Playing covers, with multiple splits etc - tutorials?

[Tobias Åslund]

I recently joined a cover band, that mainly plays 80' and 90's hits. It was a couple of years ago I did this, and I find it more amusing than I was expecting, to prepare for this gig. I sometimes go a bit over the top with splits and layers - like in Billie Jean I have three splits on each of my two keyboards (Korg TR76 with a Nord Stage 2 sw73) and for another tune I sampled a few vocoder phrases into my Stage, but it's all in good fun. We will have our first gig tomorrow and I'm quite excited about that.

 

Anyway - I am a trained pianist, and have studied jazz for two years, so I have a good ear, and a good understanding of harmony and such , but when playing synths and also Hammond I'm basically self taught. I also really enjoy programming multi setups and tweaking sounds to get close to the original.

 

So - my question now is, do you guys have any tips where to find learn how other synth/keyboard players approach playing covers, picking parts, programming layers and splits and so on? Video tutorials and DVD:s would be preferable.

The only clip I can think of right now is a video by Jordan Rudess on how he programmed his K2500 back in the days and approached DT tunes live - and an 80's series I think was called "school of rock", but I'm hoping for a more recent productions with more contemporary music.

 

Any ideas?

[CEB]

I run a lot of triple splits. Parts that require the highest dexterity I will put on the right side sometimes. I don't limit the location of my splits to note frequency locations.

 

If a tune is new or if I am having problems remebering my split points I may use colored vinyl tape to mark splits points. There is an octave riff in S&M by Rihanna and I went an octave too low and ended up crossing split points. I marked S&M's split points with orange tape. Probably will remove the tape in a week or two. Currently two songs are marked one in blue and one in orange. I am not too proud to use training wheels. Whatever gets the job done.

 

I like splits. I like working on the same plane. It is about my personal workflow.

 

I learn all the main hooks and primary important parts. The pop music I am doing has so much stuff in it I find many of these songs are longer term works in process. As my song flow improves I often add additional parts as I go along. Or I learn to implement more samples and sound etc.... When playing rock or country or blues I would songs would not change from how I first learned them. Nothing changes my setups like going back to a tune I thought I had down then analyzing the original through my Sennheiser cans.

[MorayM]

Triple splits? Pah! Try 8+ on one board...

 

Honestly, I mostly learnt by doing, but there are a couple of people online who helped. Jordan's a major influence, but also Jem Godfrey of Frost*, who was also a major proponent of 1-board gigging. He had some great vids which showed how he maps huge combinations of sounds across 76 (later 61) notes, but unfortunately he took them all down when the band last went on hiatus.

 

The main breakthrough for me, like CEB, was realising that the low bits don't need to be on the left and the high bits don't need to be on the right. Work out all the melody lines and licks in the song, work out which ones happen at the same time, work out which you can play with each hand, then all that will dictate where on the board you put each sound.

[Bobadohshe]

If you are already sampling vocoder phrases and programming triple splits into two boards, I'd say you need no tutorial. You get what it's all about.

 

Now if you want to compare notes on a particular tune, I'm all for that.

 

I don't think any tutorial is going to shine any further light on something that you seem to thoroughly understand.

 

For me it's all about compromise and the point where 100% more programming/performance effort gives you 5% more gain. Once I'm approaching that plateau, I know I'm pretty much there and will stop fiddling with the setup for that song.

[synthizen2]

The modern keyboard's ability to do splits is a godsend, and the reason why I only have to carry 2 or 3 boards for all the stuff I do... including songs that require up to 7 or 8 different sounds... without having to do patch changes mid-song.

 

As for tutorials, well... they can only help you if they are working with the same keyboard/synth that you are working with... Since all keyboards/synths have their own architecture and programming language.

 

Like Bobadohshe said, you seem to have the technical side of this stuff down already. Now it's just a matter of where to place your sounds on the keyboard, and where the splits should be. That just comes down to personal preference and/or your playing style.

[richforman]

A lot of times, there's also a sort of Tetris-like logic puzzle that determines where you'll end up putting each part in your split, as you analyze the exact range of notes you'll need for each part and then figure out how to accomodate them, takes some creativity sometimes, like - Sometimes I'll have to take one sound or part and split it into two with several notes of it somewhere on the keyboard and the rest in another non-contiguous spot altogether and learn to play it that way.

[Stokely]

Personally I keep it as simple as I can get away with. As a casual player, I'm not a good fit for bands that want to get it exactly right--I don't think that's a bad thing but it's not for me.

I have done it before--Relax by Frankie goes to Hollywood I had 6 splits across 2 boards comes to mind; I had 3 splits on one board for Rebel Yell, etc.

 

My reasons are several:

1. For smaller gigs and practices I might only bring one board. If that one board only has half the sounds you need for a given song, you are stuck unless you program a second patch (which I have done for certain songs).

 

2. Audience doesn't care if I have every sound right. They might care if I screw up, or don't look like I'm into playing. Now if I started playing a signature part with a totally wrong sound, yeah they might care.

 

3. It just becomes a nightmare balancing patch volumes, hitting the wrong range of keys etc etc. I just want to play!

 

Again, not knocking anyone who does this kind of programming, I just don't find it worth the while for me.

[J. Dan]

I think any tutorial has to be specific to a particular keyboard and it's features and capabilities since the best way to do it on one may not be the best way to do it on another.

 

Since I have 2 tiers (with the bottom just being a MIDI controller), if there are 2 or less sounds, I try to just assign them to each board. Any more than that and I start using splits. Blinded by the Light, I have 2 splits on top and 7 on bottom for a total of 9.

