Building Your Band

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

Peter James | Clashing With Every Single Person

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We’re joined by legendary Hillsong keyboardist and sound designer Peter James. Peter has been playing piano/keys for the last 25+ years, and has been heavily involved with Hillsong Church as a volunteer on the weekends, as well as being employed by Hillsong United and Hillsong International Leadership College as a lecturer for the past 13 years. Additionally, he has played on 40+ Hillsong albums.

In this episode, we get inside Peter James headspace on everything from Sound Design -> Writing Parts -> Arranging -> Synth Bass. We hear how he pushes himself to continually try something new, the relationship of keyboard parts to sounds, a trick for coming up with parts, and how to incorporate synth base into your band. We hear about the influence of Hillsong producer, Joel Houston, and the reference material he pushed out ahead of tracking, such as: M83, Passion Pit, & Radiohead, that influence modern worship music today.

Go to Peter James Productions, check out his stuff at Multitracks (including his sounds for Oceans), don’t miss his Youtube Channel, and follow him on Facebook, and Twitter.

Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and support the show by rating us and leaving a comment. Have a question or thought? Leave a comment below or connect directly with us!

The Best Keyboard

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Music pastors and aspiring keyboardists occasionally ask my take on the best keyboard for modern worship music, and while I’m happy to discuss differing synthesis techniques, interface philosophies, and personalities of manufacturers, my take is unequivocal: the best keyboard, is the keyboard you own.

Why is that? Well, if you don’t have your own keyboard, you’re not going to be familiar with its sounds or how to navigate on it, so you’re only going to use a handful of patches for any particular set. You’re also not going to be familiar with how those sounds respond to note velocity, let alone aftertouch or the mod wheel, nor are you going to have a good sense of how they sound solo’d or work in a mix. Consequently, you are going to play tentatively because you’re not going to have confidence in your sounds, or how they respond, and when the sound does something unexpected you’ll get spooked by it and back down. Additionally, the house sound engineer may just mute you if something loud sticks out and start messing up their mix.

You need your own keyboard, so that you can become intimately familiar with its sounds, and so you have a variety of your favorite patches, well organized in the user section, at your fingertips. You need to become intimately familiar with how those patches respond to note velocity, aftertouch, and the mod wheel so that you can create something dynamic that evolves, as our incredibly-made ears identify static sounds with ease. Furthermore you need to have a good sense of how your patches sound both solo’d and in a mix (try playing along with MP3’s at home).

The bottom line is, the only keyboard you will be able to play confidently, is the one that you know inside and out. You will only know how to voice your chords to be both present and in their proper space if you’re intimately familiar with how those sounds respond.

Personally, it doesn’t matter who set up a keyboard or how awesome that keyboard is, if I wasn’t intimately familiar with that particular machine, I would never use it during a gig because all I would be doing is inviting trouble. I have turned down using all kind of fantastic gear, to include the Nords, rather than get bogged down in a new interface, get lost in a menu, and be unsure how a sound will respond (am I even in the right octave?). The exception to this is, I may use one sound from a keyboard that I don’t own, if it were something important that added quality and depth to my sound. The best example of this is I typically use the house piano wherever I go, and add my rig to it. This works because I am already very familiar with how a piano responds, the house sound engineer already knows how that piano responds, including how to mic it if it’s a real/acoustic instrument, and I’m spending zero time fussing with it trying to navigate a new interface.

So, yes, absolutely, if you have a Mac do get MainStage, and if you can afford a Nord Stage go for it, and I haven’t seen anyone using a Behringer DeepMind yet so I’d love to see that, and if you like the sound of something different than what everyone else is playing, even better to bring something new to the table! But you need your own keyboard. You probably need a stage instrument (meant for live music and with a simpler interface) more than you need a workstation (with a deeper interface and squencing capabilities). But in the end, it’s not about the gear. In the end it’s about how the gear is used, and how you hear it.

If you’re a wanna-be keyboardist, you need to understand that much of the contribution you make, just like a guitarist, is via the tone and timbres you bring. And it is imperative that you take ownership of that, because you are going to hear sound slightly differently than everyone else. Buying a keyboard, getting to know that keyboard, selecting your favorite set of patches, tweaking (lightly editing) those patches so they are “yours”, and then understanding how those sounds work in a song are all part of the craft of being a modern keyboardist. And have no doubt, this is craftsmanship.

If you don’t have a budget, just start hitting craigslist up, then audition the keyboards for sale there on youtube before you bother to meet up. If you have any kind of a budget, hit the biggest music store in your city, in the morning and on a weekday so the store is empty, and bring your own set of headphones to audition every keyboard they have until you start to hear the differences and start to have an opinion. Then buy your first piece of gear (from that store!! You want them to continue to be in business, right?). Over the next few years your tastes may change, or you’ll figure out what your machine does or doesn’t do well enough to consider a new piece of gear. Then don’t get rid of that one! Instead, add the new ‘board to your sound so you don’t lose anything that you have, and you can slowly get your head around the new interface and contributions of the new machine, incorporate the capability of your second keyboard into your live playing. Congratulations on starting down your path of becoming a modern keyboardist with your unique voice!

