Get your mitts on a free album – this week only

By Marie@Musicademy |

  Here’s a real treat. We’ve got a free album for you. Our multi talented friend Kris Morris, who was also the designer of our new website, has just released a new album – I Think We Both Know. Full of soulful songs about life, love and faith – produced and played by the Weeks brothers. […]

Using orchestral instruments in your worship team

By Tim Martin | April 14, 2009

  Churches often have orchestral or single melody instruments like violin, sax and flute in worship teams. Most players like to read from the music and tend to play the melody line. Here Tim Martin (pictured above with the musicians from our upcoming orchestral instruments DVD) advises on playing in a more improvised style. The […]

Add9 guitar chords for adding beauty

By Andy@Musicademy | April 10, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 9 In the last post we looked at using ‘5’ or power chords for adding strength to the sound. Now let’s go the other way and look at adding beauty to the sound by using add9 chords. Add9 chords are named because they just take a regular chord and add a 9th note […]

The gathering of believers vs open mic night

By Marie@Musicademy | April 7, 2009

This is the another in our series “Thoughts on church and worship, discipleship and more”. Here is a description of one church’s model of a worship gathering. Its probably pretty different to yours but that’s fine – do comment below on other models that you find work in your communities. The gathering of believers – a […]

‘5’ chords for strength and power

By Andy@Musicademy | April 6, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 8 So far we’ve looked at alternative or substitute easy to finger chords in a variety of keys. Now let’s look at some chord shapes to change the flavour of the sounds we make. Some times we want our acoustic playing to sound less ‘nicey nicey’ and a bit ‘stronger’ for some out […]

Substitute Chords – B with a detuned E

By Andy@Musicademy | March 31, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 7 This next little trick is again about playing in the key of B without barre chords or a capo but this time uses all the open strings and gives you some great new voicings simply by detuning the top E (string 1) down 1 semitone or a ½ step to D#. […]

Have you used our Vocals DVDs in a group setting?

By Marie@Musicademy | March 28, 2009

We’ve had a request from a church in Wales who want to use our worship vocals DVDs on a week by week basis going through a lesson before their worship group practice. They were wondering if anyone else has done this and has any advice? Now I know that a few US churches have been […]

Ask the Expert – why won’t my guitar stay in tune?

By Andy@Musicademy |

Andy Shaw, a worship leader from New Malden in the UK emailed saying: “Can I ask a question about keeping your guitar in tune when playing live. I play electro-acoustic, normally a jumbo Tanglewood. Often, I tune up the guitar for rehearsal but once I have been playing for a while, the strings have gone […]