Dear [[{First name}]],

Welcome to the July Musicademy Newsletter!

In this edition:

Keyboard Song Learner Lessons now online

Our worship keyboard course DVDs were launched a few weeks ago and are getting some great reviews. We've just released some keyboard "Song Learner" lessons available exclusively online at the Musicademy website. The lessons will help you consolidate the learning in the keyboard DVDs by teaching you new songs and reinforcing some essential techniques.

The songs featured include:

  • Blessed Be Your Name
  • In Christ Alone
  • The Wonderful Cross
  • Indescribable
  • Majesty (Delirious?)
  • How Deep the Father's Love
  • You are God in Heaven / Let My Words Be Few
  • Heart of Worship

As always there are free handouts to go with each lesson in the members area of the Musicademy website. We’ve filmed a few more lessons and they are currently in editing so do bookmark the page and come back for updates.

Ask The Expert

Musicademy tutor Tim Martin gives advice on playing single melody instruments in worship. These techniques are also great for keyboard players.

We’ve a number of single melody instruments like violin, sax and flute in our worship team, but they all need the music and tend to play the melody line. What would you advise?

The majority of single melody instrumentalists have been classically trained. This means that they read music really well but often struggle to play in a more fluid improvised style. In contemporary worship settings, the lead vocalist and congregation are singing the melody line so it makes sense for instruments such as brass, strings and woodwind to play either a harmony line or something more improvised such as a melodic “fill”.

While harmony lines can be useful it is often more effective to play in the gaps between words – a fill. This brings the first challenge of playing melody instruments in a worship band – you will never play all the time. In an orchestra you don’t get to decide when to play and when to stay silent – the composer or arranger has already made this decision for you. Even in this environment most instruments don’t play all the time. They come in and drop out to achieve the tone colour which is required at any given moment. In a worship band the soloist will need to decide where and when to play. Try to look for the places where there is a gap in the vocal line or a sustained note. These are the best places to add something to the music. Remember that in a lot of music ‘less is more’ – play too little rather than too much.

The next thing to get to grips with is using chords as a basis for playing. Most instrumentalists will have spent hours practicing arpeggios. Knowing these shapes will enable even the least confident improviser to start having a go. For example the notes of a C major arpeggio will always fit with a chord of C. The notes of D minor arpeggio will always fit with a chord of Dm and so on…

Whenever you play any of the notes of the chord written in the music they will fit. You can play chord notes going up (ascending) or going down (descending). They don’t even have to be the next note in the arpeggio—you could miss one out. Here are some chord notes you could use over a C major chord:

1 

Using chord notes is good but it will always sound a little clichéd on its own because you don’t introduce the tension of clashing notes into the music. The next step on from chord notes is to use the notes of the scale in between them. These added in between notes are called passing notes. Again they can be ascending or descending. The passing notes in the example below are larger than the chord notes. Again these would fit with a C major chord:

2

 

The last melodic feature you can use for fills is the auxiliary note. An auxiliary note is a note above or below a chord note. This is similar to a passing note but instead of going up (or down) to the next chord note you return to the one you’ve just played. The examples below would fit with a C major chord again:

3

The best way of using these techniques is to combine them. Chord notes with a leap followed by passing notes or auxiliary notes are very effective. Too many passing notes just become like scale practice so try combining leaps to chord notes and a few auxiliary notes. Just remember always to use the notes in the ‘home key’ of the song rather than those in each individual scale.

Hopefully these ideas will help you to understand how to begin improvising but it’s worth saying that nothing gets better without practice! Try to find some time in rehearsals to have a go at making up fills and experiment with how to combine the ideas above. Most of us are ‘closet improvisers’ – we can come up with ideas in our head but we can’t transfer them to our instruments. The easiest way to creative and effective improvisation is to get these ideas out of our heads. Try singing a fill and then finding the notes one by one until you can play the phrase you’ve just imagined. Good luck!

