• Musicademy Worship Drum DVDs – now available
• Drum Warm-up CD
• Ask the Expert – Electric guitar styles - Coldplay, Setting up a new worship group
• Introduction to worship keyboard part 2 - Understanding contemporary rhythms
• New T-Shirt design
• T-shirt slogan/design competition – win DVD box sets!
• Competition Result

Musicademy Worship Drum DVDs – now available

The new Musicademy Worship Drum DVDs are now available. Go to our webstore for more information and to buy. There is a set for Beginners (also available as individual volumes) and a set for Intermediate players.

Beginners will learn:

• A full range of beats, rhythms, fills and breaks
• Single strokes, double strokes and paradiddles
• Good posture, grip, sticking and hi hat technique
• How to play with a click and develop a better sense of timing
• Techniques for playing hymns in a contemporary style
• Percussion skills including djembe, conga and digeridoo
• How to choose and tune a drum kit

Designed for complete beginners and novice drummers who have had a few lessons. By completing the course you should have the skills to play competently within a worship band.

Intermediate players will learn

• A new range of rhythms, breaks and techniques
• Limb independence, timing and ability to play with a click
• Accents, bounce strokes and unusual time signatures
• Hi hat, rip, sticking and kick technique
• How to set tempos confidently and accurately
• Techniques for playing hymns in contemporary styles
• How to lead a drum circle
• Percussion - djembe, conga, digeridoo and more

Designed for existing drummers who want a course of worship focused drum lessons to take their technique up to the next level and get some new ideas to inspire creative playing.

In addition the DVDs feature hints and tips from some of the world’s leading worship drummers including Aaron Sterling (who plays for Brenton Brown, Natasha Bedingfield and Fiona Apple), Martin Neil (Kevin Prosch’s drummer), Andrew Small (playing on the latest Stuart Townend album as well as for Massive Attack and Kylie Minogue), Doug Matthews (who plays for David Ruis) and Dennis Holt, one of Nashville’s top session players, previously with Kansas and now playing for worship leaders such as Twila Paris.

The DVDs are presented by Colin Brookes. Colin was the “original” Soul Survivor drummer (British twenty somethings may well remember his blond dreadlocks from festivals in the 1990s). He’s now a full time vicar and as such is a fantastic communicator and teacher. The DVDs are taught in a step-by-step manner allowing you to learn all the chops in bite sized chunks. There are plenty of playalongs with the Musicademy band and of course, loads of on screen graphics to help you learn.

We are also delighted to feature a number of guest lessons from the new Delirious drummer Paul Evans. Paul has loads of helpful advice as well as some practical warm up routines and some interesting fills and breaks to add to your repertoire.

We have an online trailer available for preview.

The Musicademy Essential Drums Work-Out CD

To complement the worship drum DVD we have also released a drums work-out CD. The CD has three 20 minute practice routines that will help you warm up, develop your fills, breaks and rudiments and give you a great drum work-out.

The CD will help you work-out to a variety of clicks, rudiments and breaks whilst developing your timing, fluidity, break and fill repertoire. Its ideal for daily practice or warming up before a gig.

Listen to some sample tracks here and you can buy now from our webstore.

Ask the Expert - Electric guitar styles - Coldplay

Last month we looked a few sample sounds for some instant U2 style riffage. This month let’s take a variation on the theme - the Coldplay sound. Since they broke onto the scene in 2000 many worship songs have Coldplay-esque guitar parts. I think it’s partly because it suits the style of many modern worship songs well and partly because it doesn’t require an advanced technique to play credibly.

The basis of the sound is generally acknowledged as playing 8th notes i.e. 1 & 2 & 3 & etc as down strums and combining open and fretted strings together. The trick is then to also add delay on the crochets or quarter notes. You’ll only need a couple of repeats but set the repeat level or mix quite high. This will have the effect of ‘thickening’ up your guitar sound and as long as you get the tempo right it should help to drive the rhythmic element of the song along.

Make sure that the open strings you play are in are key. Either the first note or 5th note of the key works well or an open string that is one of the notes in the chord you are playing over is good too. If the song is in a non open string key, don’t be afraid to experiment with a capo. It’s a tool to help you make sounds, not just a crutch to make non guitar friendly keys easier.

