Article by: Mike Overlin

What is the right keyboard for my church? What features do we need? Do we need to replace our existing keyboard? Do we need an electronic keyboard at all!? What daunting questions. There are literally dozens of electronic keyboards available to the worship musician, some with an often confusing list of features and capabilities. Sorting them all out can be a chore for the most seasoned electronic keyboardist. Placed before a first time or in-experienced buyer, the choices can be overwhelming.

Perhaps the place to start is to address the need for such an instrument. I know there are those that question the validity of these instruments in worship. We really don’t have to go back that far to re-live the first encroachment of those whackos with the guitars and the drums and their worldly mannerisms and… oh my… where did the ties all go?! I do not go down this road to make light of those that would uphold the traditions of the past nor those that would usher in the new. I only point out that we have been down this road before and will most certainly go down it again. The worshipper will tend to find ways to worship God that are relevant themselves and there congregant. In most cases, these worship styles are very much tied to and shaped by the music and culture in which the worshipper lives. The use of digital keyboards in worship is as appropriate and commonplace in contemporary worship today as grand pianos and pipe organs have been for centuries. Truth is at one time even these venerable instruments were unwelcome in the house of God. In some circles, instrumental music of any kind was taboo and vulgar and an unworthy vehicle with which to offer up worship. I often wonder what that transition was like… from the acapella to the accompanied. When that pioneering worship musician hundreds of years ago solicited and received the approval from his Senior Pastor - and the board - and the finance committee - and was able to run down to his local pipe organ store to buy his first Munich-Master 5000. He was looking to secure an instrument that would provide voice to his worship and to herald in a new era of worship freedom through instrumental accompaniment. Even then his goal was the purchase of an instrument that was as flexible and as expressive as possible. Now I know that I have made light of keyboard history, but this last statement still holds true today. When looking for that perfect keyboard for your church or ministry, you need to consider all the things that you will require of it and how it will add to your ability to lead God’s people into His presence. Flexibility and expressiveness.

Types of Keyboards
I mentioned earlier that there are dozens of keyboards to choose from, and they fall into some pretty broad categories. Digital Pianos, Performance keyboards, Workstation keyboards or synths, Arranger workstations and portable keyboards to name a few. On top of that, you can choose your instrument complete with keys (thus a Keyboard) or in the form of a tone module - basically the brains of the keyboard without the keys. What we can begin to do is define these instruments and provide you with some guidance in determining exactly what keyboard will best suit your needs and the needs of your ministry. Price is certainly a factor in making this decision, but again, flexibility and expressiveness should be your ultimate considerations.

Digital Pianos
If your primary goal is to provide the pianist with an alternative to an acoustic instrument, then you can start by considering the digital piano. Personally, we use a beautiful 7 foot grand in my church and it is fantastic. This is still one of the most majestic and awesome instruments around. However, there are situations where a grand piano may not be the optimum choice. If you are required to move your piano often, or are faced with space restrictions on the platform, a digital piano may be a better option. When considering an electronic keyboard, Digital pianos usually offer the best piano sound and feel, and though not always light, they are extremely portable. The fact that you can move them easily without them ever going out of tune is a huge benefit. They are not subject to the ravages of temperature or humidity shifts and you can even stand them on end without too much consequence. Try that with your grand! Sound quality is another area that will affect this decision. You may be in a situation where a grand piano is simply too loud for your worship space or you may have problems micing the piano properly. Digital pianos can easily be set to provide ideal sound levels for your venue without dealing with micing, feedback or monitor bleed issues. As compelling as all these features are though, I believe that the ability to paint with more than one tonal color is probably the greatest benefit of the digital piano. These keyboards come with a variety of piano sounds as well as hundreds of additional instruments that can be played, layered or split. Layering, or stacking sounds such as a piano and a string section allows you to create the lush musical textures that we often hear in contemporary recordings. Layers can be as simple as two sounds, or as complex as four or more sounds. Splits allow the keyboard to be divided into two or more distinct sections. This allows the keyboardist to play multiple instruments at one time such as a bass in the left hand and an electronic piano in the right. The division between the two splits on the keyboard is called the split point. The concept of zones goes even further, allowing for the definition of any number of splits on the keyboard.
All of these features greatly increase the timbral possibilities available to your worship team. Again, expressivness and flexibility.