17 common worship leading mistakes and how to avoid them

  1. Including too many new songs in the set – your congregation is there to worship – most will find it difficult to do so if they spend most of the time learning your latest masterpieces
    Vary your set list to include a variety of older, recently introduced and brand new songs and be ready to make changes on the fly if you sense your congregation is becoming weary.
  2. Pitching the songs too high – remember that a comfortable range for a woman is about five semitones lower than a man.
    Change the key down to avoid going above top D particularly if you are playing in a small church situation.
  3. Clunky moving from song to song.
    Playing a song once its underway is fairly straightforward so make sure you concentrate on rehearsing how to start and end a song. Practising a seamless flow from one song to the next is worthwhile and focus on. It will help if both are in the same key with a similar groove and if you are using music, make sure the sheets are side by side on your music stand.
  4. Poor band dynamics – conflicting rhythms, one instrument speeding up/slowing down, vocalists overwhelming the sound with too many ad libs or vibrato
    Exercise leadership in directing your singers clearly and if necessary get them some vocals training. Get them to listen to each others’ parts and possibly film or record a service to help with some constructive criticism.
  5. Lack of leadership – without clear guidance from the worship leader its difficult for the band to know what they are meant to do, let alone the congregation.
    Give a good clear brief in practice and use vocal cues and body language to communicate during the set.
  6. Overly complex vocals – congregations get easily confused when the lead vocalist slips into harmonies, trills and ad libs. Simple clear melody is always the easiest to follow. Leave the harmonies for the backing vocalists.
  7. Poor phrasing and blending by vocalists.
    Make sure that all your singers are phrasing each “musical sentence” in the same way. It can help to have one backing vocalist leading the others so that everyone finishes their words at the same time. In the studio, singers are often asked not to finish the last consonant in a line so that the ending doesn’t sound jagged.
  8. Wrong keys or wrong capo positions.
    Make sure all the band are playing in the same key. Issue your set list in advance with instructions for keys. And if you change your mind, make sure that everyone knows.
  9. Tuning – are all your instruments in tune and are they staying in tune throughout the set?
    Even the right notes out of tune sound far worse than the wrong notes in tune so buy yourself a decent tuner like the Boss TU2 – cheap tuners can be so frustrating
  10. Lack of rhythm and togetherness by the band – this can be caused by many things including poor musicianship and lack of overall direction.
    Try to generate a sense of team where everyone plays their part to contribute to the whole without any one musician standing out. Also ensure that you have the relevant instruments in your foldback – i.e. the kick drum and other instruments responsible for rhythm.
  11. Winging it – either the result of poor preparation or trying something new out on the spot.
    Be sure you can accomplish what you have in mind. Are you trying to sing a song without the lyrics in front of you and you’ve forgotten the words? Does your AV guy have the words for the congregation or do they have to remember them too? Do you and the rest of the band know all the chords you need?
  12. Technical problems.
    The sound gremlins can happen to the best of us but try to get there early, set up methodically and make sure your technicians are well trained in the system they are using.
  13. Problems with pitch – you’re starting a new song and you’ve suddenly realised you’ve started on completely the wrong note.
    Try to identify the problem songs in advance and quietly play the note you need to hit on your instrument. Hold the note in your head while playing the intro and then hit it with confidence. Alternatively ask one of the other (confident) vocalists to lead on that song
  14. Over emphasis on the melody line.
    Make sure your backing vocalists and single melody instruments are playing harmonies. The lead vocalist and congregation are all on the melody line – create some contrast.
  15. Worship crash – often caused by trying something complicated that hasn’t been practised enough.
    Never try anything complicated until you, the band and the congregation are really familiar with the song.
  16. Starting the song in the wrong tempo.
    Either invest in an in ear click or sing the song through in your head first so that you can pace the tempo properly. Generally the chorus is the fastest part of the song.
  17. Audio visual failure – this happened to Matt Redman one time when Andy was playing. Matt just shifted his set list to songs with simple lyrics and gave spoken vocal cues to the congregation at junction points in the song.

Have you got some more classic mistakes and suggested solutions?

E-mail us and let us know.

Competition result

Rev Dave Eadie from Torrington Baptist Church in the UK won the five free downloads in the last competition. Here’s what he said about them:

I Just wanted to say thank you so much for the prize of winning the Musicademy draw.  I downloaded several video tutorials including Wonderful so Wonderful (Beautiful One) by Tim Hughes. I’ve been playing guitar for about 7 years and in this one session I learnt more about tempo, style, tension as well as simply just playing a wonderful song. I look forward to seeing the rest of the video downloads and recognise that as a result of these sessions I’m not only learning how to play one great song, but how to gain the skills and tools to put what I’ve learnt into practice in thousands of other songs, whether contemporary or Christian. 

The videos are well shot, the ability to stop, go back and go over stuff is great, but Andy is so clear and the additional resources on the site really help to flesh out the songs and make learning fun instead of frustrating. I’m really glad I’ve stumbled on this website and would recommend the session to anyone. I’m now intrigued to see what the other courses are like. 

Thanks all

Rev Dave Eadie

Torrington Baptist Church

Win Five Free Song Learner Downloads

We really like to know what you think of our newsletter and the Musicademy products so please take a couple of minutes to answer these questions and e-mail them to us. One respondent will win five free song learner downloads and we’ll let you know what they think of them in the next issue.

  1. What did you think of this newsletter?
  2. Which articles did you particularly enjoy?
  3. Any questions for our “Ask the Expert” feature?
  4. Any suggestions for content that you would like to read in the future?
  5. Any suggestions for websites we could recommend people?
  6. Have you bought a Musicademy product or downloaded a lesson and what did you think of it?

Please e-mail your responses to enter the draw!

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