For the fretted notes try walking up and down a single string and find notes that work in harmony to the melody line, much like a backing vocal part. What you are looking for is a good spread of drones, octaves and 5th so try working between frets 7 and 12 for the fretted notes and see what you come up with.

Sounds-wise Johnny Buckland uses a semi hollow Thinline Telecaster with Fender humbuckers into a Fender Deville amp. This gives him a thicker tone than a normal Tele but still doesn’t loose the treble end like you may do on a Les Paul. Whatever setup you’re working with the key is to not overdo it with the distortion and turn up the ‘Mid’ control if you have one on your amp. What you are trying to achieve is that ‘clean but dirty’ sound that comes from having the volume and tone knobs on your bridge pickup wide open and hitting the guitar reasonably hard to push your sound into overdrive.

If you want to add some top end sparkle you can add reverb too but again don’t overdo it because it will have the effect of backing the guitar sound up in the house mix so your part could be much harder to pick out. Also try to resist the temptation of adding other effects like chorus is it may ‘sweeten’ your sound too much and you’ll loose some of the edginess of this rock based sound.

Lastly while this is a great tool to pull out of your guitar styles kit bag, make sure the sound fits the style of the song AND the style of what the other band members are playing, so use it well but use it tastefully, worshipfully and sparingly to make a statement at the appropriate moment.

Ask the Expert – Setting up a new worship group

Colin Hodgkins from the UK emailed to say: “My co-leader and I are at the early stages of forming a young persons praise and worship group. My co-leader is a quite proficient musician but I am a complete novice in the early stages of learning bass. Our kids will be at varying levels of ability from zero to novice with perhaps one who is quite proficient. How would you recommend structuring/planning for growth. We are aiming for having a few songs under our belt for the start of 2009.”

When starting off a worship band the same rules actually apply to both novice and even more advanced teams. Keep it simple and learn to play together as a band rather than a collection of individuals.

If your young people really are complete beginners I’d recommend at least a few months of lessons or training before you throw them into a team situation. Get them at least to the stage where they can comfortably play a handful of chords or pieces, in time, without stopping.

Then take one, two or three easy, singable, well known worship songs with just a few chords and a simple rhythm and get each member to learn them on their instrument before you come together for a band practice. Give them a few weeks notice and provide charts, audio recordings and even Youtube links if necessary. If they haven’t got an instrument teacher to work it through with you may need to help them through it on a one to one basis before they get to the daunting task of playing it with a band. We’ve a few of the same songs on our guitar, bass and keyboard online lessons so they may be a helpful starting place.

Much of this preliminary work is really about confidence building before they make mistakes in the group situation. And they will make mistakes!

So start with slow songs like Jesus be the Centre, Holy and Anointed One, How great is our God, I Will Offer Up My Life etc. All these songs are slowly paced and have straight grooves with not too much syncopation.

If you only have charts with lyrics and chords written above it may be a hindrance at this stage so try and get at least the chords with proper bars on a stave so everyone can grasp the concept of counting through the beats and knowing when to change chord.

If you have lead instruments like flutes and violins try to encourage them to play something other than the melody line as that’s already taken by the vocal and so either play harmony or just notes from within the key in the gaps.

Although its inclusive to have multiple lead instruments its not necessarily very musical so even at the outset try to encourage lead instruments to take turns or play complimentary parts with each other rather than it being a free for all. If these players have had classical lessons they may read music so a resource like CCLI’s Song Select will help them find properly scored out harmony lines that they can work with.

So when you actually come to rehearse start by praying, talking and laughing together for a short time which hopefully will remove nerves and tension. Next make sure everyone is in tune! Then as you come to practice arrange everyone so they can see and hear each other. As the group leader your job will probably just be to keep them steady and together so get a metronome or click and physically count the beats out loud as they work through the songs. Try also directing them between song sections such as chorus, verse, bridge at random to get them used to working with changes. Just give at least 2 or 3 bars warning before anything unusual!

