Introduction:
I play keys for our band and we’ve currently worked on “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers, “Clocks” by Coldplay and “Moving To New York” by The Wombats. The key purpose and significance of the keyboard player, although in the background, is to kind of play along to the melody and harmonise. I work quite closely to the guitarist, as a lot of the time we play the same chords. However, it kind of depends on which part of the song really because in “Moving To New York”, I work quite closely with the bassist, especially in the riff bit towards the end. Sometimes, it can be quite difficult because if you play too deep on the keyboard then you kind of step on the bassists toes, in a way, or if you play too much melody then you kind of step on the guitarists toes so you have to really know when and where to apply the keyboard.
This is our second song, “Clocks” by Coldplay. This is the main piano riff of the song that repeats 4x in the start and 4x after the chorus’ and 2x for the solo before the end. For this, I needed to work on my rhythm and timings because the song moves quite fast so each time I got the notes down, I couldn’t relax and make it flow because it went so fast. I fixed this by practicing slow so I could get each part comfortable before playing alongside the song. However, when I first played this song I didn’t really know where to apply the riff so it was all over the place for a while whereas now I know how many beats to count and which part of the songs structure it comes in at.
Towards the end, the main riff plays 2x before this riff, which repeats 6x. This still needs a little work because it’s not exactly in time. To fix that, I’ll play it slower at first, until I’m comfortable with it, and then play alongside the song to fix the timings. As of right now, I don’t play fast enough which can make the song sound messy in certain parts and kind of knock the whole song off. I could also try work closer to the bassist again to try and make sure I have the right tempo.
This is our third song, “moving to New York” by the Wombats. This riff comes after the drum solo goes round 2x and then the keys and bass jumps in with this riff. I need to secure the timing on this but to do that I’ll just keep playing alongside the song until I’m comfortable with it. Right now, it sounds a little messy at the end because the riff plays fast but gradually slows down and the it’s an F major for 4beats but I don’t slow down so I reach the F major for 4 bars before everyone else is ready. Listening to the song should fix my timings because I can hear myself play with them so I can tell if I’m in time or playing the right notes/chords.