Practicing accompaniment

[SX700AusieGuy]

Hi all, I'm brand new here, a beginner with an SX700, from Australia (as the username clearly suggests )

At the moment, after around 12 months of practising, I can basically accompany a singer when she sings musically-not-too-complicated songs.  I want to improve my accompaniment skills further but don't always have a singer available to practise with. I think I could do it in one of the following ways:

1/ Play and record the melody part of a song that I'd like to practise. Then play it back and accompany it with a pre-set arrangement of style, voice, etc. Again and again and again with gradually increasing levels of accompanying sophistication.

or

2/ Downloaded from internet an mp3 song that I like into an USB. Plug that USB into the keyboard, then arrange a set of style, voice, tempo, etc. that matches the song, and then play the song and accompany it with that pre-set arrangement... as above.

I have just started this and haven't been very successful with either of those ways above.

Has anybody ever tried to do something similar before for the same reason? If "yes", would you like to share your experience please?

Or does anyone has any suggestions to help me with my accompaniment practice?

Thank you

[GregB]

I usually just practice along with a full recording, but here are a few ideas --

1 - Next time you play along with a singer, record the singer on a solo track and use that.

2 - Get some "split tracks" recordings - these have the singer on one channel and the accompaniment on the other channel.  Usually people use these to sing along with just the accompaniment and add in the recorded vocal where they want to hear it, but you can easily use it for the opposite.  This technique is most commonly used in church music and childrens' music.

3 - There are some plugins / services out there that can remove the vocal or remove the accompaniment from a recording.  I have not tried them, but they are more sophisticated than the vocal-removal tool present in our keyboards.

- Greg

[BogdanH]

I think, having a singer-only audio track is the simplest way to practice (as Greg suggested). There are some web pages where you can convert an mp3 song into "accompaniment only" and/or "voice only" for free. I tried few times and it works more than good enough for that purpose.
But there's a big difference compared to having a real singer. If having a real singer, then you and singer constantly adapt on each other: singer adapts to your playing (tempo, fill-ins, etc) and vice verse. By using singer audio track, it's only you who adapt (follow the singer) and that might not be as easy as one would think: in live performance, it's a musician (band) who determines the tempo, but here it's opposite.
About tempo... if you also plan to use styles for your accompaniments, then there's another big problem. If you convert some mp3 song to "voice only", it's almost impossible to keep (keyboard) accompaniment and (mp3) singer in sync. In short, forget about it.

My conclusion: nothing can replace live singer. And if none is available for practicing.. well, you can still sing along.

Bogdan

[mikf]

You dont really need a singer to work on accompaniment. You should just be able to hear the vocal "in your head".
I am not really sure what you think you need to improve. Your playing skills, your control of the keyboard technology or your accompaniment chops. But I think your problem is probably that it is all of these, and if that is the case what you need is general practice, not specifically practice with a singer. I see accompanying people well as something you work on AFTER you can play pretty well. There is no magic bullet that will make you better by some technical trick like the things you mention.
I don't know what level of expertise you have on accompanying singers on a traditional instrument like organ, piano or guitar, but having done that would be a huge first step because one thing that adds difficulty on an auto accompaniment keyboard is that there is no forgiveness on timing. That can take a bit of getting used to for both of you.
Mike

[vlbrgt]

I have done this with some songs from the Dutch website 'Karaokeversie.nl'.
You can download all tracks separatly.
I then use the voice track and make it synchronize with the style and midi that I use.
In the midi file there will be a command that starts the audio at the correct time.
The biggest point of attention is that the audio MUST have a constant tempo.
Not all the songs on the Dutch website do have that.

Let me know your e-mail address, and I will send you one of the songs I made this way.