Performance Keyboards
Maybe you are looking to add a second keyboardist or to provide your primary keyboardist with an even larger tonal pallet from which to minister. Performance keyboards are instruments that are capable of incredible flexibility and musical expression. At the push of a button, these instruments can go from piano to organ to string section to blazing lead guitar... or any combination of sounds that you can imagine. These “controller keyboards” often have controls and capabilities allowing for the integration of additional keyboards or tone modules into your rig, providing even more musical artillery. I mentioned the tone module earlier, and this would be a good time to go into a little more depth with this concept. A keyboard player will need at least one keyboard from which to perform. If he or she is a pianist, they will probably pay particular attention to the feel of the keyboard. A keyboard with a synth action will have a response similar to an organ keyboard. A pianist will want to consider a keyboard feel or “action” that is weighted. This is intended to approximate the way that the keys feel on a real piano. An additional piano action term to look for that goes beyond weighted is graded. This feature reproduces the feel of a piano as you go from the lower octaves to the higher and is found on many high end digital pianos. On a real piano, the bottom of the instrument will play heavier than the top. With a graded action, the touch of the keyboard will get lighter as you go from left to right on the keys. All this to say, that once you have that one main controller keyboard, you may not want, or need additional keyboards to obtain additional keyboard capabilities. This is where the tone module comes in. These devices will have the sounds and capabilities of their keyed counterparts and will allow you to control them from your controller keyboard utilizing a simple MIDI cable. Plugging the MIDI output from your controller keyboard into the MIDI input of the tone module will give you the ability to play both the sounds of your keyboard and the sounds of the tone module together. Complex keyboard rigs can easily be made up of several different keyboards and tone modules. Of course all the power and flexibility of the performance keyboard comes with a price, and the learning curve will be steeper than with the digital pianos mentioned above. But when it comes to pure music performance capability, the return is well worth the investment of time and money.

Workstation Keyboard
If your needs extend beyond performance to the actual creation of music, you may want to consider a workstation keyboard or workstation synthesizer. These instruments combine the flexibility of the performance keyboard with musical creation capabilities such as on-board sequencing and sampling. Sequencing allows you to craft music “from the ground up” by recording your performance via MIDI. Sequencers do not record the audio of a piece of music, but rather the performance of a piece of music very similar in concept to the way that a player piano stored its performances on a paper roll. This brings the ability to manipulate, in every way, each individual note or nuance of a song! Sampling allows you to record musical sounds (or not so musical sounds) into the keyboard and then play them back from the keyboard or a sequencer. Most of the realistic instrument sounds in all of these keyboards are sample based, meaning they are recordings of actual instruments. Sampling allows the musician to record their custom instruments, sound effects or sound bytes and manipulate them from the keyboard. These workstations can also be used in the creation and performance of “loop” based music which is very popular in contemporary music and worship songs. Like performance keyboards, these instruments come in a variety of sizes. 61, 76 and 88 key versions are common, with the 88 key versions usually featuring a weighted action, providing the above mentioned “piano like” feel.

Arranger Workstations
Finally, some of today’s most sophisticated technology is incorporated within the arranger workstations. These are amongst the most versatile and powerful songwriting and performance tools available to the worship musician. In addition to providing many of the capabilities of the keyboards above, these keyboards can actually interpret the chords that you play as you are playing them and automatically provide all of the additional instruments in real time. Drums, bass, guitars, strings, horns…. the works! Even non-keyboardists can create complex musical arrangements by playing simple one finger chords. (One finger chord… now there’s a concept) The benefits of an arranger workstation to the worship musician are many. If faced with leading worship by ones’ self, they provide a realistic, interactive full band sound that can easily be guided to follow the flow of worship. They usually have some sort of storage device on them such as a disk drive or smart media card allowing you to use them as MIDI file playback devices. A churches musical director or worship leader can quickly put together a recording of a new song or arrangement for the members of the praise team without having to sequence the tracks from the ground up. Finally, Worship leaders that may not be keyboard players can easily play these keyboards with a very rudimentary knowledge of keyboard chord structure. Even if the chords are played in the simplest inversions, the resultant accompaniment is correctly voiced and stylistically complex.

To go into all of the details of this technology incorporated by the keyboards we have mentioned here would truly fall outside the context of this column. My hope is to have shed some light on the variety of keyboards available to the worship musician, and to help guide you in the decisions you will have to make before purchasing. The bottom line is to surround yourself with the tools that allow you to more freely worship God, and to lead His people into His presence.

Article Reprinted with Permission from: Song and Sound Magazine, Sept 2005