Please Practice: 8 Tips to Give Your Team

Of all the players that I've had in worship teams, the ones that practiced the most came out of the bar band scene. If any of them came to rehearsals unprepared, they apologized before they even pulled out their guitar. The players with church backgrounds, yeah…not so much. Why is this? That’s fodder for a whole new article series. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’ve never received guidance on this subject. Here are some practice tips for your team:

Before rehearsal:

• Listen to each song while following the chart. Even if you know the song well, a repeated listening-through will reveal things you missed and further solidify the song in your head.
• Listen to the song again, playing along with it (here’s where the correct key & pitch-shifted recordings comes in handy).
• Do an initial play-through. Without the recording, play the song completely through one time. If any part causes you to stumble, mark it with a pencil and move on.
• Work on bumps. Once you’ve played through and marked the trouble stops, go back and run those spots till you have them down.
• Listen again (and again). Instead of just turning on your car or office radio, put the songs in a playlist on your iPod, mp3 player or computer and listen to it passively throughout the week. The songs will sink in more than you know. On the way to rehearsal, listen to the songs again, thinking about your part.

Between rehearsal and Sunday:

• Work the problem areas. Mark the spots that gave you trouble during rehearsal. Run those until the hiccups go away.
• Focus heavily on any parts that are yours to lead or carry, such as a solo or segues.
• Listen again (and again). Did I mention this one already.

Got anymore tips? Love to hear them. Throw them in the comments or tweet them to me @jonnicol.

28 Ways to Make Great Segues, Segue #8

Intro
Segue #1-3

Segue #4
Segue #5
Segue #6
Segue #7


Segue #8 - The “Lingering Four Chord”

Sometimes during worship you want to move from one element to the next quickly. But other times in worship, you just want to “stay in the moment,” in that place where people are meeting the risen Jesus. Hopefully you’ve had those moments when it would just feel wrong to put the end cap on the song by playing final downbeat of the final chord of the song. A great place to go is the Four Chord (IV or 4).

The Four Chord (IV or 4) is simply that: the chord built on the 4th interval of the key. F is the IV chord of the key of C:

C (Dm Em) F

I  (ii    iii)  IV

As much as the V chord (especially V7) wants to move back to the root, the IV chord doesn’t seem to have that much desire to go anywhere.

Let’s look at Tim Hughes’ “Here I Am to Worship” (in the key of E). This song is a classic example of the “Lingering Four Chord.” The last chord of the last lines of both the chorus and the bridge is A (or A2). By landing on that very stable, but very “not final” chord, Hughes was able to build in what worshipers want: a moment just to “be”—to linger in the presence of God.

And we can just hang at the end of those lines, stop the rhythm, just let the guitar or piano lightly play that A2 and be in the moment. No one needs leadsheets or video screens at that moment. I’m not sure if Tim Hughes was deliberate about the chords in those two lines, but he dropped a gift on worshipers with that song.

But what about songs that don’t have that built-in "linger-factor"? Most of the time, a song can be ended with the 4 chord instead of the 1 chord.

Here is Crown Him With Many Crowns ending on the 1:

It feels absolutely done.

Now play and sing it with it ending on the 4:

There’s a place to hang out, isn’t there?

After you’ve hung out, you can...
1) end on the 1 chord,
2) simply let the 4 chord fade away, or
3) use the 4 chord as the beginning of a transition to another song. Check back at some of the transitions we already talked about. You’ll begin to see ways that you can marry a lot of these segues together.

It took us awhile to get through the first 8 of 28 Segues. But now we move from musical segues to non-musical segues and planned transitions between other elements of the service. These next twenty will go a little quicker. See you then.

28 Ways to Make Great Segues, Segue #7

Read the previous 28 Ways...

Read the previous 28 Ways...
Intro
Segues #1-3

Segue #4  

segue #5

segue #6

Segue #7 -  Finding a “Chord Trail” to the New Key

The gist of this segue is finding a "path" of chords that lead to the new key. Here’s an example:

Key of C to Key of Db (1/2 step up)

Moving back to F chord created a smoother transition to the Bb chord (because they share two common keys), which allowed a smooth transition to the Eb (here again, they share two keys), which created a similar bridge to the final chord of the transition, which is the V7sus (Absus) of the new key: Db.

That example used chords that were a fourth and a fifth apart and shared keys.  Now here’s an example of a more linear path to the same place.

C to Db (1/2 step up)

This transition still used chords that were a 3^rd or 6^th and 4^th or 5^th apart, but the use of inversions (a non-root chord tone in the bass of the chord – known also as “slash” chords) gave the feel of step motion.

Now, you’ll probably only want to use an elaborate key change like these in certain parts of your service. This kind of transition is perfect for underscoring a prayer: the team ends one song in C and the next is in Db. The pastor decides to pray at that point and the pianist (or the guitarist, if he’s brave and has a capo) can meander over these chords during the prayer. If the transition is played slowly, lingering on each chord, the congregation won’t even know they’ve been taken to a new key.

There are countless ways to do this “Chord Trail” transition. Here are just a few more examples:

C to D (whole step up)

This one is much shorter. It utilized a “flat 7” chord (bVII) (in this case, Bb) to bridge to the Asus, the V of D. The “flat 7” (bVII) chord really grabs the ear and takes us immediately out of the key. Check out how you can utilized the “flat 7” in this arrangement of Holy, Holy, Holy.

You can also minor chords along with inversions to help move you to the next key:

C to D (whole step up)

Again, there’s a bazillion ways to move from any key to any other key. Just play around with "chord trails" when you’re working on your song to song transitions. But a word of warning—I like “chord trail” transitions, but I’ve learned simpler is usually better.  I came up with some “really sweet” progressions to the new key. That is, they were absolutely wonderful in my office, alone, door closed, planets aligned just right. On stage, on Sunday, in front of people...well, not so much.

guitar training stuff...free

Hey friends.

I just finished and posted a "not yet edited" version of some training material I'll be using next Saturday at the Worship Guitar Workshop. It's right here:guitar workshop training. It's one of the subjects I'll be covering.

if you're in the area and want to stop out for it, that'd be great. Here's the link for non-IE users and IE users. Still working out some bugs on this bootstrap venture.

Anyway...feel free to download this training--if it's useful to you, let me know. If you've got ideas to improve it, let me know that, too.

thanks.

~jon