Building Your Band

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

Piano songs and guitar songs

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In most worship songs, it is pretty obvious when the song is a “piano song” or a “guitar song.” When a song is a piano song, it may have more chord changes (think hymns), and the groove generally derives from the chord structure. Conversely, when a song is a guitar song it may have less chord changes, and the groove derives from the rhythm of the instrument or some lick or hook. This is something you are probably intuitively aware of and consider when arranging the song, but let’s focus on it directly for a moment and consider some implications.

A few years back (maybe before the internet even!) I remember reading a huge interview in Keyboard magazine with Michael Tilson Thomas* in which he talked about composition separate from that of any given instrument. In other words, he didn’t want the physicality of writing at the piano to suggest certain things in the composition. Rather, he wanted to compose independent of any instrument and then later on figure out how to voice it.

Being aware of this dynamic, there is one obvious idea and one less obvious idea we can learn:

The obvious idea is a neat arranging trick. If you have a piano song and you want a fresh arrangement, you can really change it up by arranging it around the guitar. Conversely, if you have a guitar song and you want a fresh arrangement, you can really change it up by arranging it around the piano. This is most famously done by taking hymns generally written at the piano, and making guitar arrangements. An example in the other direction – I was asked to arrange a piano version of one of Chris Joyner’s tunes for a song he wrote on the guitar called “I Believe“.

A less obvious idea is that there is a very real sense that the physicality of our instrument dictates a lot of how we play it. So while we should to play to our instrument’s strengths, we should avoid being limited by that (due to lack of technical skills), or held in a box by that (due to a lack of imagination).

So the former is probably easy enough to understand; we should try to minimize limitations by our technical skills. But the latter is a blind spot. For example, how often do we play monophonic (let alone with just one hand) on the piano? If a simple melody or counter-melody best serves the song, we should play just that (rather than chords) as suggested by our many fingers and all those keys.

Instruments are means to an end. The end is the song. How best can we voice the song?

*famed conductor of San Francisco Orchestra and notable re-interpreter of classic American composers such as Aaron Copland.

Where are you going?

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Not all those who wander are lost ~ J.R.R. Tolkein

… except when you’re playing. Whether you’re playing or singing, you need to do so with an intentionally. And you get that intentionality when you know both where you are and where you are going.

We’re talking here about the emotional content of a song. You may be in a verse, or a chorus, or a bridge – you need to know what you trying to do or to say, and know what is happening next. Are you trying to build things up? Is the bottom going to drop out in the next section?

Typically, the verse will build tension, and the chorus release it. The bridge might take a turn and do a reset and start to build tension again in a different way before dropping back into the chorus and looping it on the way out into an anthemic finish.

This emotional aspect needs to be considered by the band and the worship leader when building the song’s road map. And of course it can be improvised. But it needs to be intentional.

There are lots of ways to build, but the secret to a crescendo, the secret to building a song up, is starting quietly. If you start with everything in, you can’t turn up the volume any more.

And if as a band you realize that everyone is in, and has been in, and nothing is changing (you’ve gained as much altitude as you can), YOU need to be the one to drop out and create some movement.

Ideally a producer will talk his band through the road map so that things don’t have to get into such a tight space. There are so many options, so many ways to break a song down and build it back up. Some of my favorite ways to break things down are to:

  • Drop to acoustic piano
  • Drop to acoustic guitar
  • Go a capella with kick on 2 & 4
  • Go to bass and full drum kit (rhythm section) and full vocals
  • Drop to a big lush keyboard pad and listen to the congregation sing
  • Looping a bridge that builds
  • Combinations of these

There are so many possibilities.

The main thing is to be aware of where you are, and where you want things to go. Don’t get lost!

Sounding like a garage band using garage band

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Among the dire warnings in the world of music was the prediction that software like Apple’s Garage Band would allow anyone, even untrained musicians, to make music. This is because Garage Band allows anyone to drag in musical loops of sound, and transmogrify them into the key and tempo of the song*. People seriously thought this was the end of music as we know it [citation needed].

