spacious, how open, how transparent, the music becomes?
Please understand that I’ m not trying to get rid of a keyboard player from your team. I’ m a keyboard player, and I often play pad parts on my team. The point of worship pad products is that they can bring the beautiful textures of pad parts to your worship team if you don’ t have a keyboard player who can provide pad parts.
The takeaway for us keyboard players is this: let the makeup of these worship pad tracks influence our own playing of pad parts. What do you hear when you listen to the tracks? You generally hear the 1 st, 2 nd and 5 th notes of the scale, and those notes are held for quite a while, as I mentioned earlier. Ask yourself what you play when you are playing a pad sound. If you’ re playing full 3 note chords for each chord you play, your pad part isn’ t bringing the unique character that pad parts can bring to your team.
Make this practical. Make this your own. Next time you’ re rehearsing with your worship team, call up your favorite pad sound. Orient yourself somewhere in the middle register of your keyboard, not too far below or above middle C, and find the 1 st, 2 nd and 5 th notes of the key you’ re in. Hold those notes as the rest of the band plays the song. You’ re now providing what the worship pad tracks were providing. Unique to what you bring to the team, as opposed to what the pad track provides, is the ability to follow the song’ s chord progression. You can, for example, play a bass note, giving definition to the progression. This can be especially effective as an intro to a song, when the bass player might not have yet entered. Generally, though, when your bass player has entered, avoid lower notes, since they’ ll compete with what the bass player adds, and they can make the music sound a bit muddy.
Three notes. Yep. Spend some time experimenting with keyboard parts that are limited to these notes. Whether pad sounds or piano sounds, the result can be a satisfying addition to your worship team’ s sound.
Notes in Scale KEY 1 2 5 C C D G G G A D D D E A A A B E E E F # B B B C # F # F # F # G # C # C # C # D # G # F F G C Bb Bb C F Eb Eb F Bb Ab Ab Bb Eb Db Db Eb Ab Gb Gb Ab Db Cb Cb Db Gb
Ed Kerr Ed 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