Keyboard players with heavy left hands

[Pep]

If your only chance to work it out is at gigs, looks like there are enough strikes against you continuing on with these guys to justify you moving on.

My band practices once a week, but we're all retired and have the time. I like to say that some guys have poker night, while we have practice nights. But the thing is that even though we are all experienced, like a basketball team we need to learn each other's moves. And that means we need rehearsal. And it's paying off.

A big problem we had and I think a lot of bands with experienced members may have is that guys have been playing a song "wrong" for so long, it's hard to unlearn what you are used to. This is especially bad with our other lead singer who plays rhythm guitar. For all intents and purposes his background is in solo work. Kinda like a busker, but on stage. He completely stylized vocals both in "rhythm" and notes. i.e. he would sometimes drop or climb into what would be the harmony vocal parts. So when I try to sing harmony with him, the timing of his notes is way off and often he leaves the melody to join me on harmony.

It's taken a long time but most of it is fixed, though there are some parts where I've just given up and I go into the melody for a couple of notes.

He also has no "harmony sensibility" but that is changing too. Because I played 3rd trombone and bass trombone in high school and college stage bands, I just naturally "hear" the harmony, even to songs I've never heard before. I assumed everybody did that but nope. I came across it several years ago in my "amish family" band, where it took months before the teenage kids in the band could sing decent harmonies, but they really nailed it. We did a lot of Doo-wap very well. But I'm having the same challenge with this guy. Again, as we rehearse, it gets noticeably better.

If you've had the stamina to read to this point, let me summarize: If you guys are having these problems, you may not need to rehearse to learn the songs, but rather, like a basketball practice, you need to rehearse to learn to play like a team.

And at the end of the day, that is what a band is. It is a team”Harmony sensitivity

If your only chance to work it out is at gigs, looks like there are enough strikes against you continuing on with these guys to justify you moving on.

My band practices once a week, but we're all retired and have the time. I like to say that some guys have poker night, while we have practice nights. But the thing is that even though we are all experienced, like a basketball team we need to learn each other's moves. And that means we need rehearsal. And it's paying off.

A big problem we had and I think a lot of bands with experienced members may have is that guys have been playing a song "wrong" for so long, it's hard to unlearn what you are used to. This is especially bad with our other lead singer who plays rhythm guitar. For all intents and purposes his background is in solo work. Kinda like a busker, but on stage. He completely stylized vocals both in "rhythm" and notes. i.e. he would sometimes drop or climb into what would be the harmony vocal parts. So when I try to sing harmony with him, the timing of his notes is way off and often he leaves the melody to join me on harmony.

It's taken a long time but most of it is fixed, though there are some parts where I've just given up and I go into the melody for a couple of notes.

He also has no "harmony sensibility" but that is changing too. Because I played 3rd trombone and bass trombone in high school and college stage bands, I just naturally "hear" the harmony, even to songs I've never heard before. I assumed everybody did that but nope. I came across it several years ago in my "amish family" band, where it took months before the teenage kids in the band could sing decent harmonies, but they really nailed it. We did a lot of Doo-wap very well. But I'm having the same challenge with this guy. Again, as we rehearse, it gets noticeably better.

If you've had the stamina to read to this point, let me summarize: If you guys are having these problems, you may not need to rehearse to learn the songs, but rather, like a basketball practice, you need to rehearse to learn to play like a team.

And at the end of the day, that is what a band is. It is a team.

Wow, you said something that resonates with me, “harmony sensitivity”. We have a girl singer who has difficulty remembering parts and when she does, she pays no attention to blending with others. She just belts it out. Even though she’s been singing professionally for a number of years, she really doesn’t understand blending and tightness in harmonies.

 

[Pep]

So - you CAN teach a keyboard player new tricks?

go figure ;-}

PS - a band I play keys in has decided to learn "Kid Charlemagne". We had our first swing at it last week. I have a deep clav patch assigned to my left hand. It's lower, and louder, than the bass guitar part. Our bass player, (also band leader), asked me to turn it up a notch.

Everyone thought it sounded great (though I know I can do better). Bass and Keys, when mixed correctly, can be a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Well Tosh,
Here we are 9 months down the road the problem still exists. Last night, near the end of a tune, I was playing the same consistent parts I always do (no variation), and he drops down into my space. He’s playing the same thing so no problem, right?

Wrong. His phrasing is a bit different so we’re clashing. I dropout to clean it up and of course the bottom drops out. Everyone looks at me so I look at him.
When the song was over he gets nasty with me and I respond loud enough for the other members to hear, “ Dave, we have some options here. We can both stay in our frequency areas and there will never be another problem. Ot, you can continue to drop down in my area and I’ll continue to drop out. When I’ve had enough, I’ll bring in another rig with 2000 watts to insure my parts are heard. It’s your choice.”

The band leader called me thing morning thanking me for the way I handled the situation.

 

[Sam Evans]

His phrasing is a bit different so we’re clashing.

That's the worst. Playing in unison can be great, but you have to be locked in together or it sounds terrible.

Can you get him to start by just cutting the low EQ? Do that enough, so that he's literally not putting out fundamental tones below middle C or so, and that could get him out of your way. Maybe you need to buy him a HPF ...

 

[pbass2]

Yeah, that's a lot of keyboardist. They think they're the center of all things. They don't care how $#!tty conflicting notes sound in the low registrar and expect you work around them. Doesn't fly with me. I always tell them, and if not willing to compromise, I'm gone.

Well, I've been hired by a lot of singer-songwriters who write on piano and they're the bandleader so, they ARE the center of things!. They whip up these super busy arrangements with lots of left hand movement by themselves for playing solo, then hire a full band and of course you start getting all the expected train wrecks (not just with the bass, guitar too very often). Some are open to editing their parts to rearrange things for a full band, while some just want to stick with what they know--either way a bassist can make it work, but you gotta learn exactly what they're doing--you can't just wing it.
I have found more often than not, that when you show someone like that who isn't used to working that way how they can lay out more and let the bass, etc carry things, lightbulbs usually go off for them. They start to understand how their piano parts can be arranged for other instruments, that they don't actually have to play every damn note themselves. It ends up being very freeing for them.

 

[Gopherbassist]

What you DON'T want to do as a bass player is try to tell the keys player that they aren't allowed to play below, say, middle C because that's "your range" -- anymore than we'd let guitarists tell us not to play above the open D string ...

I've seen several people say the exact opposite on this site. I even got shouted down once when I said sometimes the bass player can play some rests and let the key player have a little space on the low end once in a while. It's refeshing to see an actual musical take on this issue here.

 

[/\/\3phist0]

This is why slap bass was invented.

Better solution: slap keyboardist