Salsafy Your Sound!

5.16.2013 3:00:00 PM
Salsa (Spanish for “sauce”) is a broad commercial term used to describe danceable Latin music. There are no specific chord voicings or progressions that give you a Salsa sound; it’s all about feeling the rhythm in chunks of More...

Jazz Arranging for Keyboardists

5.16.2013 3:00:00 PM
Keyboard players are naturally good arrangers. We do it every day while we’re writing, tracking, putting chords to melodies, and mixing our music. All of these activities involve selecting textures, achieving balance, and More...

Tracking Analog Synths That Have No Presets or MIDI

5.15.2013 3:00:00 PM
Now that real analog synths are back with a vengeance, producers have to contend with—gasp—no programmability. Many of the best analog beasties shipping today—like the Arturia MiniBrute, Doepfer Dark Energy, and Tom Oberheim’s More...

Be the Bass With These Left Hand Techniques

5.15.2013 2:13:00 PM
Picture this: You got the gig and you’re excited about the music. You get to your first rehearsal and the bandleader wants you to play “bass” on a couple of things. You panic because you’ve never had to be the bass player and More...

5 Ways to Play Like Regina Spektor

5.9.2013 7:09:00 PM
I’ve lived in New York City’s East Village for nearly 20 years, and have followed Regina Spektor’s career from its early beginnings at the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A, just a block from my apartment. Regina’s keyboard work More...

Get That Vintage Arcade Game Sound in your EDM Tracks

5.8.2013 12:00:00 AM
From electro to tech-house and everything in between, countless electronic dance tracks have made use of vintage-style arcade game leads as their main hook. Let’s explore the concepts behind this approach to sound More...

Synth Soloing Portamento Master Class

5.3.2013 12:34:00 PM
In the last two columns, we’ve explored the difference between single (legato) envelope triggering and multiple triggering, and the performance possibilities offered by each. In some synths, you can also vary between legato More...

5 Ways To Play Like Dave Brubeck

4.28.2013 2:00:00 PM
Dave Brubeck, who passed away in December 2012, just a day shy of his 92nd birthday, was one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time. Rhythms of horses’ hooves on the California cattle ranch he grew up on, along More...

Add Impact to Your B3 Bass Lines with Percussive Pedal Techniques

4.26.2013 12:48:00 PM
A powerful technique used by most modern B-3 organists is to tap rhythmically on a bass pedal while playing the actual bass line on the lower manual using the left hand. Only occasionally do they play actual bass notes on the More...

Use Hardware Synths Like Soft Synths in Ableton Live

4.23.2013 4:00:00 PM
Good hardware synths have a presence—in regards to both sound and tactile experience—that software instruments don’t fully duplicate. However, getting them to interact seamlessly with your favorite DAW can be challenging. More...

Synth Oscillator Tuning Tricks

4.19.2013 2:00:00 PM
A world of possibilities opens up when you tune two or more synth oscillators in various ways, relative to one another. Let’s explore.       Detuning Here’s a classic sound—the warm beating of oscillators drifting More...

Secrets of Samba Piano

4.19.2013 2:00:00 PM
Growing up in Brazil, I listened to a lot of Samba, which is Brazil’s most popular style of music. To illustrate how to play Brazilian Samba properly, let’s take a typical jazz-ish melody and chords, and change them into More...

That Minimal Techno Sound

4.17.2013 4:39:00 PM
Minimal techno is a genre that constantly percolates just under the radar of mainstream, but is a huge influence throughout the worldwide electronic dance music scene. Originally, this production style thoroughly lived up to More...

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4.11.2013 2:27:00 PM
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You Know More Voicings than You Think!

4.5.2013 6:00:00 PM
When I wrote my first textbook Jazz-Rock Voicings for the Contemporary Keyboard Player, I included some common “shell” voicings that I heard on recordings by jazz greats. For example, I heard Wynton Kelly and Red Garland More...