Particularly if you don’t sing, multiple changes of leads and comps is pretty much how you give variety and interest to a song. In fact, that’s the source of the name of our type of keyboard... the ‘Arranger’!

An arrangement is simply the term for taking a melody and chords, and making it more than a simple, boring, one sided recitation. Sure, with great skill and expression, you can play a song with one sound and one basic backing and make it work. But it takes a LOT less skill to make something that changes every eight or sixteen bars to a different texture.

But arrangers don’t make it that easy to be constantly changing stuff AND playing well. That’s a lot of buttons to push, interrupting your playing and disrupting your flow. And that’s where doing multiple things with one button push (or even better, a foot pedal press!) makes it easy. The sky’s the limit once you plan things out and reduce it all to that one press!

Next time you listen to an instrumental arrangement of a popular song, just sit there and make a mark every time the lead or the backing or the counter-melody changes. You’ll be amazed!