View the video demo and talk-through tutorial (below) to learn:
- How I approach this song (useful for any template).
- How IK is designed to support this workflow.
PRO-TIPs
- The secret to a crescendo is starting soft, so strategize a series of pads that start low and help you build the song.
- This isn’t a piano song, despite starting and finishing with piano. Don’t try to make it a piano song by playing piano straight through.
Ideas Not On the Record
- I use a warm pad under my piano to add support because I don’t think the piano should be so sparse.
- I use shimmer on my dark piano to add some atmosphere because I think the song calls for it.
- I use a “hovering” sound on top of my pads which really shows on the second verse and animates it more.
These are personal preferences and choices that are part of what I think serves the song, but are above and beyond what the record suggests. As with all “good ideas”, if the Music Director or the Producer doesn’t like them or thought they detracted, I’d immediately default to their position. Because we create scenes (see next section) that are all modular, it would take about 2 seconds to implement any requested change.
SCENES
Instead of a “one patch to rule them all” workflow which tries to tackle an entire song with one patch, IK thinks in terms of “scenes” for the different sections of each tune. I’ve found this is the easiest way to not get lost in a bunch of parameters and faders while playing live. This not only lets you treat IK as you would any other keyboard, it lets you incorporate other synths to cover specific sections of the tune if you prefer. Since IK uses aliases for its patches and combinations, duplicating a patch or combination requires no additional CPU overhead.
FEATURED SOUNDS
- The Giant 3rd party piano supported in Series 3, with mod-wheel in default position, Lush compression, Dense verb, and Shimmer buttons selected in the piano engine (bottom row of buttons). Alternatively the stock Yamaha piano similarly configured is an excellent choice.
- Vintage Pad (a default patch) for intro and verse 1.
- Padalicious + Hovering (a new combination from a combination and a patch) for chorus 1, verse 2, and outro.
- Grand Narrative (default combination) is used for the first build on the repeat chorus.
- Archangel Pad (default combination) is used on the bridge for holding the A chord for 16 bars.
- Red Shifted Universe (default combination) is used to build the bridge and for the walk-up.
- Digital Glory (default combination) is the final build, first build down.
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