Here’s some good advice from Paul Baloche on choosing a keyboard player for your worship team.
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Here’s some good advice from Paul Baloche on choosing a keyboard player for your worship team.
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A pianist/keyboardist — and this could apply to all instrumentalists other than the worship leader — should approach every song from the position that it would be appropriate not to play at all, and from that point back into the song, so to speak. I don’t always live to this standard, but it is something that I try to observe. It’s entirely OK not to play on certain songs, which allows you to use your body in other forms of worship (sing, raise hands, cowbell).
Ideally, there will be both a keyboard/synth and piano so you can go between the two instruments given the style of song, or play both simultaneously. A keyboard, assuming you are playing a pad with slow attack, will blend well into just about any song, while a piano is tougher to fit in, especially in songs where the studio recording does not have a piano.
My dad, who is a worship leader and long time performing/recording keyboardist (i.e. in a “band” context) has often mentioned the sitting on your left hand approach — or for the sake of rhythm, restricting yourself to using just your left pointer finger to play down beats and fill out chords in conjunction with what the right hand’s doing. Since the piano, in particular, is capable of providing such complete accompaniment on it’s own, it makes sense that when part of a band (or at least when the whole band is going) that it find its place to contribute without stepping on toes. The sound man will thank you too.