Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

Serving the song as a… [solo instrument]

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Michael Thomas Cello

Michael Thomas Cello

It is awesome to have you in the service this morning! We love the unique color that you bring, as well as the obvious proficiency you bring on what looks to be a gorgeous  instrument. Wow.

First things first – I hope you have a built-in pickup, or have brought a phantom powered mic that clips on to your instrument. Hopefully you know where it goes to generate a nice warm tone, because we’ve never really mic’d anything like you before and we don’t have time to experiment, and no one likes listening to mostly rosin or reed.

Also, I obviously haven’t had time to arrange anything for you, except you’ve hopefully heard one or two MP3’s that feature your instrument (planning!). So for sure, cover those parts. Otherwise, I’m not sure what to tell you to play. I hope you are comfortable feeling things out by ear; of course you are, or you wouldn’t be here.

Now, if you drone through the songs, especially in the upper register, you’re going to make it extremely difficult for the vocalists to be heard. Assuming we have a competent sound engineer, you’re going to get pushed way down in the mix if you do that, so obviously, don’t do that.

It makes so much more sense for you to play the intro, any riffs or hooks, and a couple of key spots or designated solos rather than compete with the vocals. Do this, and you will do what you came to do.

We’re totally open to any arranging ideas to feature you that you can suggest during the rehearsal. Ok? Great? Let’s do this!!

Serving the song as … [vocalists]

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Why do we have multiple vocalists? Any ideas?

Are they there to detract from the person fronting?  No. They remain the focal point.

Are they there to detract from the melody? No. That’s the main thing.

So why are they there?

They are there to make the lead vocalists sound good and fresh once our ears grow tired of their voice (which happens no matter how good they sound). So we probably don’t want any backing vocalists until that happens. We may not need to hear backing vocalists on the first verse at all. When they do join in, they shouldn’t sing a harmony unless the melody for that part has already been established.

One alternative is to start by singing unison for a while, and then give the lead plenty of chance to shine once again on their own before coming back in. But only do harmonies once the melody is well established!

Now a choir is a true gift! That being said, we probably don’t need to hear a choir sing the same thing on all four verses of a song. Once we’ve heard something once, we’re good. So why not pull out on the first two verses and come in with ooooohs or in unison on the third, and then bring full volume and harmonies on the fourth? Or just punctuate a song with several well chosen phrases? Or make a grand entrance when we loop the chorus after the bridge and the band drops down to just kick on 2 & 4… and then sing it out in full voice with the band. In my mind, that’s what the gates of heaven opening sounds like!

The possibilities are endless with a choir, but because they are such a big instrument, it’s so easy to just let them fill all the space, all the time, and quite honestly, even a choir can get boring.

Arranging vocals is a full time job. Much intentionality is required to do it right, and keep everyone sounding their best.

Serving the song as a… [timekeeper]

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I love a great drummer. I love watching them paint with their sticks. I marvel at their limb-independence. I love the textures they produce. I love the spontaneity and the inspiration they bring, and how they can lean forward or back against the beat and even stretch time. A great drummer can defy the laws of physics.

But let’s start at the beginning. If there was a survey of advice for young drummers, the unanimous consensus would be: stop playing fills and keep steady time.

The classic rookie mistake of a drummer is to think that busy is better, to think that riffs/fills are important to their role, and then to sacrifice time keeping for flash. We’ve all done it, or something similar to it. But when a drummer shifts time around (plays a flashy fill and then rushes a little), the consequences are far graver. Instead of thinking about where the sound is going, the band is now trying to figure out where the downbeat is! Everyone gets hesitant and preoccupied, and that shows.

Consider this – instead of filling up space with a fill, have you ever noticed how producers in electronica build tension going into a new section? They usually pull sounds out. They pull out the kick, or pull out the snare, or pull everything! One of the few examples I can find of this in a worship song is David Crowder Band’s “Our Love is Loud”, although Crowder is admittedly fairly electronica-oriented in its production. (Can anyone think of any other?)