Turns out that’s not the way it works. Computers are like a bicycle for the mind. They don’t think for us, they allow us to think more efficiently. So what Garage Band really does, in essence, is to lower the threshold for music creation. What was missed by its detractors is that it doesn’t change the threshold for what good music is.

The part they got right is that Garage Band can allow untrained musicians to make music. Which technically means that you can be a musician without having technical training, or knowing how to play an instrument. But if you’re not a musician, if you don’t have “it”, you’re not going to make good music. You’re going to simply create a wall of sound, because in Garage Band, it’s easy to paint a track full of a certain loop. Turns out that “Garage Band” was aptly named.

The secret to making music, then, becomes knowing what to cut.

Suddenly, Michelangelo’s apocryphal story that to create David he simply “carved away everything that wasn’t the sculpture” shines in a new light.

I was reminded of this recently when my 4 year old daughter got a new Toca Boca app for the iPad called “Toca Band”. It’s basically Garage Band for kids, except it only has four bars of music that loop with no tempo or key change options, and then has about three variants of each loop, plus an opportunity to perform a solo instrument. It was easy for her to fill up all the slots with instruments, but I started pulling things out, showing her that it sounds better when you only have a few things going.

The trick to revealing the song, is knowing what isn’t in the song.

 

* Technically “Acid” by Sonic Foundry, did loops first

How to sound like a garage band (the classic blunder!)

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You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”. But only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…”

– Vizzini, the Princess Bride

Back before Apple’s software co-opted the term, a Garage Band was a group of kids who decided to start a band, and the only place they could go to rehearse was someone’s garage. The acoustics of the space didn’t help – everything was echo-ey, and hearing yourself was difficult. Since this was everyone’s first time in a band, typically everyone would play all the time at full volume trying to show their friends how awesome they sounded, creating a veritable wall of sound devoid of any real dynamics.

Of course we would never do that in church. 😉

Yet there seems to be a negative pressure sucking people into doing precisely this. If they are on stage, they feel like they should be doing something, specifically making sound. Very few people feel comfortable not playing during a tune. There may even be a sense for a paid musician that they are getting paid by the note, so the flowerier they play, or the more notes they can fit in, the better.

But what if it became your job not to play?

Part of the job of the producer is to push back on the natural disorganization (decrease the entropy) that is naturally occurring. One way I’ve pushed back on this, is to make it each musician’s job to not play one section of each song. That could be the second verse, the bridge, the chorus after the bridge, the first verse – something!

When this happens, dynamics begin to emerge. People begin to think about how the way in which they are playing (or not playing) really serves the song instead of what serves their rock star image. This is the perspective of the producer.

Of course, as the producer you are free to dictate, “Hey guitar, why don’t you drop out the second verse and let it be a piano thing with bass and drums, and then come back in on the chorus?” Not only will this provide a wonderful relief to the naturally occurring wall of sound, the guitar will sound a-w-e-s-o-m-e when it comes back in.

This “subtracting not adding” is an idea that reoccurs in music time and again. We see it with the sound engineer applying parametric EQ, “cut, don’t boost”. We see it in the idea of a crescendo, as the secret to a crescendo really is to start quietly. The longer I live the more I’ve come to trust that less really is more.

 

How big should your band be?

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Well, the bigger your band, the less everyone should play and the better everyone has to be at listening and taking turns with one another. Is that what you expected to hear?

Smaller bands don’t have to take turns as much. They still need to take turns, and they still need to listen, but the simple fact is this: if there are less musicians, there are less instruments competing for the finite amount of sonic space.

It really is the same spectrum allocation problem the FCC is contending with, as only a limited amount of signal can fit in a given frequency spectrum.

When I play, my ideal band is:

  • A front man, center front on acoustic guitar
  • Drum kit in the back center
  • Bassist next to the drummer
  • Two backing vocals, in back opposite the bassist
  • Electric guitarist on one side, front
  • Me on piano and keyboards on the other side

What this means is that the electric guitarist and I share most of the space and we can look across the stage to coordinate, and together we work to stay out of the way of the vocals.

What is a rhythm section?

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Put another way – what is meant by a “rhythm section”? And more importantly, why is it called that?

