Practice Tips for Church Keyboards

Video Transcript

"TOM SMITH: Hi. This is Tom. This is for ExpertVillage.com. We're talking about how to play keyboards in a band setting or a worship team at a church. One of the things I want to talk about is how to practice. A lot of people go home and they'll play on the piano and they'll play the song--and they'll get back to the bad habits of using both hands and as many fingers as they possibly can get on the keyboards. I find a good way to practice is to put on a CD, put on a CD of the song, even if it's in the wrong key like if you're band is doing it in a different key. If you're lucky, what you can do is use your keyboard and a lot of the keyboards now have transpose buttons where you can actually adjust it. So, for example, I'm playing this song "Enough" in the key of G, if--on the recording, it's in the key of A, I might shift it so that I can play the chords that I'll be playing on Sunday but it still matches up with the CD. And I find that's a good way to practice because when you're listening to the CD, you can hear all these other parts. You can hear the drums, you can hear the bass guitar, you can hear the guitars, you can hear the person singing the melody and then you can start to work at creating a tapestry like you should be weaving in and out of the music. You are not front and center for the whole tune, and that is a good way to practice. You just sit down, put on a CD, and see how you can play with one hand or in some of the techniques we talked about with the CD."