Total cost of ownership – an approach to justifying big spend on PA and equipment

By Guest Blogger | August 7, 2014

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) sounds like a highly abstract concept. But it’s really not. It’s also something that churches—sadly—tend to miss out on. TCO is simply a calculation of what a particular product or service is going to cost you during it’s life. TCO has become popular in automotive circles, with some manufacturers boasting […]

Does your worship prepare people to die? Guest post

By Guest Blogger | August 6, 2014

Augustine told us that the “law of prayer is the law of belief.”  In other words, what touches the heart is what tends to be remembered and treasured. In our day we could easily say that the law of song is the law of belief. I have many volumes of systematic theology on my shelves. […]

Anatomy of songs: a contemporary worship version

By Guest Blogger |

So this little graphic has been doing the rounds the last few days. It’s originally from The Wrong Hands website and is a cartoon by John Atkinson. Our friend Ben Mizen decided to do a “back of an envelope” take on it for worship songs:   What other arrangements would you suggest?  

Calling all electric guitarists! Would you buy this new product?

By Andy@Musicademy | August 4, 2014

We need your help in deciding whether to produce a new product for electric and acoustic guitarists. Picture the scenario, you’re doing a new song and the worship leader sends you a reference track mp3 but its really hard to decipher how many layers of guitar parts there are, let alone what each guitar part […]

A practical how-to guide to arranging a song

By Andy@Musicademy | July 19, 2014

How to arrange a worship song We had an email recently from Mark Proctor: “As a church we are currently in transition from an organ only church to having a music group.  Unfortunately none of us have any experience of arranging songs and every article/website appears to assume that it’s a full ‘rock’ band format […]

Smile: you’re in a “sound portrait”

By Marie@Musicademy | July 11, 2014

I took a day out to the Hampton Court Flower Show recently and stumbled across a group called Epiphany up in a “Quiet” Treehouse. The installation was exploring the availability of high-performance, low-noise technology including domestic appliances such as quiet kettles, fans and hair dryers. Part of the exhibit featured the band playing improvised music […]