Preparing for a rehearsal with a live synth player

You’ve got your big national tour booked. All the logistics are in place; the venues are decided, accommodations and transport is all figured out. Next comes choosing the right band. You’ve got a lot of interesting synth tones in your music, so you’ve decided to hire a synth player. What’s the best way to prepare to rehearse with them?

In this article I’ll talk about some of the ways that you can make a rehearsal go smoothly for a synth player. I’ll cover some generals that apply to most musicians, and then focus on some things that apply to synth players in particular.

A photo of psychadelic/dance band Jagwar Ma rehearsing, taken by Goldenskyandsun. See CC license here.

Prep in advance

These first few tips apply to hiring just about any side man musician. In that sense, they’re useful for synth players as well!

Provide the music in advance

This might seem like a no brainer, but providing recordings of your songs (even demos, if you don’t have studio versions yet) to your musicians is probably the easiest first step you can take. Having recordings available lets your musicians learn the music and prep their parts in advance, or at the very least familiarize themselves with the structure, key, and feel of your songs.

Are you going to use charts?

This is another tip that applies to hiring any side musician - determine ahead of time whether you’re okay with using charts on the gig. As a bonus question, decide if you’ll be providing charts to the musicians, or if they should make their own. A good side musician should be able to chart and learn the song on their own, provided there is the time to do so, but if you are providing them charts, let them know! If there are specific parts that you want them to play, perhaps you’d rather not leave that up to interpretation.

On the other hand, if you’re expecting musicians to memorize their parts for the shows, be clear about that as well. While a lot of musicians now use discrete tablets rather than big binders to display their charts, it can still make for a more “professional” look to go chart-less. Keep in mind your musicians may want more time and practice if they need to memorize the music.

Where and when will you rehearse? 

Will you rent out an hourly rehearsal spot for a few sessions? Or perhaps you’re lucky enough to have your own jam spot in your basement? Again, this is another tip that might seem really basic, but figuring out these details in advance will help things go smoothly. Odds are that your musicians are freelancers and juggle multiple clients and gigs, so determining everyone’s availability ahead of time will ensure everyone can be present for them. If you do have gigging musicians, weekends tend to be a busy time for them, so you may need to look more towards weekdays.

As for location, that will be up to you! It’s pretty common to rent out hourly rehearsal spaces for these. In Toronto for example, where I’m based, there are many options such as Lynx, Main Stage (formerly Rehearsal Factory), Cherry Jam, and Groove Room, to name a few. Typically you can rent these rooms between $20-$30 an hour. If you happen to have access to your own jam space though, you may not even need to worry about this!

Now that we’ve talked about some of the general things you can do to prepare, let’s talk about some of the quirks that come from working with synth players in particular.

Which and how many parts of your song are you expecting the synth player to play?

This is probably the most important question to answer from a synth player’s perspective. There are a few factors that you’ll want to consider when figuring this out, such as:

• What are the other musicians playing?

• Are you using backing tracks?

• What gear is the synth player using?

What kinds of tones are in your music, and which of them do you want the synth player to reproduce? Maybe you play indie pop rock and the synth player just needs to play some simple pads and leads. But if your songs are more maximalist in their production, you might need to make some decisions about this.

Photo of a band rehearsing in Toronto taken by Magda Wojtyra. See license here.

What parts do the other musicians play?

One first factor to consider is the other instrumentalists in the band. Maybe you’ve got a primary keyboardist who will be playing “normal” sounds like pianos, organs, clavs, etc. And then your synth player could cover all the synth tones.

It’s also worth asking what the guitarist (if there is one) is playing: are they playing pretty straightforward rhythm and lead parts? Or are they off into ambient sonic territories with big reverbs and delays like The Edge from U2 might do? If it’s the latter, you might need to make sure the guitar and synth are not stepping on each other’s toes.

Backing tracks?
Perhaps the band is also playing with a backing track. In this case, which elements of the song will the backing track contain, and which elements will you want the synth player to play? This is an important question to answer so that you get the most out of the track and your musicians and are not just overlapping parts.

I can chime in with an example of a gig I got to play this fall. I was playing synths and keyboards for the Francophone artist Kyris at the Francophonie en Fête festival in Toronto. This was sort of a first gig following the pandemic for him. During the long, forced break from performing, Kyris had started to take his usual folky music into a more electronic territory.

In particular, he started using synths and vocoders in his newer style, and in order to reproduce these elements live, Kyris and his producer Arnaud decided that we should play these songs to backing tracks. The way we decided to divide these elements was that all the background vocoders, samples and sound effects would be covered by the backing track, while I would play the more upfront synth tones and normal keyboard parts. This way, as the synth player, I was able to determine which sounds I needed to prepare to be ready for the rehearsals and the gig.

Gear

Let’s bring the topic of gear into this discussion. While planning with your synth player, you’ll want to get an idea for what kind of synthesizers and keyboards they’re using. Are they using one keyboard? Maybe multiple? How many different sounds and tones can they play simultaneously? Is it easy or viable for them to switch patches mid song, if needed? These are all going to be factors you’ll want to keep in mind when deciding which parts they should be playing.

As a bonus question, are they mostly playing hardware gear, or is a laptop entering the mix? If yes, this can dramatically open up the possibilities for accurately reproducing the synth tones. But I won’t go into detail on using computers and software in this article - I’ll leave that discussion for another time!

A laptop running Ableton Live set up for a live performance. Using laptops to run backing tracks or even to use software in the performance is becoming increasingly popular.

To figure out exactly what it is you want your synth player to play, it might be beneficial for both of you to discuss some of these things before you all get together for the rehearsals. Consider having a pre-rehearsal session where you explore which sounds you’d like them to play in your songs, too.

During the rehearsal

That’s enough talk about planning and logistics - let’s dive into some things to keep in mind for the rehearsal itself with your synth player!

Plan for extra time

Because synths are a little bit trickier of an instrument, especially when sculpting tones, it’s a good idea to plan some extra time into the rehearsal. While rehearsing, synth players may need to make notes about which patches they need to change to during the set, or any sort of parameter movements they might need to perform - such as a filter sweep or applying LFO modulation. Give them a bit of time to jot those down!

If your songs are still works in progress and you’re asking the synth player to come up with their own parts, understand that they need to explore not just musical ideas, but also different sounds and tones. They might need to test out between lead sounds, pad sounds, synth keys, or all the way to strange sound effects to find the right fit for your song and your vision. Depending on how much time you have budgeted for the rehearsal itself, you might want to plan a separate session to figure those details out.

Flexibility is key

This is important from everybody’s part! It’s important to first be flexible with the arrangement of the song. Sometimes, the studio recording of a song simply does not translate well to a live  performance, and vice versa. This has happened to me in a few rehearsals. It might just lack the same energy, oomph, flair or pizzazz. You may need to rework the live arrangement for it to sound good when played by a band.

This flexibility should also come from your musicians too, though. A good synth player should be ready to make changes during the rehearsal. For example, while I like to prepare my different patches and parts as much as possible in advance, I recognize that the artist I’m playing with may want me to make some changes in the parts I’m playing or even make adjustments to my synth tones. 

In that situation, it’s nice to give your synth player a second or two to make those adjustments and re-save the patches. It’s often easier than trying to remember what changes to make once the rehearsal is over!

All in all, I’m hoping these tips were useful for you if you’re planning to hire a synth player in your live band. There are some extra considerations that go with them simply because of the instrument they play. In sum though, plan ahead (as much as possible) which parts you want them to play, give them some time to tweak their sounds, and you should be all set. You’ll be up on stage rocking a great show before you know it!