Unless Chris Tomlin's Your Worship Leader...

...you probably need to lower the key on Chris Tomlin's songs.

You may have one singer who can nail those notes. But most of your team can't. And your congregation REALLY can't.

So you go to Song Select and print out a more congregationally-friendly key. Voila, done! Right?

It's all good till your electric guitarist shows up playing the opening riff of "Our God" in B while the rest of the band is in G.

Go ahead. Be mad at him. Righteous indignation. You gave him the right chart in the right key.

It's just that he's one of those "ear" people who can't read a lick and wouldn't know a key signature from a Florida Key. Would we all like him to know the key by looking at the chart? Yes. Are we setting him up for failure when we hand him a chart in one key and CD in another? YES, and then some. There goes our indignation.

Here's how to solve it: pitch-shift your mp3s.

Pitch what where?

The first time I did this, I used my turn-of-the-century Cakewalk home recording software, imported the mp3 that I wanted to transpose, and then monkeyed with the pitch shift effect till I got it right. After several of times through the process I had it down, but it was still a bit of a pain. Then one day I saw I stumbled upon www.transposr.com. (yes, it's intentionally misspelled - not just he product of a late night blog post).


All you need to do is simply upload your mp3, set the original key and the desired key and, BAM! within a few minutes you're downloading a baritone Tomlin.

Transposr.com is one of my "picks" on at worshipteamcoach.com. Not only does it do the work, but get this - it's FREE. You don't even have to register. So it's easy and free and here's what you get for it:

1. Your "ear" players will love you for giving them the right key. They like learning new songs, but learning the new song in the wrong key - not so much.

2. Your vocalists can 'harmonize' in the right key. That's always a good thing.

3. You can play along with recording during rehearsals and practices.

4. You can make Vicky Beeching sound like Darth Vader.

Last thing - if you're a volunteer or part-time leader with limited time, ask one of your "ear" players to do the work transposing the mp3s at Transposr.com. (Just be sure to write out the original and transposed keys for 'em.) It will give him or her ownership of the ministry and free up your time (and they might learn a little about keys).

So try it out. Now. Before the bean counters over at Planning Center override the marketing geniuses and start charging us.