Serving the song as a… [guitarist]

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Much of the music we listen to today is defined by the guitar. There is so much you can do right, and so much space to explore. I’m going to assume you know not to use a blues tone on a song that isn’t Gospel. But other than that, I’m not going to get into the technicalities of the kinds of pickups you should use, or if Line 6 pedals are the way to go or not, I’ll let you guys debate the relative merits of the various ways you color your sound.

The main thing I want to say is that communication with the keyboardist is good because you two are taking up most of the same space as the vocalists. Communication before rehearsal is nice, during rehearsal is really nice, and eye contact during the gig can do so much to disambiguate who is doing what, when. Since so many songs are the guitarists, when there is a piano song or keyboard section, let them do their thing. And if there are two guitar parts, you don’t need to cover them both (even though I’m sure you can). Feel free to pawn off the least interesting guitar parts to your keyboardist – they will love you for it!

Except for special arrangements, make sounds that are guitar sounds so everyone can tell what is going on. There is nothing more confusing for a keyboard player (or congregation, if they are paying attention) than to hear synth sounds not coming from the keys!

Serving the song as a… [keyboardist]

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I like to have little 3-octave keyboards on top of a grand piano, and then a 4-octave USB controller to the right of the piano routed to virtual instruments in a mac book pro. While my first love is the piano, my real secret of making the piano sound good is having plenty of other sounds within easy reach… and uh, NOT playing the piano all the time.

So what I’m trying to do is to keep the piano sound fresh by varying what I am doing on it. Sometimes that means sitting out a section, and sometimes that means I switch to a pad for the verses and the bridge. Sometimes I play one hand on a pad and one hand on the piano for some sections. I like the smaller keyboards, because then I can have more of them closer to me, and since I’m trying to be sure to make room for the base, the smaller boards are perfect. If I do need to do an epic pad when it’s all me, I can always use two different boards at once and the two different sounds will sound even more amazing.

The other thing I love doing is running arpeggiators. But that’s one of those things you can do only if the drummer is playing to a click track, so the tempo is tight and doesn’t drift. You know that cool, muted, 8th note rhythmic device the guitarist is doing? It isn’t good form to try to layer that with an arpeggiator. No stealing riffs! When guitarists do get that mountaintop solo, there are two things we can do: hold down the song and create some space! Two hands down low playing whole notes will define the chord and the downbeat and add meat, freeing up the guitarist to do their thang in the space above.

Serving the song as a… [_________]

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When we’re just starting out, we learn to play solo, by ourselves. When we start to transition to playing with a band, we have to learn new things about playing our instrument. We have to learn how our instrument interacts with the other instruments, and the role each of the other instruments that are present.

So while serving the song happens certainly at the producer level, that must be supported at our individual instrument level. In the following posts, I want to focus on what that can look like for each instrument.

I’d love to hear additional thoughts from specialists on each of these!

A critique

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If someone were to critique this sight and what I am doing hear, I think they would probably say that all these articles on the production of music is really missing the heart of worship. That most of this doesn’t matter. And I would understand there point. The intent of doing music on a Sunday mourning (or Saturday night for that matter) is to honor God, to worship Jesus, to invite the Spirit in, and to experience God. It’s really not about the best arrangement, or the best mix, or any of that.

The simple fact is that some people get distracted by the simplest errors of spelling and grammar, which ends up drawing focus away from the message*. I’m not one of those people. I’m gifted with horrible spelling and grammar. But I have seen that deter people often enough from the content of what I’m trying to share (particularly in professional environments) that I understand its importance.

I remember a church with a hired worship leader who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tune his guitar. That’s a guy that needed to go back home. Everything I am talking about here is just as basic, just as fundamental. We really need to get the basics right before we are freed up to be guided by the Spirit.

While music production is not the ends, it is a means. And a means that, if done well, will become effortless and invisible, like the air we breathe.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

 

p.s. In this case: site, hear, is, there, and mourning, should have been sight, here, are, their, and morning.

 

The most important musician

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Who do you think is the most important musician?

This is not a question I have heard posed a lot, but I am very confident about how I would answer this question, and it may not be who you have in mind.

