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 […]

Graham Kendrick on co-writing worship songs

By Marie@Musicademy | November 19, 2013

  Here is an audio recording from our occasional interview series with Graham Kendrick. As before I’ve written up the interview in some depth but you’ll find more on the audio recording if you have time to listen. In more recent times it has become more common to see songs co-written rather than having a […]

Eleanor Mumford on worship songs

By admin | July 10, 2013

Eleanor Mumford (yes, the mother of Mumford & Sons’ Marcus), an experienced leader in the Vineyard church reflects on what the Vineyard movement brought to worship songs – simplicity, purity, sweetness, accessibility and intimacy. She encourages song writers to return to simplicity. Two soundbites: “My plea to our wonderful worship leaders is that we would […]

What chord comes next in a song?

By Andy@Musicademy | October 25, 2012

One of the members of the Musicademy website sent me what you can see in figure 1 below. He struggles with playing by ear and remembering the chords in common keys so he came up with this little chart that he sticks to his keyboard or guitar when he leads worship. The basic idea is […]

Lost in Wonder – The story behind the song by Martyn Layzell

By Marie@Musicademy | October 8, 2012

Lost in Wonder (You Chose the Cross) – The story behind the song Prior to our trip to Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia in September 2002, to be involved in the Soul Survivor conference, Mike Pilavachi and I had decided to extend our time in Malaysia to include a three day break in Penang, an island situated […]

The best of 2012’s new worship songs from the summer festivals

By Guest Blogger | September 7, 2012

The tent’s all packed up, the wristband you vowed you’d keep on all year just fell off in the shower, the holey airbed’s in the bin, and you’ve hit the festival comedown. You long nostalgically for sweaty circus tents full of thousands of people, many of whom haven’t showered in three days, singing their hearts […]

10 practical song writing tips

By Marie@Musicademy | July 31, 2012

As a guitar teacher, students sometimes ask me to help them write a song. Some want to write worship songs, others pop songs. Most have a few ideas that on their own sound really catchy but no way of threading the ideas together. Some have a few words, some have a chord progression, some have […]

Learning to Play by Ear Part 2

By Andy@Musicademy |

Previously we looked at how to work out all the chords available in the key of G and then use them to write a song.  I suggested you took an existing song and worked out which chords came where by listening to see which ones sounded major, which ones sounded minor and by the process […]

How to discern a good worship song – 3 aspects to consider

By Guest Blogger | May 24, 2012

There are times when I look at the traditional church and think to myself that they might be onto something… Just think about how it works for us Lutherans: At the synodical level, a group of musicians, pastors and theologians come together to review hymns, approve them, catalog them by theme, scripture and season and […]