Playing Rock Keyboards in a Band

Video Transcript

In this clip, we're going to be talking about playing in a group and what that really means. The main thing that playing in a group means versus playing solo by yourself, is just listening to everybody else, everything else flows down from that. The timing of how you're playing and how you're playing along with everyone else; and just simplifying, you know, changing your part to make sure that you know, it fits with what everyone else is playing. Those are the two most important parts but those are both, involve listening. So let's take the piece, the little part that I just recently played and look at how that might change based on playing in a group. In this piece, before I was playing all the different parts that are necessary to make it sound full as a solo keyboard piece. So if you listen, you hear the bass line playing and the top melodic rift kind of hand playing. One of the things that you can do to start off is just listen to make sure that that's not getting in the way of anybody else. If the bass player is going do-do-do-do-do-do, then you don't have to necessarily play it in full chords. If the drummer is playing a beat that is a little bit different from dat-do-dat-do-do-dat-do, then you can adjust your part to that. Or maybe the bass player goes up high like to a certain point in the song where you want to change that so instead of you playing down here, maybe you move it up an octave or so just to make sure that it fits with what everything, you know everything that's going on in the song. One of the big differences between people who typically play piano solo and people that play in a band context is the whole idea of playing by ear. The, you know, everything that you learn when you're playing by yourself, you know, with music is helpful but a lot of times you really have to go back past that music and you know, what's the idea that you're trying to get across with that music rather than just playing the notes on the page, you know, really saying why does this melody change here and why does it get louder and softer. The dynamics and just the movement of the piece and all the melody and everything that goes in there. You really have to start thinking about that more than just playing it so you're reacting to what everyone else is doing. And when everybody is reacting at the same time in a band, that's when the magic really happens.

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