  • It’s not the drummer, although this person is critical for keeping steady time.
  • It’s not the bassist, although this person is critical for how chords move in the song.
  • It’s not the guitarist, although this person is often the most notable in a band.
  • It’s not the keyboardist, although this person can add so much color and depth to the sound.
  • It’s not the lead vocalist, although the front man can make or break how a band connects with the audience.

The most important musician, if you ask me, is the sound engineer.

The sound engineer is a musician. Their instrument is the mixing board, and they need to be able to play that thing like a Stradivarius. They need to love, and I mean really love, music. If they don’t love music, that will become very apparent in the mix. It will sound clinical and boring. I call this the NPR mix.

Onyx 1640i by Pete Bulanow

Onyx 1640i by Pete Bulanow

Their role as gatekeeper is clear: Everything goes through the sound engineer. What is muted or un-muted is totally in their hands, and a band is helpless against a sound engineer who isn’t paying attention.  The sound engineer controls the stage volume, and what the band hears is largely in the hands of that person. The band has very little control over the house mix, and while a sound engineer can’t “polish a turd” as the saying goes (even if they can mute a pitchy vocalist), they very much can make or break how a band comes across in the house, which translates to how the audience responds, which translates to how the band plays. This person couldn’t be more critical.

The rookie mistake I hear (see) engineers make is when they “mix with their eyes”. What I mean is if they set levels the same (to include gain) e.g. for all the backing vocalists, the sound comes out at the same volume. True, each channel could be producing the same amount of gain, but vocalists sing at really different volumes. You have no choice but to mix with your ears.

Or you think because you push a channel up a little louder that it got a little louder. But if you didn’t hear it get louder, it doesn’t matter if you pushed the fader up. Perhaps you pushed the wrong fader up!

You can actually walk by a mixing board and see an engineer who mixes with their eyes vice their ears.

And yet, when everything is going great, the sound tech goes largely unnoticed. The only time the engineer gets any attention is if there is feedback. It’s a thankless job to all but those who know the real deal, to those who really hear a mix.

So musicians, thank your engineer for a great mix!!!!

Keeping the main thing the main thing

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A few years back, before the era of DAWs, I was living not far from Nashville and took the opportunity to mix a MIDI project (that I had developed all on a Korg M1) at a “real Nashville studio”. It was one of the smaller recording studios, but still had records from Amy Grant, MWS, Larnelle Harris, and the Imperials up on the wall (that had, at least in part, been recorded there). It was a great and increasingly rare experience to have had, particularly in today’s age of home studios.

Back to my story…the engineer spent a fair amount of time mixing an instrumental track, and it was sounding great, ready for a lead vocal to go over the top of it. One problem though – there never was going to be a lead vocal. The song certainly had a melody line, often played by a solo instrument, but the engineer had apparently gone into auto-pilot and mixed the music as he normally does as a sound track with space for a lead vocal.

Once I figured out what was going on, I had to step up and discuss this with him. He cautioned me that perhaps I had “demo lust” (that affliction whereby you are asking for a professional mix, but really just want it to sound like the demo), but I assured him it wasn’t that, it was just that the melody wasn’t speaking. Several hundred dollars later, we had a great mix I could live with.

Making sure the melody speaks (is louder) is one of those things that gets drilled into you with piano lessons. When you get to a certain level, you even get to the point where you’re expected to voice the melody within a hand i.e. while playing other notes, even if other notes are above the melody. I can’t say I was ever highly successful at this, but I am at least aware of it (thanks, Alfreda Winninger!)

The lesson to learn is an important one, and one we have yet to learn well. As obvious as it may seem, as cliched as the title to this piece is, we have to be deliberate when we introduce harmonies, and ensure those harmonies never obscure the melody.

There are a number of practical steps we can take to ensure the melody speaks. Perhaps don’t use harmony vocals on the first verse at all so that everyone can learn the song (even the visitors!). If we need backing vocals on the chorus, sing them in unison with the melody the first time. Only after the melody is well established, should we introduce harmonies, and then, never let the harmonies be voiced louder than the melody (sound engineer – I’m looking your direction)!