KEYS
WARNING: HEADPHONES ADVISED! | Ed Kerr
For years now I’ve taught lots of sessions at of the arrangement. Check out the piano part I want to give you some suggestions for practice
worship seminars on how a keyboard player in Lauren Daigle’s “You Say”. That’s a lot of 16 th routines that can help you play any of these
can create effective pad parts. The content can notes, and it takes a lot of piano skill to play it piano parts with confidence. First of all, notice
be summarized very simply. Figure out what well. If you’re going to be the featured soloist those two important words I just mentioned:
the first and fifth note of the scale is in the key with your local symphony playing Brahms’ Bb Practice Routines. Do you have one? Establish
of your song and hold those 2 notes down. Major concerto, you probably won’t find any one. Let’s look at the piano figure from “Build
Probably somewhere near middle C. Yep. Hold of these piano parts challenging. But if your My Life” (FIG. 1)
those 2 notes down. Through the whole verse. contribution to your worship team for the last And the chorus. The bridge, too. year or more has been mostly pad parts, seeing In order to play this figure smoothly and evenly,
one of these songs on your set list for next I’m going to suggest you incorporate some
Sunday could freak you out. of the practice techniques I used when I was
Okay, that’s oversimplified a little, but the
essence of that summary is accurate. The first
and fifth notes of the scale will work well when
you’re creating a pad part. Listen to a bunch of
(FIG. 1)
recent worship song recordings and you’ll hear
example after example of this. Clearly that pad
part is not going to be very demanding of your
technical facility on your keyboard. But, there’s
an interesting trend I’ve observed in some
(FIG. 2)
popular songs these days. There are several
that feature demanding piano parts.
Listen to “Is He Worthy” as recorded by Andrew
Peterson or Chris Tomlin and you’ll hear a very
(FIG. 3)
syncopated piano part that continues through
much of the song. Listen to “Build My Life” as
recorded by Pat Barrett and you’ll hear a piano
figure in the intro that continues through much
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November 2019
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