As a member of the house band for TV juggernaut American Idol, keyboardist and guitarist Russell Graham is perhaps one of the most-heard musicians in the world. Backing up a multitude of aspiring singing stars as well as many guest performers, the group is listened to by hundreds of millions of viewers over the course of a single season. Led by music director Ray Chew, the hard-working ensemble has one of the toughest gigs in show business, one that requires both spot-on precision and wide-ranging musical versatility week after week, with the added pressure of delivering that in front of an enormous live television audience.

With natural musical abilities that became apparent at a very young age, Russell studied both classical and jazz piano in his youth. He went on to attend the music program at Harvard University, where he learned and developed numerous skills that would become an important part of his future career. After many years of teaching and playing in the New York area, Russell connected with Chew in 2003 and became a part of his musical roster. This led to performing for Showtime at the Apollo, the NBC show The Singing Bee, and many other high-profile gigs leading up to American Idol. Russell’s wife, singer Tanya Diona, is also a member of the Idol band.

Russell has been a longtime Roland player, going all the way back to the XP-80 Music Workstation. As you can imagine, his current live TV gig demands quick access to high-quality and ultra-expressive sounds, and for this he relies on two JUPITER-80 Synthesizers. The backing requirement for every show performer presents Russell with a different set of sound decisions, and he makes full use of the JUPITER’s large selection of SuperNATURAL acoustic and synth sounds and powerful Live Set architecture to meet his constantly changing needs.

Russell spoke with Insider recently, discussing the challenges of American Idol and live television, his Roland gear, and much more. He also offered up some detailed and insightful advice for musicians looking to land the top gigs.

After you graduated from Harvard, what were some of your career milestones leading up to American Idol?

I went from school to working a day job, but also teaching piano after hours, to not really having time to do both and going into just teaching. At the same time, [I was] working on the weekends with bands in New York that did a lot of corporate functions and high-profile, high-expense weddings. I ended up playing with one of those bands for about 11 years. It was musicians who, for the most part, did Broadway or toured with recording artists or did session work, but picked up sideline work and private-party work during their off-hours. And here I was getting to play with them, and having to kind of rise to their level. So that was part of my further musical education.

How did you meet Ray Chew?

One of the vocalists for one of those [gigging] bands did production work for an artist named Shaggy. That producer/writer’s name is Gordon Dukes. He brought me in to play on some of those sessions, and that kind of opened a new circle of people to meet and work with. Through Gordon I met Tanya [Diona], through Tanya I met Joe from the Apollo, and through Joe I met Ray Chew.

Joe knew that the other keyboard player had [future] dates he was going to need to sub out. I met Ray, and then I just kind of followed up by phone for a while. And then four months later, it’s January 2003, and I get a phone call saying, “Hey, can you come do Showtime at the Apollo?” I said, “Of course! Yeah, I can come do Showtime at the Apollo!”

I ended up being the third keyboard player in the band for that season, and I got to work with Ray Chew and Rickey Minor at the same time. Ray was playing keyboard, and Dave Delhomme was also playing keyboard. And there I was as the third keyboard player, where they could check out if I played well, and if I didn’t they could turn me off. [Laughs.] Fortunately, it worked out well. After the television show taping was done and it was back to doing the weekly live amateur night at the Apollo, Ray asked if I would continue doing that, and I [did] that for several years.

How did things progress for you after that?

Getting the opportunity to play at the Apollo and play with Ray Chew opened the doors to various other performance situations. In 2006, when Ray took over as musical director for the BET Awards, I was lucky enough to get to tag along and go do that. Then we did BET Celebration of Gospel for a few years. We did The Singing Bee for NBC in 2007, which was a lot of work and a crazy, crazy schedule, but a very fun experience. And through some of the other musicians at the Apollo I got to work with various other artists.

