How to Find Top Synth Players in Your City

Are you wanting to add a synth player to your band, but you’re struggling to find one? Maybe you already know a few keyboardists that have amazing chops, but they’re mystified when it comes to designing patches on a synthesizer? Well, in this article, I’ll share some ideas on how you can find synth players - both by going into and beyond your existing network of musicians!

Tap into your local network

This is the very first step you should take. Talk to musicians you already know, play, or jam with regularly to see if they know synth players themselves or have a friend of a friend that might fit the bill. You can also try to hit up some local instrument stores. If you already know the staff a little bit, ask them if they know anyone who’s got some expertise when it comes to programming and playing synths.

You can take this second idea even farther by inquiring at a shop that specializes in synth gear, if there’s one nearby! In Toronto, where I’m based, we used to have a specialty store called Moog Audio, but it unfortunately had to shut its doors during the pandemic. That said, there is still a synth repair shop in town, Synths When. Some other options in town might be the keyboard section of the Long & McQuade on Bloor or Paul’s Boutique in Kensington Market, which offers a good selection of vintage synth gear. These are all good places to start in Toronto.

The storefront of Paul’s Boutique, in Toronto. They offer a good selection of vintage synthesizers.

If you’ve already exhausted your friends and family with questions, you might try researching some local music stores that specialize or offer some synth gear and asking folks there if they know some great synth players.

Focused Research Tactics

These next few suggestions are more focused at finding synth players specifically - they may take a bit more time and effort, but will probably yield the best results!

Go watch some local shows

If you need to go beyond your personal network of contacts to find a synth player, one of the next first steps you can try is to see some local artists’ shows in your city. And specifically, try to find some artists that incorporate synthesizers in their music! You might try to search for bands by genre. Synthesizers make it into many different genres of music these days, such as pop (synth pop, in particular), newer, modern varieties of R&B and soul, some forms of rock like prog, indie rock, psych rock, etc. From there, see if they’re playing any shows soon, go watch them play live, and if you like what you hear, introduce yourself!

I’m specifically recommending you try to look for local bands over touring bands, because odds are you want to find someone who also lives in your area. And I’d also recommend that you try to find shows that are in smaller venues where you’ll have an opportunity to go talk to the performing musicians once they finish their set. In bigger venues, there’s a higher chance the artists will retire to a green room or backstage area once they finish playing.

Some of my personal favourite venues on the smaller side in Toronto include a few on Queen West, like The Horseshoe Tavern, The Rivoli, The Cameron House, and also other choice spots like The El Mocambo, The Piston, The Monarch Tavern, Supermarket, The Dakota Tavern, The Painted Lady, The Baby G… the list goes on. Although it’s not foolproof, I’d probably advise against mid-sized venues that can fit audiences in the 500 person and over range, as at this point, you might start seeing more touring rather than local acts. Lee’s Palace in Toronto kind of straddles this line, getting a mix of touring and local bands.

This is a picture of me! I’m on the left, playing with Alex Southey at The Baby G in Toronto. Photo credits to Neal Ganguli.

Tribute Bands

As a quick sub-point, it’s worth mentioning that another effective tactic could be to research tribute bands that play music that involves synthesizers. Many bands like this exist at a touring level, and a lot of them are based in major markets. So this technique may not work as well if you live in a small or medium city, but it might still be worth trying! In any case, some artists/bands you might look up tribute acts could include Genesis, Phil Collins, Prince, Pink Floyd, Yes, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, etc. From there, try to get in touch with their synth player!

Find some locally produced albums

This one is pretty straightforward: look for some albums that have been produced or recorded in your city, and try to look specifically for music that includes some synth tracks! Then look for the credits and see who played synths on those albums. If it’s not super clear who did so, I’d recommend getting in touch with the producers or engineers who worked on the record to find out who did the synth work.

From there, get in touch with the synth player, introduce yourself and see if you can hire them for your work! If you’re lucky, you might stumble on a mutual connection that you can contact to have them introduce you to the synth player.

If you’re not sure how to begin looking for locally recorded albums, keep an eye out when you go to your local music store, as some will carry local musicians’ albums and recordings - this was the case with the now gone Music City instrument store in my hometown of North Bay. Or, you can also research local studios in your city and see what they’ve worked on! Some will include a portfolio of sorts on their websites, but you can also try searching on websites like Discogs where lots of people list their albums, including credits.

Search freelancing websites like Fiverr

You might begin questioning my advice here - “Why is Gab recommending random people on the internet when I want someone local??” - but hear me out for a second. Not all synth players make themselves known onstage, and I get the sense that like producers, we can sometimes be a bit reclusive, keeping to our studios to make weird sounds and not partake much in the public eye.

