5 More Ways To Play Like Keith EmersonBYBRIAN CHARETTEJune 26, 2013

Keith Emerson is the reason I play keyboards. When I first started playing music, someone gave me a cassette of Emerson, Lake & Palmers albumBrain Salad Surgeryand my life was changed forever. Emerson is undoubtedly one of the most influential keyboardists of the last 50 years. Here are a few exercises to give you a taste of his dizzyingly diverse keyboard style. Read our December 2010 interview with Keith Emerson where YOU wrote the questions! Read the "5 Ways To Play" lesson from that issue.

1. Organized

Ex. 1illustrates some of Keiths killer organ work. Bar 1 begins with a descending bass line and Lydian arpeggios moving in minor thirds. By bar 4 we see another typical Emerson device: triadic shapes over unusual bass lines moving in parallel. The example ends with rhythmic prog hits. Emerson played mostly Hammond C-3 and L-100 organs, but regardless of your organ rig, set your top manual to 888 (just the first three drawbars, all at maximum) with percussion on short decay and vibrato/chorus set to C3. Set the bottom manual to00 8800 000.Check out ELPs track Endless Enigma for an example of how Keith employs these techniques.

2. Five To Stay AliveEmerson routinely sets up ostinato riffs in his compositions.Ex. 2is influenced by the ELP tune Trilogy and is in 5/4 time. Often after a long cadenza, Emerson plays four bars of a vamp similar to this one before drummer Alan Palmer enters with fervent force.

3. Mano y MonoAnother sound associated with Keith Emerson is the monophonic Moog synthesizer. Keith would often play sweeping modal lines with a fat monophonic sound employing crazy amounts of pitch-bend and portamento, as inEx. 3. This example uses the Mixolydian mode (major scale with a flatted seventh). When you get to bar 3, channel your inner prog rock star and turn that modulation wheel up.

4. From Rags to Riches

Emerson loved ragtime-esqe piano parts and often used an out-of-tune piano for tracks featuring them, like on Benny Was a Bouncer and The Sheriff.Ex. 4approximates this style. Here the left hand plays a standard ragtime accompaniment while the right hand plays melodies voiced in sixths and other unusual intervals. The exercise ends with a right hand fugue-like line.

5. Go FourthEmerson often employs fourths in his melodic lines. The notes inEx. 5all come from theCDorian mode. In your own melodic explorations, instead of playing the mode simply straight up and down, try to see it in fourth shapes. The ELP albumsBrain Salad SurgeryandTrilogyboth feature extensive use of fourths.

Link: http://www.keyboardmag.com/fusion/1301/5-more-ways-to-play-like-keith-emerson/29287 [NB: audio file on url]