 

Sometimes if a part takes up a wide range, you run out of real estate for all of the splits, and I don't like having to switch through multiple combis in one song. So one technique I've started using on the Kronos is to have some zones have layers of sounds with a switch or pedal assignment having opposite effect on each. So for instance, I can use a switch to toggle between 2 sounds in one zone, or a pedal to fade between them.

 

Overlapping zones is another trick sometimes. Cold as Ice when the strings come in, I use the volume pedal to layer them with only a portion of the piano zone, and limit polyphony so that retriggering the piano chords while sustained doesn't stack string voices, but replaces them. By playing the chords in the right voicing, I can have LH piano, RH, piano + Strings. I do that on a number of songs. Sometimes it's a matter of having a 1 note zone in the middle of another zone to get a sound effect in there. I do that for the hand claps in Too Much Time on my hands. I can use my pinky finger to do the hand claps while playing EP with RH and synth bass with LH.

 

The Tetris analogy is a good one!

[marino]

When i did this in a previous existence, it wasn't rare to use 7 or 8 zones in my Studiologic 2001. I could have a couple of special effects on the two lowest keys, that's 2 zones already. Then in the lower region (of a 88-key controller) I could have a layered pad, coming from 2 different expanders. In that same range, a pedal could crossfade or layer that sound with a piano.

In the middle register, there could be an organ sound, and in the upper region a solo sound - maybe layered as well for more beef.

That's 8 zones. AND if you need brass and strings too, you need a second keyboard.

 

If you are a trained pianist, you're lucky; just practice your songs as you would with a piano piece. After a while, you'll get used to some sounds coming out in the "wrong" octaves.

 

Also, be prepared to edit your setups on the fly, especially about volume. The first time you'll play your carefully built setup, you'll likely find that the relative volumes for the various sounds result all wrong when played with the rhythm section...

 

 

[richforman]

Man I know exactly what you're talking about with the strings and piano on the bridge of Cold as Ice. The strings just come in on the first of the three chords, the Ebm, and have to sustain and decay smoothly but not clash with or get in the way of the other chords when they come in. Your idea of working it with the volume pedal and using the polyphony creatively!, is good. I just have my split set up to play what would be the RH piano part with my LH instead, sacrifice LH piano completely, and just play that first Ebm chord on strings in another zone with my RH and have it set up to decay in about the right amount of time to sound good. It's just always cool and interesting to see and realize how we all work and think through a lot of the same challenges and puzzles when trying to cover these songs.

[clavjav]

I'm from a similar background to yourself Tobbe. There were times when I would have loved some resources to help me learn this craft! I'm just doing my best to learn as I go along. I probably only programmed my first patch about 3 years ago, but I feel like I've come a very long way since then, adding more boards, complicating (and then simplifying again!) the way I work.

 

Recently I've tried to make my playing more musical in general, and I think my current band sounds better as a result. I.e. just because my keyboard(s) can split/layer/arpeggiate/sequence/sample/etc and has over 1000 voices, doesn't mean I need to employ it all! Sometimes just playing Rhodes on some 70s tunes, hinting at certain parts here and there, sounds better than sporadically playing various auxiliary parts using 13 splits.

 

But that's just my current way of thinking!

[J. Dan]

Sometimes just playing Rhodes on some 70s tunes, hinting at certain parts here and there, sounds better than sporadically playing various auxiliary parts using 13 splits.

 

I might be one of the worst offenders at trying to work in every single insignificant little sound effect and background part, but for certain songs, I tend to agree. Getting too busy trying to get the insignificant parts in there can kill the main parts. If there's some killer EP part going on, I'm more likely to sacrifice other parts to make it shine. But if it's the kind of song that has a whole bunch of simple parts, I'll try to work them all in to complete the palette.

[Tobias Åslund]

If you are already sampling vocoder phrases and programming triple splits into two boards, I'd say you need no tutorial. You get what it's all about.

Well, I guess, tutorial is nothing I need at this time, but it would be interesting to see how other people approach playing this type of music.

To me it's a very different feeling doing these types of songs - I often feel more like a machine operator than a musician. And once you set up a six part split across two boards, that program is only useful to that particular song. During the second rehearsal someone said - ah, wouldn't it be great to have a synth solo here? (I think it was in Human Nature) where my reaction was like - give me fifteen minutes to find a couple of octaves somewhere for a synth lead and program that into this particular setups... Let's just skip that idea..! That's the times when I miss playing "real music" where I feel I do as much playing as the rest of the guys in the band.

 

Anyway - we have a lot of fun playing together so far, and although I feel i overdo and over-complicate a lot of songs, it's a really nice challenge!

[CEB]

I think this is why I always seem to have one intrument in my rig that is stand alone and completely outside the MIDI chain. Currently in my pop rig it is the GAIA.

[Tobias Åslund]

Thanks for all the input so far - I see a lot of great ideas here, for sure. I will spend more time contemplating this after this weekend.

 

It's kinda fun funny when I think about all the musical training I've had, including ten years of piano lessons, I think I've only had two sessions playing electronic keyboards. Since my piano teacher at the time had a lot of gigs playing keyboards in musicals and stuff like that I asked for some input. Then we played some string arrangements from West side story, and Chess, the musical, but that's about it.

 

I stated playing piano in 1989 so by than the keyboard workstation was already invented. I got my first Casio tonebank keyboard the next years , and in '92 I think, was when I really started learning synthesizer programming, when I got to borrow my brother's Ensoniq SQ1, since he was studying overseas.

[Bobadohshe]

To me it's a very different feeling doing these types of songs - I often feel more like a machine operator than a musician.

 

That's 1/2 the fun of it. You ARE a machine operator, it's like playing a different instrument. That dance that results when both hands are flying all over different regions of two keyboards is fun both visually and kinesthetically.