Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts – Sound men/women

By Tim Bowdler | June 21, 2010

Advice for church PA and sound teams Sound men and women get a bad rap in churches. Musicians spend about 70% of their time complaining about their stage sound, their monitor mix, the irritating buzzes, the front-of-house levels – pretty much everything really. Give musicians the slightest excuse and they’ll moan about the sound. They’ll […]

Practical ideas on chord charts and notation – guest post

By Guest Blogger | June 14, 2010

Suggestions for notating chord charts We had several comments on our recent post – Adding notation to chord charts – including an email conversation with guitarist Bob Crockford from Derbyshire in the UK. We really liked what Bob shared with us of his system of notation so we asked him to write a guest post explaining […]

Ask the Expert – Guitar practice regime

By Andy@Musicademy | June 11, 2010

Guitar practice tips Neil Shuck sent this email about guitar practice. Its similar to a number of others we have had recently so we thought it worth publishing in a blog post. “I’ve just purchased the “Intermediate Acoustic” Worship Guitar Course, and I was wondering if you could help with a question. The ‘blurb’ states […]

Mini tube heads – lunchbox styleee

By Andy@Musicademy | June 2, 2010

Small light tube amps for church worship For a while now I’ve been banging on about the virtues of using small, light tube amps for church worship band duties (see “Small amp great sound” links at the bottom of this post). The main benefit apart from the size and weight advantage is the ability to […]

Introduction to Worship Keyboards – Understanding Contemporary Rhythms

By Tim Martin | May 28, 2010

Understanding contemporary rhythms Last time we looked at keyboard chords and their voicings. In this post we consider contemporary rhythms. Its a timely post and partly in response to an Ask the Expert question we had recently about mastering syncopated rhythms. Once you can use different chords and inversions properly it’s time to tackle the Achilles heel […]

Ask the Expert – Advice for playing syncopated worship songs

By Andy@Musicademy | May 21, 2010

How to play syncopated songs on the keyboard David Aldrich emails with an issue that lots of worship keyboards players wrestle with: As a keyboard player, I really struggle with playing syncopated worship songs. Playing on the off-beat just doesn’t come naturally to me. Do you have any tips on how to do this? Andy […]

Why DI?

By Andy@Musicademy | May 12, 2010

Why should musicians use a DI box rather than just plugging straight into the sound desk? This article was originally written back in 2010 and we’ve substantially updated it since then with some help from sound tech professionals Simon Lewis and Tim Horton who you can also see in the video clip below (thanks to […]

Gear confessional – Guitar amps

By Andy@Musicademy | May 7, 2010

Guitar amps for a worship musician I started getting into low wattage tube amps a few years ago when the THD Univalve came out. I had bought and sold various amps including Fenders (a twin and a Vibrolux), Marshalls, Musicmans (Musicmen?), Carvins, Voxes and some other stuff too and basically they were all way too […]