A rhythm section is really just the drum kit and bass (upright or electric).

It’s called this because the rhythm section operates as an integrated unit by defining the rhythmic structure of the song as well as the tempo and the groove. That cool rhythm guitar part? Yeah that’s just filler or ear candy at best. The real song, the definitions of downbeat and the bass of the chord, are determined by this dynamic duo.

This idea is at the foundation of moving away from the pianist defining the song and the mix. And everyone has to be aware of this dynamic. Even if a song were to start out on acoustic piano, or with a guitar riff, as soon as the rhythm section is in, they define time.

When a rhythm section is working, it’s truly a beautiful thing. It frees other instrumentalists up to not have to “carry” the song, but to just play the parts that really add value.

Making room for the bass

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Once again I am going to write from the perspective of the keyboardist, which I can fortunately do not only because I am one, but also because keyboardists are the biggest offenders at this! It is actually pretty hard for a guitar to get down in that range, in the same way it’s hard for a viola to step on an upright base, or a cello to step on a violin.

So, dear keyboardists – your wax- on wax-off is to sit on your left hand. I’m serious – you don’t get to use it – not at all.

And here is the really beautiful thing. Your sound guy will appreciate it. The piano will sound better. Your band will sound better. It will be less muddy. Your bass player will probably take you out for dinner!  It’ll be a win-win-win-win-win, at least a five-way win.

Once it starts making sense to you what you should be playing, that you can indeed get away with using just one hand, once you don’t need it anymore – then you can finally have that hand back. And you will find that you will sound better than ever.

You were getting bored doing the same old thing week after week anyway, weren’t you? You needed a challenge. Well this is it.

Protip:  don’t forget to do your Hanon exercises so your left hand doesn’t atrophy!

Flesh and bones

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What on earth am I talking about here? This is how I think about the roles of the various instruments. The rhythm section, consisting of bass and drums is the skeleton, the bones, and everything else is the flesh that hangs off the skeleton.

So the real “song” is defined by the rhythm section. A vocal track should have no problem existing inside this space thus creating “the song”. And indeed it is all empty space in there. The other instruments – the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard, organ, solo and orchestral instruments, backing vocals and choir – all are the flesh and muscle and organs (hah) that exists inside the skeleton, and must not conflict with the lead vocal or each other!

This paradigm, these new wine skins, must inform how everyone thinks about the song to include how it is played and how it is mixed. The mix must begin with the kick, snare, hat, etc. and then go to the bass, and then the other instruments. They can be sub-mixed in groups (the rhythm section in Group 1-2, the instruments in Group 3-4), so that the vocals speak, but the only thing that can conflict with the vocals are the instruments, not the rhythm section.

New wine in old wineskins

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If your church has been around for a while, it undoubtedly started out with a pianist and/or an organist. That person was the center of the music. I remember recognizing this quite dramatically when I was 12 years old, the first time the pastor’s wife in my little church of 100 was sick and couldn’t play piano. I was asked to step up and was stunned to notice that I had more power than the choir director. This despite the fact that I had been in orchestras and I knew how to follow a conductor, it turned out the conductor was following me!

This paradigm becomes so ingrained that even when band instruments are added – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard, bass, drums – the piano remains the central point of the music and the mix and directs how everything happens. You can tell this is the case not only when the piano plays the introduction and then the band comes in with the congregation, but also when the piano player is mentioned in the bulletin, to the exclusion of every other musician!

I’m sure this scenario isn’t the one Jesus had in mind when he said this, but I think this is one of those cases where putting new wine into old wineskins isn’t going to work out so well.

How this shift happens isn’t easy, it’s a discontinuity no doubt, but we need new wineskins in order for the group to move forward, and everyone needs to be aware of it. The long and terrible reign of the piano player as dictator for life must come to an end 😉 ha!

A worship team prayer

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1242006800_17820a3dee_oLord, allow us to listen –
To each other
To the congregation
To the space between the notes
To what you have to say

Lord, allow us to see –
Your way
Your working
Your people
Your will

Lord, allow us to feel –
Your presence
Your calling
Your life
Your abundance