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 […]

‘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 […]

Substitute Chords in B

By Andy@Musicademy | March 27, 2009

In this little mini series we’ve looked at substitute chord shapes taken from our Acoustic Intermediate worship guitar DVDs that with help you find some easy one finger changes and hopefully inspired you to you use some different voicings with different sounds. Now let’s look at a key that most guitarists shy away from unless […]

Substitute guitar chords in A

By Andy@Musicademy | March 16, 2009

Substitute Chords – part 5 Before we check out some chord subs in typically awkward keys like B lets look at the last of the open keys. A is very similar to E and in some situations you can readily swap the shapes between these two keys. You will also have seen most of the shapes come […]

Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring Bass Score

By Marie@Musicademy | March 15, 2009

We were asked for the score to go along with the impressive warm-up exercise that Matt Weeks plays on our Intermediate Bass DVDs. Be warned – its not easy! Take it really slowly at first and then gradually speed up once you have it note perfect. Click the link above to download the score.   Find […]