What do bands mean when they want a keyboard/synth player?

Question

I'm looking into joining a band but I need to learn to be a synth player........what exactly does that mean? Please give some examples of synth players/songs, thanks.

What equiptment do I need and how does it work?

Please be as detailed as possible and any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much!!

Answer 1

Kraftwerk uses synth players almost exclusively. A synthesizer is basically a keyboard that makes synthetic (digital / analogue / man-made) approximations of classic instruments, or even completely new synthetic (fantasy) sounds.

Have you seen Ferris Bueller's day off? Ferris used a synthesizer to make those fake coughing sounds.

Answer 2

Synth players not only need to have good chops on the keys, but also know a little about sounds and synthesis creation. A lot of synth players use many synths in their setup, but if you're just starting out, you may want to scour musiciansfriend.com for some synths. $1500 will get you a nice synth/workstation. One of my synths is a Juno-D from Roland and it sold for $600 when I bought it. It has a great set of stock sounds and lets users mash together sounds to create new ones. Some people think the thing is trash, but for a beginner synth, it really isn't bad.

Some things you will want to learn about are envelopes (attack, decay, sustain, release) and you can just google those. Another big one is the combination of cutoff and resonance filters. They can really help to shape sounds.

One thing I would recommend is looking around on youTube for videos of Jordan Rudess. He is the synth player for Dream Theater and he plays well but also has a great ear for awesome synth sounds. Better than that even would be looking into Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer. Most of their songs feature him somewhere. Tarkus is a personal fav. You may also learn a little from Rick Wakeman, the keyboard player for 'Yes'. These are the first 3 big names that come to my mind, I'm sure there are countless others that may be better or worse, depends on who you ask I guess.

Usually a simple breakdown of synth parts consists of background parts being played on pad sounds and solos and rhythmic parts being played on lead sounds. If you don't know what these are by name, you certainly know them by sound. Mess around on Yahoo or Google and try to find some sound samples. One of the best things I think you can do to get an idea is download MIDI files of Emerson Lake and Palmer tunes or really any song that has a good synth part and then load that MIDI file into a sequencer such as Reaper. Then assign that MIDI part to a VST synth (my personal favorite free synth is called SuperWaveP8) and listen to how the synth sounds with different presets applied to the sound. That is how I get a feel for sounds anyway. Just record some MIDI data and let it play back and scroll through all the patches for that VST.

That's about all I can think of for right now. Good Luck!

Answer 3

You would need a workstation like the Korg Triton, Yamaha Motif or Roland Phantom = http://www.americanmusical.com/sort--Keyboard-Synthesizers--m-04_62.html

Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel as well as my self play the motif.