KEYS
CREATING MOVEMENT IN PAD PARTS | Ed Kerr
I ’ m coaching a keyboard player online who for years played guitar as her primary instrument . She ’ s learning to play keyboard on her worship team , making tons of progress and quickly grasping the musical concepts I ’ m sharing with her . Primary among these concepts is the fact that lots of keyboard parts using pad sounds on modern worship recordings hold the first and fifth notes of the scale through a chord progression .
After a few weeks of establishing this concept with her , she asked what else she might do rather than stay on these droning notes when playing pad sounds . Hmm . This is an important question for you and I to ask . Just because we can find tons of examples of recorded pad parts that do stay on the droning 1 and 5 in the scale doesn ’ t mean that we couldn ’ t create a pad part with more movement .
8 th notes on a chorus , pad parts can feature sections with little movement ( using those droning notes 1 and 5 described above ) and sections with noticeably more activity .
So , what might that movement look like ? I ’ ll use the D A E F # m progression from the verse and chorus and show you one of the many possibilities for a more active pad part . Each of the voicings I ’ ll describe here are held for 2 beats , a half note .
D CHORD F # on top ; A below D on top , F # below
A CHORD E on top ; A below C # on top , E below
Second , I limited myself to only two notes per voicing . I always made sure to create a wide interval , either a sixth or fifth , between the two notes . Those wide intervals speak nicely when playing a pad sound , and they don ’ t muddy up the sound like putting a note in the middle would do .
Third , I created two kinds of melodic movement between the top notes in each measure . Sometimes I descended to a lower note in the chord and sometime I ascended , climbing to a chord tone above .
These concepts don ’ t just apply when playing pad sounds . If you ’ re playing a warm string ensemble sound or legato string ensemble sound , these measures with melodic movement can work well and mimic what string players might do .
One of the most popular worship songs around the world these days is “ Way Maker ”. If you ’ re playing it in the key of A , the 1 st and 5 th notes of the scale , those common droning notes , are A and E . The chords for the verse and chorus , each held for four beats , are D , A , E and F # m . If you do opt to play the droning notes A and E , remember that you can make the D a D2 chord ( D E A ) and the E now fits the chord . In the E chord , you can make it an Esus ( E A B ) or Eadd4 ( E G # A B ) and the A will fit the chord . Finally , the F # m can be an F # m7 ( F # A C # E ), so now the E is part of that chord . Yep . The A and E can be held through these four chords .
Basic pad part building , right ? Now what if , after you ’ ve played verse 1 , chorus 1 and verse 2 you want to give some more movement to your pad part ? Remember that one of the important roles every player in your worship team has is to contribute to the dynamics and energy of a song from beginning to end . Just as a guitarist might opt to strum the chord changes on beats one and three of a verse and then finger pick
E CHORD E on top ; G # below
F # M CHORD A on top ; C # below
G # on top , B below
F # on top , A below
There are limitless possibilities for you to create a similar part with movement like I ’ ve done . You might want to consider doing three things that I did in the above example . First , within each measure I made sure that the top note in my voicing changed rather than staying on the same pitch . When playing a pad sound , repeating a pitch likely will not be easily heard since pad sounds tend to have a fairly bland attack .
128 May 2021
You could also use the voicings I ’ ve shown you above with a piano sound . Rather than play half notes , holding each voicing for two beats , a half note , as I described earlier , you could play each of the voicings twice , giving a quarter note pulse . The melodic movement will be easily heard since the piano sound has a more definite attack than most pad sounds .
Try patterns like these when creating your keyboard parts sometime in your team ’ s rehearsal . I suspect you ’ ll hear the difference that it makes to play droning notes in some sections of your song and parts with some movement in some sections as I ’ ve described here . The rest of your team may notice the musical impact these parts have , too . Embrace the musical challenge we all have to make the journey from the first bar of our songs to the last - impactful for our listeners .
Ed Kerr Ed Kerr lives in Seattle with his family . He serves as worship arts director at First Free Methodist Church , teaches keyboards in Paul Baloche ’ s leadworship workshops and is a clinician with Yamaha ’ s House of Worship . He also manages the Yamaha Worship Facebook group and invites you to join the group . www . KerrTunes . com