KEYS
CHALLENGING KEYS | David Pfaltzgraff
Photo by Martin Hexeberg on Unsplash
I have confessed this a few times before, over the years, but people that know me as‘ David from Sunday Sounds’ still find it surprising: I’ m more of a guitarist than a keys player. My story? My Mom taught me piano lessons starting in second grade. I learned classical piano techniques from her and got decent at sight reading sheet music.
Then in middle school my parents gave me my first acoustic guitar, and everything changed. Back then my reasoning was primarily focused on my perception that guitar was a much cooler instrument to play than piano. I begged my Mom to allow me to stop piano lessons and once she could see that I was serious about guitar, she finally relented.
I quickly figured out that some keys were much easier for me to play in than others. As a fledgling guitarist I found my footing on guitar in keys that featured a lot of open strings or straightforward chord shapes. G, E, C, D, A quickly became my‘ comfort keys’ and once I started playing on a worship team and discovered capos, it was easy to capo my way towards those familiar shapes on demand.
Coming back to the piano as an adult, I quickly realized that one, my muscle memory traveling around the keyboard had grown quite rusty and, two, I found this concept of‘ comfort keys’ applied right back to the piano in the same way.
In fact, initially many of those comfort keys happened to be the same across both instruments. I couldn’ t tell you exactly why, but it was undeniably true. Over a decade later I like to think my skill as a keys player has grown to match or exceed my comfort level as a guitarist.
At least until that one worship setlist.
IT’ S ALL FLAT
It came in like a wave of scale related anxiety. An entire worship set in the key of Db, with four out of five tunes featuring‘ piano intro’ parts
that I knew would be at the top of the mix. What was worse was that this was for a worship conference where I knew we’ d be playing for a large number of attendees and even recording one of the songs for a later live album.
I had grown to feel quite comfortable in most keys over my decade plus journey back to the piano, becoming at home in B, Bb, Eb, and even discovering that perhaps my favorite key was F #. But I knew there were two keys I felt significantly less comfortable in than all others: Ab and Db.
And here I was, staring down a song list running Db front to back.
So, what’ d I do? I practiced more than I had ever practiced before, working hard to commit every motion, part, or improv to muscle memory.
I’ ll share how the set went but first let’ s dig into the why a bit.
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