Have you ever read this Scripture verse?
“Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy” (Psalm 33:3).
If you lead worship, I’m sure you have. But you may be wondering, “How?” or “Why can’t I have a band like Israel Houghton, or Michael Gungor, or Chris Tomlin?”
Well, to be honest you have to adjust your expectations. You are a local church worship leader. Most likely, you are working with volunteers. You may have incredible, professional quality volunteers. Or you may not. That’s OK. But wherever you are, I’ve created this post to help you as a leader…improve your band.
Because sometimes it’s hard to know what to work on. And it’s hard to know the right techniques to get there. So here are 5 tips that you can start to apply with your team.
And also, I’d love to hear your feedback on this post – what you’ve found that works, what doesn’t, and what you’re currently doing to improve your band.
No one is exempt from the comments here 🙂
5 Rehearsal Tips For Increasing Your Team’s Skill
OK, so here we go:
1. Try a Creative Rehearsal Setup – For the most part, we rehearse like we perform on Sundays. We all face the chairs. This is great for Sunday morning, but not so much for rehearsal. Great music is about chemistry between musicians.
I suggest you set up your instruments in a circle and face one another. Dive into that awkwardness (if you’re not used to it) and learn how to look at one another, feed off each other’s energy, and develop a vibe together. I can’t fully explain what happens when a band “connects”, but you’ll know it when it happens.
2. Teach Them How to Practice – If you’re like me, I started out telling my musicians, “Learn the songs just like the CD! Practice a lot! Show up ready!” I didn’t realize how unhelpful this was. Not everyone can “listen” to the songs and just pick out their parts. That’s a particular skill set that needs developed. Now, I’m very specific:
1. Pull out a pad of paper
2. Sit down with a fresh cup of coffee (Important)
3. Listen intently
- What is this song about?
- What kind of energy does it carry?
- What is my particular instrument doing?
- What are the other instruments doing? How do they relate with each other?
4. Try it out – mess around on your instrument for a while and try to figure out your part. Even if you have no clue, please just try. Trust me, it’s very good for your development, even if you fail.
5. Search YouTube – Oftentimes there are instrument tutorials for a lot of popular songs on youtube. Test your results with theirs and develop your part. Get very comfortable with it.
6. Stop – I suggest two personal practice sessions for every worship service – the first time is figuring out what you’re playing. Second time? Well, it’s time to make it musical. Play it with passion.
3. Practice Memorization – What if during rehearsal you challenged your team to put their music away? You may freak some of your musicians out, but you must know: musical quality changes when its internalized rather than read on a page.
Every rehearsal, practice performing songs without music. Allow mistakes. Make it a safe environment to fail. Eventually, they’ll get it. It just takes some deliberate practice.
4. Isolate instruments – Rather than just running through songs, isolate instruments and teach your team how to play together. First, try just drums over the chorus. Encourage your drummer to make every hit count – no wasted notes. Then, add your bass player. Let them groove until it feels good. Teach your bass player to lay back in the pocket. Then continue to add instruments one at a time and play over and over until the groove clicks.
5. Invite Outside Voices – I have a suggestion for you. Once a quarter during 2013 bring in an outside guest to speak into your worship team. There’s something about hearing from a fresh voice that accelerates change. Maybe a worship leader from another local church. Or a respected music teacher in your area. If you’re interested, I offer worship team workshops where I can come to your band rehearsal and do a workshop for your team. Would love to connect!
OK, now it’s your turn.
What tips, techniques, or systems have you used to increase the skill of your worship team?
Can you take a minute and leave a comment?
[ois skin=”Beyond Sunday 2″]
Hi David,
Two things:
1) I wish I had your blog as a resource when I became a part-time worship pastor three years ago. Invaluable stuff and the only thing stuffing my Readitlater/Pocket account right now (except for YouTube videos)
2) I can’t wait to apply this stuff once I’m able to take on more leadership responsibility in my new church (had to leave my last worship position due to a move for a new job).
3) Love the idea of notes. I’ve only seen a handful of musicians leverage taking notes before rehearsing. I just made my own commitment to a worship notepad.