So sometimes, we want to turn to the internet to find people. One pretty precise way of doing this is to hop on a freelance site like Fiverr and Upwork - or, you can be more specific and use a music freelancing website like Soundbetter or Airgigs. Next, you’ll search for a synth player on this service. It isn’t always possible to search specifically for “synthesizer” as a category on these sites, so you may need to start from keyboards and narrow down from there.

The next step is the important one: try to filter out the different people via their location. Some of the websites make it easier to do this than others: Soundbetter is quite good and directly lists the musician’s city while browsing multiple offers, whereas on Fiverr, you have to visit the musician’s profile to get an idea where they’re located. From this point, you can contact them directly through the platform if you’re looking for remote session work, but you can always take their information and try to find them on social media if you have other services in mind.

This is a screenshot I took directly from Soundbetter while browsing the “Top Keyboardists & Synth Players for hire” page. You can see that musicians’ locations are listed directly in their offers, such as the one I circled in red for Jonny Tobin who is in Vancouver. It’s not a guarantee you’ll find someone in your area, but you can use this method to try to narrow down someone who is close by!

General methods

These next few ideas are a bit more general in their nature and are less guaranteed to turn up synthesizer players specifically, but they require less effort and energy. So, if you don’t have much time to dedicate to finding a synth player, these may be some good ideas for you to start with.

Go to some open mics

This is pretty straightforward - go to some open mics around town! If you know of events that are more along the lines of open jams, these will probably even be better suited towards finding musicians (while it’s not always the case, open mics often attract singer-songwriters types).

The double-edged sword about open mics is that you never know who you’ll find playing there, and this goes both ways. You might not find anyone at all that plays synths, but you could also find exactly what you need. And I really do mean you’ll never know who you’ll find. I used to go to an open mic at The Cavern in Toronto (it sadly doesn’t happen anymore), and I got to meet and watch the beatboxer Andre Gibson perform a short set. He just happened to be the 2nd place Beatboxer in all of Canada in 2017. It turned out he would go there to practice his freestyling from time to time.

I don’t get the chance to go to open mics and jams as often these days, but Toronto has a bunch to choose from - probably enough to go to a different one every night of the week if you really wanted to. A few Toronto bars on my radar that host open mics or jams include the Imperial Pub near Yonge-Dundas, which is hosted by my friend Alex Southey, Supermarket in Kensington Market (I think it hosts both an open mic and a musician jam), the Painted Lady, the Cat on Q, etc. As a Franco-Ontarian, I also want to give a special mention to the Franc’open mic, which is Toronto’s first recurring francophone open mic event.

So you get the idea - go to an open mic and see what you can find! I’d also encourage you to play a couple songs yourself to help leave an impression on folks. You may not meet synth players specifically, but you can at least meet some new people and expand your network which can ultimately help in finding a synth player anyway.

Use local ads/classifieds and Facebook groups

Okay, this is probably the method that requires the least amount of effort. In some ways, it’s also my least preferred method, because you don’t really know who you’ll get. It can be a bit hit or miss. But, if you’re really struggling to find people, this can be an option.

There’s no rocket science involved with this method: hop on your platform of choice, like Craigslist, or Kijiji for us Canadians. You can search ads to see if anyone is advertising their services as a synth player, or put up an ad saying you’re looking for one. I’m not going to give a whole masterclass on the best ways to communicate with people on these websites, but I’d encourage you to be courteous and to be as specific as possible when writing your ads to better find what you’re looking for.

In a similar vein to these websites, although Facebook is now an aging platform, there are still a lot of musician groups on it, usually specific to cities or regions. They can in fact be useful to search for musicians to work with. I’ve actually managed to find some work for myself on occasion with these kinds of groups. Each group will have its own rules and guidelines that you’ll need to respect, so I can’t give specific advice other than to again be courteous, and to approach it in the same way. You’ll probably be able to both write up some ads saying that you’re looking for synth players and be able to browse what others are saying.

You’ll want to be mindful of the nature of the group when you’re posting, as well. For example, there are multiple kinds of groups like this for the Toronto area. Some are catered more towards people who play in local indie bands and may be doing so for fun, while groups like the Toronto Pro Musicians Network, as the name implies, is a community for professional musicians. If you post an ad in this group looking for a synth player but are not offering any kind of payment, your ad may not be very well received.

This is a screenshot of a search in Facebook Groups for the words “Toronto Musicians.” We can see a variety of groups one could join.

I’ve actually managed to find work from these groups on occasion, particularly the Toronto Pro Musicians Network.

Conclusion

We’ve gone over a few methods you can use to find great synth players in your city, such as: ask your local network, go see some live local shows, find local albums. And some other general ideas like hanging at open mics or jams, and using classified ads. Although I used examples specific to Toronto, these tips can really be applied anywhere.. I hope that one of these methods will help you find the synth player you’re looking for! Be persistent and keep at it. Even if it takes a bit of time, word usually gets around in the music community and someone will find their way to you!