Keyboards in Doom/Gothic

[Chubby Avenger]

Hey all,
I've a question for you people. Even a discussion issue, actually.
I've been playing on keyboard for many years (except the late few, due to service in the army).
A couple of friends of mine started a Doom/Goth band (main influences: Draconian, Tristania, Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Dakrua) and asked me to play on the keyboard with them.
Thing is - Although I'm a constant listener to the influences listed above, I'm having a hard time making up my mind about the way I want my parts to be located and played. Every time we play some new song, I find myself suggesting ideas that actually keep the keyboards out of this

How do you thing keyboards should sound like in Doom/Gothic? Atmospheric? Symphonic? Leading?
I'm sort of confused with the 'rules' of the genre, since I'm a prog listener originally.

 

[kanthos]

Other than playing lead parts, keyboards are generally more of a background instrument, at least in a band setting where you've got lead vocals and guitar.

I don't know the genre, but from your post, I suspect that your problem isn't so much what to play in a Doom/Gothic band but how to play in a guitar-driven band *in general*. If you're suggesting ideas and realizing they don't work, you're either suggesting the wrong things, or don't have the skills or gear to pull off what you suggest (so the suggestions are good, but what you're doing to make them real isn't working with the band).

I wrote a longer post about playing in a band with another keyboard player that has useful tips. It's for a church setting, playing modern rock/pop, but the principles apply in general. As a summary, what you want to do is hear what everyone else is doing and see how you can fit into that. If they want a lead part, play one, but beyond that, in a guitar-driven band, the keyboard player is often supposed to add texture and color. You can't really set the groove of a piece the way you could playing a rhodes or B3 in a funk band. Find the spaces that need to be filled in, and think creatively about how to fill them.

 

[Chubby Avenger]

Kanthos,
I've read your reply, and the longer post too - thank you for the both.
I think I pretty much understand, intuitively, how am I supposed to fill in. Obviously, as a keyboard player in a band with 2 guitars, bass, drums and a violin (yes, we've got that too - a different issue) in which the songs are guitar driven in general, I know the boundaries for my parts and how things are supposed to work in theory.
Although technically I can play pretty well, I lack the experience in 'keyboard thinking' - I stopped playing intensively a few years ago and learned to play on the guitar - an instrument on which I'm able to express myself in a better way than keyboards, that I've learned to play in the first place.
What I need, is examples and ideas. Bottom line - what should I play in order to understand better 'keyboard thinking'?

 

[AdamGBB]

You can do a lot more than add subtle, atmospheric, soundscape-like chordal pad washes. You could take your goth/doom band into a melodic direction with some broken arpeggiated chordal shapes with a church organ or piano preset.

As for your comment on how your song ideas are not concerned with a keyboard part... ummm... it seems like an all too obvious solution... but have you actually tried coming up with song ideas by just playing around on your keyboard?! Far easier to create song ideas with keyboard parts that way because the keyboard part is then the basis for the idea.

 

[kanthos]

Sorry, I missed your reply to my previous post, otherwise I wouldn't have waited over a week to reply.

I don't know if I can suggest playing anything as a way of improving your keyboard thinking, at least not on its own. Keyboard thinking really comes from knowing your gear and its limitations and abilities (if you don't know what you can do with it, you won't use those capabilities), and from having good musical ideas in general.

There are really two ways you can go about improving. One is to spend a lot of time trying to come up with different ideas: layer sounds, combine things that you might not have thought of, and so on. If you're really creative, this could work well for you; if you're less creative, you could spend a lot of time and accomplish very little. From my experience, this kind of thing tends to work better if you have a rough idea of what you're aiming for, either in terms of the sound you want or the song you want to play with. For example, I play a lot at church (pretty standard rock/pop most of the time), and I know where I'd instinctively want to use pads but haven't had the keyboard to do so. Now that I have my new Korg, I'm going to sit down and make a number of layered pads that I'll be able to use. If I didn't have any idea where I'd use a pad but just had it in my head that making pads would be a good thing to do, I'd probably be much less successful.

The other way to improve is to start with getting ideas from other sources. If you also want/need to improve as a pianist, I recommend spending the money to get a lifetime membership to the Jordan Rudess Online Conservatory, as you'll get access to a lot of theory exercises and instruction that will be much cheaper than buying the equivalent books, plus you'll get access to a number of video clips from his Keyboard Madness DVD that give practical ideas of how he uses splits and layers, not to mention playing lead parts and using the pitch bend and mod wheels. If you're already a good pianist, you could just buy the DVD on its own, as that will be cheaper.

Besides Jordan, whose ideas work with most genres (even though he's not playing music for most genres, the general concepts still work elsewhere), the other thing to do is listen. Find bands that you like with good keyboard players and good keyboard parts. Make a playlist of songs with good keyboard parts and listen closely to figure out what the artists are playing and think about why it's effective. I'd strongly suggest doing this with artists outside your genres of choice; just because they're not playing the music you play, that doesn't mean you can't still learn from them. Besides, you might find things you like.

After you've listened and got ideas, try and recreate the parts you hear on your keyboards. Of course, someone like Jordan Rudess who has a large number of keyboards will get better results than you, but that doesn't mean you can't come pretty close.


For both cases (experimentation and listening -> recreation), make sure that you're constantly playing. Add a new layer to your sound and then play the sound a bit, preferrably in a few different styles, to get an idea of how you could use it. Play short portions of different songs. It'll take time and practice to get ideas of what works and what doesn't.