Pianist or organist? Leading worship in a traditional setting

What’s our goal? [Part 1 of 3] Hi! I’m Sacha. Let me introduce myself and share my reason for writing about this topic. I have had a heart for worship for a while and I’ve led in a variety of different styles of church. I’ve been a modern worship leader for only three years, whereas […]

Free beginning worship guitar lesson

Here’s a free lesson from Musicademy’s Beginning Worship Guitar Course which is available both on DVD or as downloads. This is quite an early lesson in the course and teaches the chords Cadd9, G and Em7  and how to use these in sequence. The lesson also covers using a pick, bars and counting. This is […]

Christmas resources for churches: carols, backing tracks, chord charts and more

  Christmas Carols: MultiTracks and Split Tracks We have a huge 22 carols in our backing tracks library now. Click through below to listen to audio samples and to buy: Angels We Have Heard On High/Angels From The Realms of Glory Christmas Offering Hark The Herald Angels Sing Joyful Joyful Joy To The World O Come All […]

Creating guitar parts for worship: Space and Dynamic [Video]

New electric guitar video series by Matt Isaac Welcoming guitarist Matt Isaac to our team of bloggers with the first of a series of videos exploring ways of creating electric guitar parts in worship. This first video is quite “talky” but those coming up in the future are a lot more hands-on. Space and dynamic […]

Separating song from genre

Two stories: Christmas carol service, doing “Silent Night”. I had set it on mandolin with a very simple strummed guitar background, very few chords, very gentle and folksy. The keyboard player kept twitching and saying it wasn’t “Christmassy enough” so we had a chat, and he set up a nice big church organ sound, and […]

Coaching classical singers to sing in a contemporary style

A singer in your congregation has a passion for worship, and has approached you about joining your music team. You have a heart to use people’s gifts, and this person is clearly well-trained musically, has a genuine faith, and is keen to serve. But it soon becomes clear that their singing style is very ‘classical’ […]