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.

Preparing a Song

Everything starts with getting a setlist. Since I just got my Motif-XS Rack in early January, I was starting from scratch – I had no saved presets I could use since the workstation I sold was a Korg. I start with listening to all the songs on the setlist, especially ones I don’t know, and figuring out which types of sounds I might want to use. I often play songs in the background at work and write down a few quick notes after hearing the song a couple times, though things often change once I sit down at the keyboard. This stage is also where I figure out which parts from the original song I want to keep and which parts I want to take in a different direction. I’ll walk through how I prepare Hosanna by Hillsong United, starting with the preset ideas.

Hosanna

• I: Delayed Wurly
• V: Pad/Wurly (no delay)
• QC: Pad
• C: Larger pad
• B: B3 + synth pad

I’m using one or two letters to indicate the place in the song structure I’ll play the part. In the example, I’ve got an Intro, Verse, Quiet Chorus (there are two versions of the chorus in the song; one is just keyboard pads and is quiet while the other has the full band and is louder), Chorus, and Bridge. The example also shows both layers and splits: the verse is a split between a pad and a Wurlitzer electric piano and the bridge is a layer between a B3 organ and a synth pad (I use synth here to mean more aggressive and less acoustic-sounding, though other than using realistic strings as a form of pad, all the pads I use are made up of synthesized sounds).

Hosanna has a couple recorded versions. One starts with a really nice Wurlitzer (Wurlitzer + tremolo + chorus + delay), and that’s the one ‘signature sound’ for the piece for me. When I first started playing the song, I added a Wurlitzer lick that I adapted from a guitar line at certain parts in the verse; I’ve since heard another version of the song that has a different lick on piano during the verse. Currently, I keep the Wurlitzer sound but play the piano line. The pads under the verse and choruses are pretty standard for the song – I don’t try to copy their exact pad sound, but the sounds I use aren’t much different. The bridge, on the other hand, I take in a very different direction. The original has a guitar solo and then a bridge, and I think they actually use different sounds for each: just a pad for the solo and a pad with strings for the bridge. I use the same sound for both, and it’s the B3 with a bit of a buzzy synth layered together. Using the B3 as a pad is a great way to get some presence, and the synth gives it some bite.

I don’t care about the overall structure of the song at this point; I’m just figuring out the parts I need to make.

Individual Presets

I’ve figured out the type of sounds I want to use, so the next step is to sit down at my keyboard and make the presets. I’ve got five presets to make here, one for each of the parts I listed above. Most of the time, I’m making presets for the Yamaha; the only time I make a new preset on the Roland is when I have an organ playing by itself (eg. if I press a key and an organ is the only thing that sounds). I wouldn’t use the Roland’s organ engine for the B3 + synth pad in Hosanna since it’s one overall sound and the B3 is a part of it; mixing two keyboards for that means that if the master volumes on both are out of line with where they were when I made the part (which can easily happen during a performance), the pad will have too much or too little organ.

The Roland doesn’t let me name presets, but on the Yamaha, I make sure that the song structure is part of the name. For example, the presets will be named Hosanna (Hillsong) I, Hosanna (Hillsong) V, etc. This way, I can look down at the display on the Yamaha and always be sure I’m on the right part and that I haven’t changed through two presets instead of one or something.

Here’s an example preset from Hosanna. I use only the first three voices; the wurlitzer sound is transposed down an octave while the other two sounds are transposed up an octave. I transposed the parts because the two pad sounds are layered together but the wurlitzer stands alone, so I’m splitting the keyboard. Transposing by an octave or two is usually necessary when splitting so that both parts are playable in the range where I want them. For example, I won’t play really high notes with the wurlitzer sound but I want some midrange, but since it will end up on the higher half of the keyboard, I’d be playing higher than I’d like if I didn’t transpose. The next image shows the key ranges, which makes it clear that I’m using a split for this preset.

