Holding Patterns on Keyboard for a Church Band: Part 1

Video Transcript

"TOM SMITH: Hi. My name is Tom, and this is for ExpertVillage.com. We're talking about how to play keyboards in a worship team at a church. One of the things, as a keyboard player you should do is to be able to play a holding pattern. This could be between choruses or maybe the pastor's just given his sermon and they want some music in the background and it usually ends up being the guitarist or the keyboard player that has to do some kind of a fill. You don't want to overpower what's being said, you just want to be in the background, maybe it's during a prayer or something like that. So, normally what I do is I go for a soft sound; maybe it's an electric piano, maybe it's strings. If we've sung a chorus, maybe what I'll do is look at the chorus of the song and just try and shorten it and play the chords of the chorus softly or in open fifths with a little bit of a bass with my left hand. So, something like--so, all I'm really doing is just rotating between the first phrase of the chorus. And that allows me to keep a little bit music in the background. People are used to the chord pattern so it's not conflicting or detracting from what's being said and it just gives a little bit of depth when somebody's speaking."