By Andy@Musicademy | July 14, 2010
How to play by ear For many people, the thought of playing ‘by ear’ or being able to anticipate the chords, notes and musical charges in a song you’ve never heard before seems an impossible task. It’s often considered a ‘God given’ gift rather than a skill that can be learned and constantly improved on. […]
By Guest Blogger | July 1, 2010
Advice on worship team auditions For years, I worked through how to build a team in a “worship band” format. I tried volunteers, training up musicians, bringing in friends and many other things. After a while, I settled on the realization that recruiting for worship and music is something that can be helped by developing […]
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 […]
By Andy@Musicademy | June 9, 2010
Ideas for notation on chord charts Tim Lunn from Wantage in Oxfordshire asks: “I’m interested to know your thoughts on the use of chord charts for worship groups. The problem is that although, in our case, the bass and guitar rely on them heavily they convey no sense of timing and can cause problems when the […]
By Andy@Musicademy | June 7, 2010
How to develop a worship arrangement for a praise band A friend of mine once remarked that there are three approaches to arranging a song – beforehand, during the song or wishing you had made an effort to arrange it after you have finished playing! The key thing to remember is that the chord chart […]
By Kim Gentes | May 27, 2010
What do all the strange names and symbols mean in guitar chords? First, understand that chord nomenclature is a colloquialism of modern music, and there are occasional variances on how people use the symbols. I used the common forms below, which are a mixture of common pop music (such as the half-diminished) and jazz influenced […]
By Andy@Musicademy | May 25, 2010
What to do with a musician having problems with counting and rhythm? We had this email from a Musicademy subscriber in the US which I think flows pretty well on from yesterday’s post. “Our song leader cannot count very easily and has trouble with keeping rhythm. We have to jump through hoops to second-guess him […]
By Bob Kilpatrick | May 24, 2010
Why are you a worship leader? You are the worship leader in your fellowship. How did you come to this role? You’re the only person in your fellowship that can carry a tune. You’re the pastor’s wife and that’s what pastor’s wives do. You were seduced away from another fellowship by a generous salary and […]
By Tim Bowdler | May 18, 2010
Advice for church congregations in relation to worship music It’s ok, we didn’t forget you. Yes, a key part of the worship is the congregation – the group of worshippers. The worship leader is there up the front taking the congregation to a place of worship, but it’s not much use if the people in […]
By Andy@Musicademy | May 14, 2010
Tips for introducing a new worship song to your congregation There a number of ways to introduce new songs to a congregation. Graham Kendrick teaches his songs line by line, Stuart Townend tends to teach songs in sections as the lyrics change but the melody remains the same and Matt Redman often injects the new […]
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