Saving the Presets

The editing tools I use for the Yamaha make it easy to save presets. Once I’ve made the five sounds I’ll use for Hosanna, I copy them around in a new Total Library file and arrange them so that the order of the presets is the order for the song. I use one file per song and the filename matches the song plus any other details (for example, I occasionally play with someone on piano as well and want to avoid piano sounds, so I’d have an alternate version called “Hosanna – No Piano”). Of course, I’m making copies of some of the presets within the Total Library file; the intro only happens once, but I’ll be on the verse preset three times over the course of the song.

The Roland is more of a pain with presets. There’s no easy way to selectively load presets into a slot on the keyboard and there are no computer editing tools. The easiest way for me is to briefly describe the organ preset and save that in a text file, and then I need to recreate the preset on the keyboard when I’m preparing for a performance, which actually doesn’t take long (usually 30 seconds or so per preset). By default, I split the keyboard and use a standard drawbar setting on the lower half for bass (838000000), so I only describe the upper half or anything that’s not standard.

I Know Who I Am
VC: Upper is 888800004, C-3, fast, no perc, 8:00 gain
B: Upper is 666666666, C-3, slow, no perc, no gain

Here, I’m using one drawbar pattern for the verse and chorus, and a different one for the bridge. Both use Chorus set to C-3 (the heaviest chorus on a Hammond organ), and have percussion off. The first one has the Leslie speaker on fast rotation, the second is slow. The first has the gain knob set to 8:00 (7:00 is off, on my keyboard) to apply just a bit of distortion. That description tells me all I know to quickly make the preset I need.

Chord Charts

Church music of this nature is usually really easy, and I play often enough and know the songs well enough that I don’t really need to remember what chords are used. Even when we vary something, I usually remember that or make up a complimentary part without the chord chart. However, there’s a lot more details to remember on keyboards: when to switch presets, which sounds are used where. So, I mark the chart with the order of the parts at the top, and for each part, I give some details about the sound and if I need it, performance details describing how to play the part. When I use an organ sound, I’ll write down the drawbar positions. The drawbars aren’t motorized, so they don’t change position when I switch presets, so the only way to do any fine-tuning of the organ sound on the fly, as many B3 players do, is to move the drawbars to match the preset. Having the drawbar positions written down is the only way I’ll remember what I’ve done.

I print the chart off, put it in a plastic protective covering, and put it in a binder in alphabetical order, with a tab for each letter of the alphabet, so it’s easy to find the chart when I need it.

Preparing for a Performance

If all I was doing was making song presets and not using them, I’d be done. However, I have a performance to worry about. When I’m making presets for a setlist, I’d usually combine the sound creation step and the organizing step, but to keep it simple, let’s assume that I already have presets for all the songs we used in the 4Worship service and I’ve just been given a setlist. What do I have to do now?

Ordering Presets

I start by combining all the individual library files for each song in the setlist into one master file, in order. Since the individual files have all the song parts I need in order, it’s just a matter of copying them and adding them to the end of the list. I then save the master file and push all the presets to my Yamaha, and then it’s ready to be used without a laptop.

On the Roland, I need to make all the organ presets by hand and save them in slots starting with 2-3 (see the previous article’s section on Roland Presets).

Setlist and Chord Charts

The one thing that can change between performances using the same song is where that song is on the setlist. I try to keep my organ presets in the order I’ll use them, so because the setlist is changing, the favourite slot where the organ preset is for a given song has probably changed as well. I take the setlist and add notes telling me which organ preset is needed when, and then I’ll set it to 14-point font and print it out, and use that sheet to make notes on stage during rehearsal. I’ll often write down the slots on the Yamaha used for each song as well (though I didn’t do that in the screenshot above) so that if we skip around during rehearsal, I can figure out quickly that Hosanna uses presets 37-45 and skip to preset 37 directly instead of going through my presets a few at a time until I end up in the right place.

Lastly, I need to take the chord charts for the set from my master binder and put them in a small one that will sit on my music stand.

In the end, almost all the work goes into making the presets in the first place; once I’ve done so, making use of saved presets in another service is pretty quick.

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