At this stage the best you can do to get the whole band playing together, in tune without speeding up, slowing down or stopping. Novice drummers may be more of a hindrance than a help at this stage so think carefully about inviting a new drummer into the group until they have reached an initial level of competence.

Lastly don’t worry if the first few practices don’t sound great. It’s amazing how people improve over time with a little self awareness and hard work. Just make sure an element of fun is kept and finger pointing for mistake is banished. Always have a de-brief and praise what went well but don’t be afraid to gently pick up on the areas that need improvement too.

Introduction to worship keyboard - Part 2

Understanding contemporary rhythms Once you can use different chords and inversions properly it’s time to tackle the Achilles heel of most keyboard players—rhythm. While guitarists naturally add rhythm to a piece of music it’s much harder work for a keyboardist. It’s often easy to play very ‘straight’ rhythms (like crotchets on each beat of the bar) which can be effective but are not enough in contemporary music. The kind of music we listen too and sing in church is quite syncopated. This means that the notes we play and sing often come in between the beats of the bar. Although most people quite naturally sing this way it can often be hard to play syncopated rhythms.

There is one rhythm which dominates much contemporary worship music. If we are to be effective keyboard players we must get to grips with it and use it well. Here it is:

The rhythm we need to play is written on the ‘G’ at the top whilst the semiquavers underneath can help us to work out how it is constructed. You can work out any complicated written rhythm by finding the longest note that will subdivide into the whole rhythm (in this case a semiquaver) and laying that underneath the original rhythm. Once you’ve done that add accents wherever you should play a note and call that number one each time. Here you get the rhythm 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2.

A good variation on this rhythm is to double the notes in length and forget the minim at the end of the bar:

This rhythm is also used widely in contemporary music. Try to play songs you know using both of these rhythms. You may need to slow things down to get them exactly right before speeding up again. Do try to be very precise about playing this kind of rhythm as it can make a real difference in driving a song forward.

We’ve written plenty of articles before in the newsletter about playing keyboards in worship. This is the start of a new mini series for people that have played keyboard using the traditional music score but want to move into more contemporary chords-based playing. To help you on your way, we’re making available online three lessons from the start of our Intermediate Worship Keyboards DVDs which explain the concept of chords-based playing and then go onto demonstrate it using the song How Great is Our God.

Click through to buy and download the lessons

• Worship Keyboards 1 - An introduction to playing using chords
• Worship Keyboards 2 - Using chords to play How Great is Our God
• Worship Keyboards 3 - Play through How Great is Our God with the Musicademy Band

Once you have been through these three lessons more proficient players can progress to the rest of the Intermediate course. If you are less experienced and would like to consolidate your new learning with relatively simple songs go to the Beginners course (volumes 3 and 4 would be ideal) or our online video Keyboard Song Learner lessons. The first part of our new newsletter series will look at which chords can be expected to show up in a given key (this information will be useful for guitarists as well), how to construct those chords and how to play them in different positions (known as voicings or inversions).

New T-shirt designs

We’ve just stocked a great new t-shirt design using the slogan “One Woman….Many Guitars”. The T-shirts are available in small, medium, large and extra large and are available in either black or white. The image on the right hand column shows the back of the stylish new design. The same image is repeated on the front but smaller and in the left pocket area of the T-shirt.

We’ve also got some great new colours in on the women’s “Love one man” range.

Order yours now from our webstore.

New T-shirt Slogan/Design Competition - Win 2 DVD Box Sets!

NEW T-shirt slogan/design competition – win 2 DVD box sets! We are launching a competition to win two Musicademy DVD box sets worth over $160. We are looking for a cool/funny slogan or if you’re feeling arty a funky design. It might feature the Musicademy name but doesn’t have to. So have a brainstorm and send in your slogan ideas – we’re happy to receive more than one entry per person.

We mainly sell t-shirts at worship festivals and conferences and the average buyer is male aged 18-40. Any entry which ends up made into a t-shirt will win two box sets of their choice.

Email your entries before the end of August 2008.

Competition result

Jennifer Derr from Illinois won last month’s competition. She’s a conservatory trained singer and is appreciating the advice from Musicademy on contemporary keyboard styles. She now has five online keyboard lessons to help her along the journey.

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