Keyboard: Melody
1. Purpose: Draw people to God, not to our skills
- Think about how our accompaniment could facilitate people to focus on the message of the songs
- Our mind-set will show through our accompaniment.
2. Communicate: Any expectations/ideas of the keyboard accompaniment
- It could be reinforcing the lead lines, reinforcing a few words in the lyrics, filling in gaps between verses, playing chords in the background, playing the lower end/higher end of the keyboard to complement other instruments etc.
- After learning the expectations, it'll be easier to prepare what we'll play during practices, but remember not to limit ourselves to a specific box (i.e. only practising background chords for the entire set).
3. Build our foundation by familiarising ourselves with all the chords
- Learning the chords will reduce the possibility of playing notes that will clash with the song.
- It'll help us to be fluid and flexible with our accompaniment/improvisation (There are so many combinations of notes that we can discover and use to create lines within a single chord)
4. Be bold in creating and experimenting various lines or ideas
- Understand the song then create variations to suit the message and build up of the song (Have tip #1 in mind all the time!)
- The worst case scenario is for the band to say no, but we can learn so much from the reasons behind it.
5. Learn from various keyboardists and song recordings
- I started by adopting/mimicking some lines, then I improvised them to fit into songs better.