We did the 2008 Democratic National Convention. We did the neighborhood ball for ABC TV for President Obama’s inauguration, and most recently we’ve been working on American Idol. And what’s been especially a privilege and a blessing is that for some of these events, and especially some of the larger events, it’s turned out that both Tanya and myself are the appropriate people for a couple of different positions in that [musical] workspace. The best part about that is that you’re in a unique situation that a lot of [couples] don’t ever get to be in. It’s a shared experience.

It seems like you wear a lot of different hats on American Idol. In addition to playing keyboards and guitar, what are the different roles you have in the band?

I’m privileged to get to do a variety of different things. It’s especially gratifying that [I get to] use of some of the skills and education from college that didn’t really seem to make sense immediately after. A lot of times now, people are relying on me not just to play well, but also to be able to hear things quickly and transcribe them, creating sheet music for the band.

We might be playing behind an artist who is doing a song off their new album, and the band needs to be able to play it “like the record” tomorrow. So I’ll be one of a number of people on our team who can listen to it and hear exactly what each instrument is playing, and transcribe it so that we’ve got a master rhythm chart for most of the band to follow, and a specific bass chart, and specific guitar parts. For a song with horns, we’ve got the individual horn parts, string parts if we’ve got live strings. So I get to do a lot of music prep.

We do some shows now where there are associated recordings. On American Idol, the contestants are doing not just a short performance version of each song for television; since last year, they’re also recording a full-length version of the song that’s going to be released on iTunes. We get to work on that. I was part of the rhythm section for the tracking dates on all that material this year, and then doing a lot of the overdubs. Those are kind of the basic roles and functions.

What do you like most about working on American Idol?

There are a lot of musical situations where maybe you’re playing accurately, maybe you’re not, and there’s something to be said for openness and creativity and finding new ways of playing things that don’t have to exactly sound like the record. But when you’re doing a show like Idol, people are expecting to hear the song that they know and love and recognize. And there’s a certain satisfaction to being given the opportunity to do that, and that we’re trusted to do what we do. There’s a satisfaction to doing it well, and there’s especially a satisfaction to the fact that it matters to someone.

Some of the contestants obviously are going to put their own spin on [a song], and you figure out how to accommodate that musically. But for a contestant who is singing the signature version of a song, they want it to sound and feel like what they’ve listened to their whole life and grew up singing along with. And the audience watching on TV wants to hear the song that they’re accustomed to, and the television producers want to know that it sounds accurate. In a world where a lot of things have become generic or computerized, and maybe the accuracy doesn’t matter as much, it’s really nice to be doing a job where people really do care whether we get it right.

What’s the greatest challenge of a gig like this?

Probably the fact that it’s live television—you don’t get to go back and do it again. Once you play it on television, it stands as is. You’ve got to get it right the first time, because there won’t be a second time.

On top of that, it’s a competition. If a contestant performs really well, that’s wonderful; if they don’t perform well, the voting will reflect that. For the band, we really need to maintain a very, very high level of accuracy all the time and for every contestant. We have to play behind everybody as if they’re already the winner, because they might be the winner. We need to make absolutely certain that the voting and the outcome and the judges’ comments are directly related to the contestants’ performance, and don’t have anything to do with whether or not the band played well. We need to play it well no matter what, so that everything rests solely on the [contestant’s] performance.

What was your keyboard rig like when you began working with Ray?

For a long time, I was using a combination of various keyboards. There would be some kind of Roland primary keyboard, and then a secondary keyboard for other sounds that, for a long time, could have been from just about any manufacturer, depending on what kind of sounds we needed. But since it came out, I was relying heavily on the XP-80 and on four [SR-JV80] expansion cards in particular, and I stuck to those for a long time. With an XP-80 and the Session, Orchestral, Keyboards of the ’60s and ’70s, and Techno cards, I had a lot of the patch numbers memorized. I could get to just about anything almost instantly just by punching in numbers.

Where did you go from the XP-80?