4) Also glad to know I got one thing right. At my last church, we always rehearsed in a circle and it was the single greatest decision I made . We instantly started clicking in a new way as a team and our performance level and responsibility to each other skyrocketed due to this one simple tweak that I thought was innocuous at the time.
5) Keep going for it with this blog. Seriously, you have no idea how excited I am to apply the tips and tricks every week.
Ken, great to have you as a reader and commenter! Excited for your new position. Worship notepad – that should a required resource for all worship team members! Love it.
One thing:
1) I need to learn how to count
2) I need to learn how to self-edit for spelling and counting errors *before* I hit the Post Comment button 🙂
David,
Excellent structure that you offer to help people plan and develop the ways they add to worship. A frustration for me at times is when musicians play the their same “riffs” because it is what they know as opposed to thinking about what a song needs. I also have known musicians that were not that proficient technically but the few notes that they played contributed to worship in a huge way. It is also a total gift to me when I hear what a skilled musician comes up with on a piece that he/she has never heard or played before that service.
Sometimes better stuff comes out when we don’t watch you tube. It avoids the copycat aspect and allows a good musician to make an “original” contribution to a song . Great point Dennis.
I would agree and disagree – if a musician is proficient and creative enough, I would trust them to come up with their own riffs. But if they don’t have that experience or musicality, I would rather they learn parts. It also develops discipline in young musicians to listen and learn pre-arranged parts. Make sense?
David, you seem to land on topics that I want to comment on when I have a deadline, like today. So as briefly as I can, here goes, in no particular order. #5, YES ! The engine of a band is the relationship between drums and bass. They must be tight, they must know each others thoughts. Then add some simple acoustic guitar and or keyboard. Sounds easy, it’s not. Avoid what I call the gospel piano syndrome, (everyone plays everything all the time). Instead of asking everyone to play, ask everyone where they shouldn’t play. Playing from memory is where the music starts, but you can’t rush it. Some guitar players may never look at the music, some piano players refuse to play without it. I think most praise bands don’t have enough rehearsal time, most amateur musicians don’t know how to practice effectively and need more specific direction from their leader. If there are enough players, I would have 2 bands going simultaneously, so that each has longer to prepare and be more comfortable. Practice every week, but take turns leading. You can take less experienced players and singers, and help them to grow. Eventually there is enough overlap that you could sub out players in case of illness or vacation. I would try to have 2 full bands of roughly equal talent. (Choose like a sandlot ball game). From that you could form a “super band” of best players. Also figure out haw to have a skeleton band in several different configurations for emergencies. If none of that is possible, it just takes sacrificial time and effort from the praise leader to manage details. Sometime the leader alone is the “skeleton” band. Be a scout, be prepared. Great video by the way, you guys have some major talent. It also seems as if everyone was there to worship.
These are some great tips, Don. Best case scenario, would you have all your musicians rehearsing every week? Or just the band scheduled for that weekend?
I would try to get some type of rehearsal going on their off weeks. ( I am a hard task master). The repetition creates the comfort level. If you want players to memorize and feel free of the page, it just takes time. First rehearsal is cerebral and short term memory, second rehearsal reinforces and develops confidence, third and fourth rehearsal starts to develop long term memory and muscle memory freeing up brain processing ability to concentrate more on musicality and expression. Following the road map is usually where most ensemble problems occur. Try to to put something in the music, a drum cue, a guitar riff to let everybody know what happens next.
There is no magic number of rehearsals. Up to a point, more is better. We use the term head-room as it applies to mixing on the board. Think of this as headroom between your ability and your assigned part. Head-room is where the comfort zone and creative zone are. Just living with it as we said earlier.
Really great stuff David. As always thank you for your hard work in thinking these things through. You’re bringing great value to worship leaders and their teams.
I think the rehearsals we have reflect whether or not we’re looking “beyond Sunday” if I can use your words. If the practice is only about playing through the Sunday’s songs and making sure we don’t get “rusty” on songs we already know, then we are purely operating in maintenance mode.
Practical tips like these allow for us to move into a more long term vision of development.
Very good and keep it up!
nf
Well said, Nate. We really need to guard against “maintenance” mode.