KEYS
PAD BASICS FOR ALL | Ed Kerr
In all the keyboard seminars I ’ ve taught through the years and all the coaching I ’ ve done of keyboard players on my worship team or one on one , there ’ s something I ’ ve said in just about every situation . I make sure that people understand that a keyboard player on a worship team is not a church pianist . Among the things that differentiate these two musicians from each other is the fact that most church pianists , when accompanying hymns , will play the melody of the hymn on their instrument as it ’ s being sung . That is just not done when playing modern worship songs . When vocalists are singing the melody of a worship song , no one in the band doubles that melody . You might be able to cite an example where this is done on a recording of a worship song , but that example would be a rarity rather than the norm .
Another thing unique to what a keyboard player on a worship team will be familiar with is playing pad sounds . Here ’ s where there ’ s a definite echo from my past articles and my coaching and seminar work . When playing a pad sound , the keyboard player thinks very differently than when playing an acoustic piano or electric piano sound . Though there are literally thousands of pad sounds to choose from these days depending on the keyboard you play or the software you use on stage , pad parts generally
share an important characteristic . These parts feature held notes , sustained notes . Some notes might be held for four bars , eight bars , even 16 bars or more . In fact , if you use a pad player app like the excellent one included with SundayKeys , once you turn on the pad player notes are sustained until you turn the player off . Those are some long note values . Whole notes tied to whole notes tied to whole notes .
You might have someone on your team , perhaps a guitarist or vocalist who has interest in but minimal experience playing keyboard . Training them to play pads could be a great fit for them , and they could contribute the richness that we hear pad parts bring to so many modern worship recordings . Here are some essentials of what pad players should be thinking as they play .
2 NOTES ! First , think about where to go to lunch after church . Kidding . First , know what the first and fifth notes of the scale are in the key of your song . For example , if your song is in the key of D , the first note of the scale is D and the fifth note is A . These will become the notes you hold down for many measures at a time when playing a pad sound . When you hold these two pitches down and chords change , you may wonder why one or the other of these pitches doesn ’ t change . That ’ s something unique about modern worship arrangements .
Now about those 2 notes . It ’ s valuable to understand some of the theory that ’ s involved here . Most of the songs you and I play in our worship services use 4 chords within the key of the song . Those chords are often labeled the 1,4,5,6 chords . Those numbers represent the number in the scale of the root of each chord . Again , with the key of D for an example , the 1 chord is D . The 4 chord is G . The 5 chord is A . The 6 chord is Bm . The pitches I mentioned earlier , D and A , the first and fifth notes of the D scale , are found in the D chord , which is spelled D F # A .
Here ’ s where things get very un-hymn-ish . Most arrangers and keyboard players who use the 4 chord , G in our example , play it as a 2 chord . This means that instead of playing the root ( G ), third ( B ) and fifth ( D ) of the G chord , the two of the chord ( A ) will be played instead , leaving out the third , B . The result of this simple change is that now the D and A , our 2 notes , “ belong ” to the G chord . They are now common tones . Common tones are notes shared between two chords . The work we ’ re doing here is going to result in the D and A being common tones in all