From the XP-80, I finally went to the Fantom-X series. I was using Fantom-X7s because they had categories and I could get to things pretty quickly if I needed to. And I stuck with the X7s and either a VP-550 or VP-770 for a few years really, setting up splits and performances and configurations and Favorites. And then I went from there to the JUPITER-80s.

At first, you were a little reluctant to switch to the JUPITER-80. Why was that?

Once I’ve got something that’s working really well, I tend to kind of stick with it. My main concerns in terms of switching from the Fantom-X series turned out to be complete non-issues. I was worried about being able to set up layers and zones and patches, especially because I do a lot of Keys 2 utility work. I do Keys 1 work, but most of the time I’m getting called for Keys 2/Guitar 2 utility work.

I do a lot of orchestral textures, a lot of synth textures, and I had setups on the Fantoms that I could go to and modify very quickly with key-range zones and things where I’ve got arco basses, cellos, violas, violins mapped out across the keyboard and fading in and out. And depending on how hard I’m hitting the keys, I’m getting a nice bow attack or I’m getting a swell into the sound.

I was concerned [about being] able to do the same thing on the JUPITERs. It turns out you can, and the touchscreen navigates very quickly and intuitively, but that was what I needed to know before actually jumping into it. It turned out to be completely unfounded and not an issue at all, because the JUPITER-80 navigates even better than the Fantoms did.

You’ve had a lot of people who’ve been asking about the JUPITER. What kinds of questions are they asking?

In terms of people asking me about the JUPITER, I don’t get a whole lot of specific questions. Mostly they go, “Oh, the JUPITER. How do you like it?” That’s really the question. And that kind of serves as my jumping-off point for, “Well, I like the sounds because of this, I like the navigation because of that, I like the way it integrates with playing orchestral or piano samples on a computer because of the way it does external MIDI routing.” The answer has generally been, “I really like it. Here’s why.”

For younger players who want to get a similar gig with a band or a tour, what kind of advice would you give them as far as what they need to be studying or listening to?

You know, I get asked that a fair amount. I should carry around a list, because there are a number of points that are always part of the answer.

Obviously, there should be some level of natural talent. And definitely, there should be some development of skill. It doesn’t necessarily have to be formal training, although being able to read and write music are valuable tools that will give you an advantage. If you’ve got two people doing the same gig at different times, and one of them is consistently playing what they need to because they know how to read what’s on the page or how to write down what they just played so they can repeat that performance, that’s going to give them an edge.

Preparation: if you see that you might have the opportunity to audition or play with an artist or for a show, or to work with a musical director that you want to work with, it’s critical to come in knowing as much about the material and situation as you possibly can beforehand. Again, that’ll give you an edge over someone who doesn’t. I’ve seen situations where an artist has specifically said, “Meet our new drummer. He came in and he knew all my songs. This is our new bass player. He already knew the stuff when he came in.” You see that quite a bit.

Definitely work ethic and discipline—being able to be where you need to be when you’re supposed to be there. Being able to learn what you’re asked to learn and stay focused and not get sidetracked. Being able to work well with other people. A lot of that is just general professionalism that in other industries and workplaces people are forced to learn and maybe even trained for. Quite often in musical situations, that doesn’t happen. You need to groom yourself and learn those skills on your own, and then just show up already having that, because people are just going to expect it.

Aside from all that, there is—I don’t want to call it the luck factor, because in a lot of ways you create your own luck—being able to go out and meet people, network. Don’t be afraid to try and meet the people who you want to work with. Obviously, be respectful, communicate well, and don’t cross boundaries that would leave a bad impression, but get out there.

Those are the biggies. And, I guess also, patience. Because quite often you’ll do the networking and you’ll meet the people and be persistent, respectful, and professional about following up and placing phone calls, and maybe nothing will happen for a while. And it’s a matter of being ready and prepared and having the right attitude, when all of a sudden—maybe even when you’re not expecting it—that phone call does come.