Recording - April 2015 - 38

Call me old-fashioned, but I love hardware. So when it comes time to get
those creative juices flowing (or to meet a musical deadline), I prefer to sit
down at the keyboard and begin poking around, rather than fire up the laptop and stare at all those empty tracks on the screen. Yes, I have a drawer full
of software solutions to get me started; I even helped bring some of them to
market. But I crave the spontaneity and interaction of simply playing an instrument. And more often than not, that instrument is my arranger keyboard.
Traditionally, an arranger keyboard is sort of like a workstation for the live
solo (or small combo) performer, capable of delivering a fully-realized musical
performance on the fly. It does a lot, and it does it all at once-and that can
seem a bit overwhelming. But by working that equation backwards and isolating parts, an arranger keyboard can offer the interaction and musical prowess
needed to jumpstart your creativity-no matter what instrument you play.
Staying in Style
To understand an arranger keyboard, you need to understand the style.
Each style offers a complete musical environment for playing or creating a
song. The instrumentation of a style normally includes drums, percussion,
bass, and a handful of other instruments (Guitar, Organ, Piano, Horn
Section, Marimba, etc.) to create a cohesive backing track that follows the
chord changes you feed it. Each style also includes several variations (for
verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) as well as intros, endings, fills, and more.
While it has never really captured the spotlight here in the USA, the
arranger keyboard is wildly popular around the globe. If you are not familiar with the arranger category, there are many makes and models to choose
from-Yamaha Tyros and higher-end PSR models, Korg Pa Series, Casio
WK Series, Roland BK and GW offerings, Ketron Audya, etc. My weapon
of choice is the Korg Pa3X, although many models offer similar features.

button to lock down the right tempo. This is a great
way to quickly dig into some grooves that may normally fall outside my comfort zone, or that I lack the
musical background to program from scratch with
authenticity. Each new groove provides a counterpoint to my real-time playing and with a little luck
eventually things start to gel, and the seed for a new
song is planted.
Tip #1 for non-keyboardists: The Single-Finger
mode makes it easy to play basic chords inside the
style. In the case of the Korg Pa3X, playing any single note will create a major chord. Add any black
note beneath that note to make your selection minor.
Any white note below the root note will cause a 7th
chord to sound. Play both a black and a white key
below the root note to create a minor 7th chord. This
mode makes it simple for the non-keyboardist to experience the full impact of a musical style.

Getting into the Groove
Stripping away all of the melodic elements of an arranger keyboard's
musical style leaves behind an expertly programmed drum machine-complete with breaks and fills. Great as the drums are, they do little more than
keep me locked to a tempo. I need a little something else to find a nice
groove that I can play around with: Bass.
The first thing I do is mute every part of the style except for drums and
bass, as shown in Photo 1. The Pa3X lets me lock these mute settings, so
they won't change as I go from style to style looking for that perfect groove.
The second thing I often do is change the preferences to use single-finger
chords. I do this not because I can't play complex chords, but to eliminate
making any early decisions. The truth is, there is often not a lot of difference in the bass line of a major or minor chord, and by leaving this decision for a later time I feel less restrained.
Now I am free to explore and audition a variety of drum and bass
grooves as I go from style to style and variation to variation. I don't have
to think too much about the left hand; just hit a root note or get a vamp
going. With my right hand, I am free to noodle around in real time. I can
dial up a new tempo to run faster or slower, or simply use the Tap Tempo
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RECORDING April 2015

Recording - April 2015

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