Holding Patterns on Keyboard for a Church Band: Part 2

Video Transcript

"TOM SMITH: Hi. My name is Tom, this is for ExpertVillage.com, and we're talking about how to play keyboards in a worship team at a church. Holding patterns is something you maybe called to play while somebody's praying or speaking or talking between choruses. You can play a phrase out of the chorus you've just done. Another thing to do is to look at the fundamentals of a scale, like you've got your root note. In this case, with "Enough", is a G and then I've got my perfect fourth and fifth. So, the I, IV and V in this key is G, C, D and then I've got a minor third which is the E minor and then the minor sixth which in this case is A minor. So, basically, you've got five chords that you can play in a holding pattern that will always sound good. Whatever key you're in, you know that you've got one, the fourth, the fifth, the minor third and the minor sixth chord that you can put in some kind of pattern that will fit as a holding pattern. So, for "Enough", I might play something like this which is the one, down to the minor third and then maybe I go down to the minor sixth, up to the fourth and then up to the fifth. And notice too, I'm using some of the approaches we talked about earlier. I'm basically playing an open octave on the G for that, so an arpeggio with just three notes, G, D and a high G. So, use those different--those five chords in any key your doing to give you a holding pattern to play during prayer or when somebody's speaking if you want a little bit of music behind it."