Regards
Etienne

[mhack]

Hey, Ausie,
I download words and chords from www.cowboylyrics.com. I use the "one finger" chords method. Pick a song you are familiar with. Pick a style. Use chords only, while singing along. I print the song lyrics that have the chords above them ( from the download) to guide me along. Practice! Good luck!
Mike

[GregB]

Particularly if you are not using sheet music for the accompaniment, one thing that might also be helpful is some "ear training".  Get a bunch of recordings with a soloist singing along with a pianist, or along with a relatively simple accompaniment, and learn to play at least a simplified version of what you hear.  What this will do is teach you to "hear" in your head the accompaniment patterns that go along with a vocal - it'll give you tools that you can use later on when doing live accompaniment.

Pay attention to both chord structure and to question + answer phrasing.  Vocal lines have pauses here and there, and an accompanist will usually play a short fill in those pauses, in musical response to what the vocalist just sung.  It's not really a complete question + answer technique since you're not resolving the music, but it is similar in concept.  If you learn to play these short fills that you hear professionally recorded accompanists playing, it'll soon give you tools you can use live as well.

Welcome to the forum & to arranger workstation playing!

- Greg

[DrakeM]

Hello Ausie Guy

It is best that YOU sing and play at the same time even if you don't sing well in your opinion. You have to be able to KEEP TIME with the style as it does not follow your singing.

This applies to any SINGER you intend to accompany at some point. That Singer needs to learn to "follow" the style temp perfectly or the two of you will never get together. This is not like a REAL band which follows the singer. There was a learning curve even for me when I started using an arranger keyboard, I had to change my style of singing for some songs.

I would think you are on the correct way with option #1 with just a little change, if you are not going to sing or have a singer to practice with you.

Record the song first as a MIDI file. Use a count "in" and record the song as you described PLAYING the melody. Also you might also turn the drummer track DOWN as low as you can and still hear it as you are recording the MIDI.

Next turn every thing off except the MELODY line and the drummer track. Record this as an MP3 file.

You could then play the MP3 file and listen to the count in and start the style at the correct beginning of the song. You will barely hear the drummer track on the MP3 but you will hear the MELODY and be able to add in your right hand fill ins as you use your left hand to chord through the song and change through PARTS A,B,C,D of the style.

If your style is set up correctly you will not much in the way of fill ins. You will need to figure out what you are going to play for the instrumental solo part for sure. Your fill ins will be 3 to maybe 6 note riffs for the most part.

I have posted a bunch of YouTube videos recently you can watch to give you some examples how I put together doing all 3 parts; singing (turning the Vocal Harmony on/off), playing the accompaniment and the fill ins and solos.

Good Luck, it just takes practice, so hang in there.
Drake

[SX700AusieGuy]

Wow! Thank you very much everyone: Greg, Bogdan, Mike mikf, Etienne, Mike mhack, and Drake for all your detailed and thoughtful responses.

Each of your response provides me with useful information and suggestions which eventhough come from slightly different angles but all pointing to the same general direction that I need to go.

I will go away now and try a few things using combinations of all your suggestions to see which one will work best for me. And I will be back later to report on my progress.

Thanks once again very much for your (big) help!

And thank you for making me feel so welcomed here 

[TiasDad]

Arranging a song around a singer means that you will be practicing in the key that they are comfortable singing in, which may change if you change singers. Not too much of a problem with the Transpose buttons but the reason I tend o learn the original versions of songs, so I can play along with the You Tube videos, along with the original singer

Good luck

[SX700-MIDI]

Hello from the "other side" (SPAIN)
As a retired teacher (Music and Technology) I think I can 100% advice you to look into the PC (Mac, Linux...) and the DAWs or other software available to handle multitrack recording, editing...
That would be definitely, the most COMPLETE as soon as you begin to get knowledge of MIDI and connections of your sx700 to Computers.
Honestly, it opens a complete and extremely wide world to your possibilities.

Try to USE Computers to your benefit but DON'T let them control you or depend on them. They only do what you tell them o. remember that.

I my self have "TRILLIONS" of karaoke tracks from a donation years ago and can also tell you I was even surprise to see how well the 700 handles .CDG, .KAR and similar files.
You could perfectly well accompany ANYTHING
Good luck with MUSIC