Building Your Band

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

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!