Live Performance, Part 2 – Sound Design

In Part 1 of these articles, I described the gear I use in my live keyboard setup. This time, I’ll walk through the process of how I prepare for a performance: in this case, the January 2011 4Worship service at my church.

Live Performance, Part 1 – My Keyboard Rig

I’ve written some articles on setting up a live keyboard setup, but they may have seemed a bit abstract, and they don’t give you a good idea on what to do if you’re starting from scratch.

In these next three articles, I’ll walk you through my keyboard setup and how I use it to perform, starting with why I have the gear I have and what makes it work well for my purposes. In the next article, I’ll discuss how to choose and arrange your sounds, and then I’ll close with what I do on stage.

My Top 10 Keyboard Playing Tips

1 – Don’t let technology interfere with artistry and musicianship

Practice until you don’t have to think about the technical issues. Don’t think about which button to press when; know it (or have it writen down).

2 – Your ears are your greatest asset

Listen to your bandmates and fill the spaces where they aren’t playing. Don’t play melody lines when several instruments plus vocals already have other melodies. Don’t step on people’s toes; complement them. Keyboards can do almost anything; that doesn’t mean you should.

Building a Live Rig, Part 3 – Adding A Laptop

If you’re a laptop DJ type, you probably know how to get the setup you want with your laptop and you’re probably already using something like Traktor or Ableton Live. For keyboard players though (and anyone else wanting to do clever things with their laptop via MIDI), there’s a lot of ways to keep things as simple as possible, as well as a lot of new concerns that arise when adding your laptop to your setup. If you haven’t read my previous articles on setting up a live keyboard rig, you need to (they’re here and here) – a lot of what I have to say now expands on things I’ve already talked about.

There are three reasons you might want to bring a laptop to a gig: to get access to better or more sounds, to play backing tracks or loops, and to display your sheet music or chord charts.

Building A Live Rig, Part 2 – Multiple Keyboards

Using more than one keyboard sounds simple enough. Set the keyboards up, plug them both into a mixer or into separate DIs, and play. But wait, what if you need to use a sustain pedal for parts you play on both keyboards? Now you need two pedals. And what if you have a two-tier stand so one keyboard is on top? Now the pedals need to be beside each other, making it harder to remember which is which. And what if one of your keyboards is really nice to play – a fully-weighted stage piano, for example – while another keyboard is a synth-action workstation that has a lot of sounds but feels cheap? Is there a way to make the workstation keyboard sound while you play the notes on the stage piano instead?