Here is a clip from a live Musicademy seminar where Tim Martin gives advice on working with two keyboards in a worship band.
Tim is the presenter of Musicademy’s Worship Keyboard DVDs.
Mark Ecclestone from Canada asks:
“Can you please recommend any websites/teaching resources on learning how to develop musical improvisation and arranging skills (like on how to play a piece of music for piano building around playing arpeggios with passing notes) that are easy to understand for piano playing? A lot of the material out there is really complicated to understand. It’s primarily done from a complicated jazz point of view and I play country and Christian music.”
Hi Mark, I’m not really familiar with other websites that can help you but we do have some older blog posts which cover this and our Intermediate Worship Keybaords DVDs (which can be used for piano as well) cover it in a lot of depth. Our online keyboard “song learner” lessons also give a lot of hints on this.
Have a read/look at the following:
Video lesson - 10 things to do with chords
Introduction to worship keyboards playing
Would you like to practice playing worship songs with a pro band? 54 practice backing tracks on DVD with animated on-screen lyrics and chord charts. Select any song without either vocals, drums (click included), electric guitars, bass or keys and play along!
Worshipfully produced by world class Christian musicians like Ben Cantelon, Paul Evans, Marc James, Cathy Burton, Matt Weeks, Mark Edwards, Dan Wheeler, Steve Harding and others using the Encounter Worship recordings.
Here is a free clip from our Intermediate Worship Keyboard DVDs. Tim Martin gives 10 ideas to make chords-based playing more interesting.
There are six hours of great instruction like this on the full 3-DVD course. Volume 1 starts with some simple lessons explaining how to move from traditional to chords-based playing; it then shows you how to add interest and improvise using melodic fills, auxilliary and passing notes.
The course then cranks it up a gear getting you to work on left and right hand rhythm skills as well as integrating suspended and extended chords into your playing.
There’s also plenty on worship leading, using string, pads, electric piano and organ sounds. We’ve incorporated a buyers guide (Tim has also written a recent blog piece on recommended keyboards for church) and plenty of instruction to enable you to develop the skills to play by ear.