Does your experience back this up? Do you see things differently or have other advice? Leave your questions or comments in the notes below or contact me directly!

Jon Waller | Destroyed an Entire Genre

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Jon joins the show discussing a range of genres based around Jazz to include Gospel and Neo Soul. Along the way, he shares samples from some projects he has done. We wrap up with his thoughts on the kinds of music that belongs in church, the role the church plays in moving music forward, as well as his thoughts on playing outside of the church. Find Jon on Facebook.

Let each one according to the gift that he has received, administer it unto the others, as a good steward of the diverse graces of God. I Peter 4:10

A few recent products from Jon on video:

This episode is sponsored by Johnny Flash Productions, a creative agency based in the Washington D.C. area that was founded 16 years ago by John Falke. I can’t speak highly enough about the quality of his service. If you have the need, I think you’d really enjoy working with him and be pleased with the results.

Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and support the show by rating us five stars and leaving a comment. We love your questions and comments!

If you like this episode, you may also like “Dave Tauler – Not Enough Bassoon Gigs“, “Justin Pinkney, ‘Translating CCM’”, and “William Brew IV | The Way It Is“.

The Five Stages of Musical Proficiency

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BYBStagesXSomething that I think would have been helpful to me in my musical journey, was some sort of validation of where I’ve been, where I am, and a hint of what is ahead of me.

This handy chart that I created is one way to break things out, and it’s the way I hear many folks describe their musical journey.

The First Stage is really the beginner stage- when you first pick up your instrument and don’t know a thing about a scale or a chord or a time signature. It’s about acquiring those basics.

The Second Stage is the “doing your homework” phase of musical progression, where you put in your time – maybe even most of your 10,000 hours – to gain proficiency on your instrument. If you don’t love your instrument by this point you get out.

The Third Stage represents a paradigm shift. It’s the first time you start focussing not on what you’re playing, but on what you’re not playing. It’s about creating space for others and responding to what is going on. If you’re copying the record at this point, that’s where your eyes get opened up to what session players are actually doing. They’re not the busy little doodlers we are when we play by ourselves. There is an economy to what they play. This is when we get knocked back by the significance of The Edge when he says:

Notes actually do mean something. They have power. I think of notes as being expensive. You don’t just throw them around. I find the ones that do the best job and that’s what I use. I suppose I’m a minimalist instinctively. I don’t like to be inefficient if I can get away with it. Like on the end of “With or Without You”. My instinct was to go with something very simple. Everyone else said, “Nah, you can’t do that.” I won the argument and I still think it’s sort of brave, because the end of “With or Without You” could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back… ultimately I’m interested in music. I’m a musician. I’m not a gunslinger. That’s the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do. —The Edge (1991)

The Fourth Stage is when you’ve moved past trying to copy your influences and you prefer your own voice. This is when you can apply your sound to original material without second guessing yourself. This is also when you might listen to the record, but you don’t need to, because you understand how to serve the song. This level represents the true expert, the specialist in music.

The Fifth Stage is reserved for the very few who are willing to be extremely brave and vulnerable and who continue to distill their voice and find something so new as to be thought of as original. Very often this occurs across genres or it is art that transcends genres.  This stage of musicianship is reserved for those who change the way we hear music, and we’re never the same after that.

Once we move forward, we still may step backwards at times so that we can again move forward with a different vocabulary or improved skill set. I think of Rush’s Drummer Neil Peart, already a world class drummer with 14 Albums under his belt, using a traditional rock style of hitting the snare (clearly at the Fifth Stage), who decided in 1994 to back up (to the Second Stage) and learn the looser jazz style traditional grip of playing to find some fresh inspiration, the result of which can first be heard on Test For Echo.

What do you think? Do these stages help you think about where you are in your own musical journey? Are they helpful as you think about the musicians you play with, produce, or direct?

Steven Kristopher | 40th Birthday Gift

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With Abandon CD CoverSteven Krisopher shares what was behind his most recent project, With Abandon, (edit: released December 15th, 2015). With sixty minutes of music in ten songs, he talks about how his desire for this project was to let the songs breathe.

Primarily a pianist, Steven wrote this project on the acoustic guitar and did a textbook rock keyboard/piano treatment, after programming the drums and bass himself. Lots of vocal tracks unite the songs, sung by him and four other vocalists (one of which we talk about in particular). He then mixed and mastered the album, and edited the official video.

Keep up with him at his website: StevenKristopher.com, and follow him at Twitter and on Facebook.

Check out his music on iTunes and Bandcamp – and “With Abandon” is out!

Find this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher and subscribe. If you enjoyed this episode, please support this podcast with a rating and comment.

Aaro Keipi, ‘Keyboardists Agreeing’

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"The Composer" by Aarography

“The Composer” by Aarography

Subscribe to iTunes

Subscribe on iTunes

Aaro Keipi and I agree for about an hour on playing classical, worship, and funk keyboard, the preeminence of pads, improvising, composition, language, and communication.

The difference between us being, Aaro is actually educated on the topic, as informed by his Masters’ Thesis.

This is our first international podcast from Finland.

Connect with Aaro: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud

Links:

MainStage

Great Pianists on Piano Playing

Christ Collat Band

Espoir by Aaro Keipi

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.

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.

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!