KEYS
CONFIDENT IN EVERY KEY | David Pfaltzgraff
When I was just a little homeschooled kid my Mom told me it was time to start taking piano lessons . As a little one I ’ d expressed an interest in music from an early age , but I was also a pretty stubborn kid . Taking piano lessons from dear old Mom led to no shortage of ‘ but I think it should be played this way ’ disagreements .
Thanks to her equal or greater measure of stubbornness I did eventually learn how to play classical piano from sheet music and the lessons continued for several years .
Once I hit my teens , I quickly adopted the belief that guitar was ‘ cooler ’ and eventually convinced my Mom to let me drop the piano lessons in favor of teaching myself guitar . But to this day I owe much of my musical theory knowledge to those early years of piano lessons and the foundation they set .
When I returned to the piano as an adult worship leader in full-time ministry if you would ’ ve asked me why I was so hesitant to step outside of all but the most basic of keys on the keyboard , I wouldn ’ t have quite known how to answer . I suppose I could blame the extended break from the instrument for causing me to lose confidence in handling less ‘ common ’ keys with more sharps and flats , or perhaps I ’ d developed ‘ capo-vision ’ from the guitar and simply migrated those preferences back to the ivories .
Regardless of the exact reason , I found myself torn . I wanted to avoid using the transpose button out of a sense of idealism but also genuinely struggled to step out of keys like C , G , and D on the piano without tons of extra time in practice and constantly checking my hands during performance .
I knew I had a problem , so I began to seek solutions .
THE COMMON PROBLEM
More recently I discovered my dilemma was not an uncommon one . Many keys players who ’ ve cut their teeth in contemporary worship contexts have expressed similar hang-ups . The more stories I heard the clearer the picture became .
For many years in the oughts ’ and 2010 ’ s modern worship music was recorded and performed in some of those simpler keys to start with and oftentimes even if that weren ’ t the case in the recording the keys would be shifted to ‘ flow ’ from one song to the next in a Sunday setlist . The result was a long stream of chord charts in just a few keys , where us keys players were often asked to play simple diamond chords on the changes and hold pads .
This worked pretty darn well for a chorus of ‘ Here I Am to Worship ’ into ‘ Heart of Worship ’ into ‘ Mighty to Save ’ but thanks to a ( quite welcome ) deepening and widening of musical complexity in worship music of more recent times - today ’ s keys player might find themselves faced with songs in Ab , C #, and Eb all in the same setlist .
So how can we loosen up those fingers and find our footing in what used to be less common keys ?
IMPRACTICAL PRACTICE
For me , I probably didn ’ t approach things in the most methodical way once I realized I had a problem .