Ask the Expert – How do I get my backing vocalists away from the sheet music?

By Marie@Musicademy | December 7, 2009

Julie Meyer from Kansas emails: “I’m having trouble weaning my background vocals off of sheet music.  Any suggestions?  The problem is they stare at the music (sometimes 5 pages per song) the whole time and don’t really participate in worshiping (their most important role on the team).” Andy replies: You didn’t mention what they are […]

Guitar lick of the month

By Andy@Musicademy | November 6, 2009

Normally we put together a chord of the month type feature but in the light of a question from Jonathan below, ladies and gentlemen for November I give you… ‘Lick of the Month’! “Some of my favorite clips on the Intermediate Acoustic Guitar  DVDs were the “Tricks in the Key of …” sections. My question relates […]

Mic technique – video clip from live sound training seminar

By Marie@Musicademy | October 20, 2009

Here’s a brief clip from one of our recent Sound & Worship Training Days. In this clip Brian Hillson of B&H Sound demonstrates basic mic technique and talks about what happens when it all goes wrong. You can see more of Brian, and the Musicademy team this Saturday in Southwell, Nottingham. There are tickets still […]

What on earth is contemporary worship anyway?

By Marie@Musicademy | October 13, 2009

We had a challenging question posed by Nick Woodburn from Bedford UK where he asks us to describe the defining characteristics of contemporary worship music. Here is Nick’s preamble to his question. “I have a question, loosely connected to the guest blog by Kim Gentes, titled “Has modern worship become corrupt?” I could relate very […]

Ask the Expert – working out passing notes in a key

By Andy@Musicademy | October 6, 2009

Reg Garner from  Middlesex in the UK emailed saying: “Thanks for the intermediate keyboard course; I’m enjoying it very much. I wonder if you could give me a bit of advice? If you were to play something starting in a minor key, say the key of ‘Am’, what would be the auxiliary notes to use […]

Ask the Expert – Guitar pick advice (yes really!)

By Andy@Musicademy | September 8, 2009

  The other day I got an email asking for advice on what guitar picks I recommend. Now when I started Musicademy I vowed never to get into the “What picks/strings do you use” debate as it seems dangerously close to a sort of train spotting competition usually hotly contested by slightly strange bearded men […]

Ask the Expert – DVDs for lead guitar?

By Andy@Musicademy | June 4, 2009

James from Canada asks: Does any of your worship guitar series, have lessons on lead guitar? Andy replies: Yes, our intermediate worship guitar course covers lots of techniques to learn lead guitar. 5 pentatonic scale shapes so you can solo using the right notes to any song in any key CAGED chords so you can […]