KEYS
WHAT ’ S AN IMPACT DRIVER DO ? | Ed Kerr
Anybody here a do-it-yourselfer ? My wife and I are . We recently opted to replace our tired upstairs carpet with laminate flooring . We ’ d been told what a straightforward process it would be . The pieces just snap together ! So easy .
Well , it was the hardest DIY job we ’ ve ever done . Yikes . Along the way I hired a professional installer to coach me a little . It was a huge help . One of the best things to come out of that coaching was me learning what a tool of mine does . I ’ ve had the thing for years but never used it . It ’ s an impact driver . I thought it was just a special kind of drill . Turns out that when we were putting some screws in to get rid of squeaks in our subfloor , this tool was amazing ! Screws that I just couldn ’ t sink went in effortlessly with the impact driver .
Wow ! To think I ’ d had this tool all along but never used it . This has me thinking about what you and I go through as keyboard players . Each week it seems there is a new keyboard that everyone is raving about , new software for making sounds or new headphones that let you hear things you ’ ve never heard before .
But what do you have right now ? Since it ’ s unlikely that many of us can trade in our keyboards monthly for the newest model or update our sound library with whatever has just been released , I ’ m thinking we might do well to look at the tools we already have .
Whatever instrument you play , whether it ’ s an out-of-tune acoustic piano , a Bosendorfer concert grand or synth that everyone is raving about , you still sit at it and make choices . You make a choice with the most basic tool that each of us have : our ten fingers . Ten fingers . That suggests to me that you could put those ten fingers to work and play a lot of notes . Not just some notes but a lot of notes . Regardless of what other players on the team are doing . You ’ re playing a lot of notes . Busy keyboard parts .
It ’ s time to use another tool you have : your ears . Listen to what is going on in the rest of the band . Is a lead guitarist playing a melodic hook that ’ s essential to the song ? Are vocalists singing a melody ? Are vocal harmonies present ? In other words , your effectiveness as a keyboard isn ’ t determined so much by how many dazzlingly
fast figures you can play but how well the parts you create fit with what the rest of the team is playing .
Just like my impact driver was ideally suited for what I needed to do working with my subfloor , there are more tools that you can put to use regularly , the 7 notes of the scale . These 7 notes that make up the scale of any song you ’ re playing are your tools for creating melodic ideas . Say you ’ re playing a hymn that you want to create an intro to use setting up the song . What do you play ? You could play the last line of the hymn , or the first . Or you could sit at your instrument and create something unique . Perhaps you could play something that ’ s similar to the melodic shape and rhythm of the hymn ’ s first phrase but not exactly like it . Use those 7 notes in the scale and different note values and different rhythmic placements to create something new .
Each time you listen to a new recording from your favorite artist or hear a worship song with a great instrument hook , remind yourself that some musician somewhere took those seven notes and worked with them , crafted them ,