Music theory

I've been talking talking alot about playing skillfully with my worship team, so I just wanted to share a great resource. The importance of theory knowledge is often understated in the worship band, but it is especially important in worship. "Musicians who don't understand music theory are lost if they have a memory slip during a song. Theory is like a road map that helps us get our bearings and return to the right path." Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters. So heres a great, FREE resource for music theory. It has good, and almost fun, theory exercises.

www.musictheory.net

I know that sounded like an advertisement but i swear it wasn't.

Abandoned....FREE worship conference

Missouri baptist university is holding their second annual FREE worship seminar. Dan Kimball (an emergent leader) and Matt Maher (who wrote Your Grace is Enough and many other awesome worship songs) are going to be there, it won't be often you have the chance to attend a worship conference with impressive guests for FREE! don't pass it up.

heres a link to the whole shebang

http://relevintage.com/abandoned-worship-seminar-press-release/

Songs of Israel: Psalms 139:13-18

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.

So often in church we are told about our identity as sinners.
But sin is an affliction, not an identity.

If sin had fallen on a worthless creature would the God of all the heavens pursue our company every moment of our lives.

Who we are before anything else is God's most beautiful and beloved creation. Every moment since before we could breathe, before we could utter a word, God has watched us and taken joy in us.

His greatest desire that we would soon come to him with all the love of a child into the arms of his father.

Every morning when you open your eyes
God rejoices that the one he loves can again share in his beauty.

I can't possibly hope to say it truer than David
"When I awake,
I am still with you."

God goes...virtual?

First let me say that, yes, this is real; and the implications are staggering.

1. Your worship band has a new direction, and it's SOLID ROCK!. Ignore the fact that it sounds like a corny Time-Life compilation CD, because it's SOLID ROCK!. I'm not completely sure what that means but i'm pretty sure it involves Petra.

2. Can you say "interactive worship". What? Uncle Carl isn't so keen on the contemporary worship thing, just wait till he has a cheap plastic guitar with five magic colored buttons on it. Soon uncle Carl will be stage diving of the pulpit. Theres only one name for that, and that's SOLID ROCK!

3. Every kid in the youth group will beg to rock Sunday worship with the band. They may only know 8 songs, but they can play them on expert!

4. What is expert level? I'm a worship leader, I've played Chris Tomlin, and except for one incident involving a youth conference and a 12 pack of red bull I've never heard a five minute guitar solo on "How Great is our God".

5. Your chord charts will now have green, red, yellow, blue, and orange notations. and you'll have to have a meeting about how activating your "star power" in the middle of "Peace like a River" by knocking over the singers mic stand may be "inappropriate".


I've haven't played this game yet, so I won't talk about how unbelievably corny this game must be, and I won't talk about how damaging this must be to the "relevant" movement in the church. These are all details, because let's be honest here; who truly can be against the amazing power of SOLID ROCK!!

Songs of Isreal: Psalm 51

* I'll be starting to write on the psalms whenever it tickles my fancy. I was never much a fan of psalms but after a psalms paraphrasing assignment recently, i realized how valuable the songs and poems really are. Psalms have always been a huge part of worship and I'm going to try to make them easily accessible and relevant to all. Feel free to use anything I say in any worship settings you may need.

Psalms 51

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

1000 years before the birth of Jesus, David knew of the mercy of God.

He begged for it.

How lucky we are for the gift of Jesus is immeasurable, and we take for granted a gift greater than David ever knew. He does not passily thank god for his grace and mercy,

He pleads for it.

It is Davids greatest need, and he can only have faith that it will be given.
We today have been told, been promised, in person by the living God, that if we follow Him all of our sins will be washed away and our life made full.

1000 years before Jesus was born David, God's everfaithful servant, begged for a savior.
1000 years later we, a starving and sinful people, were given the hope of all nations.

Easy does it.

It's time for the worship bands favorite game, how many instrument can play at the same time.

This seems to be a problem for most worship bands, and it's quite understandable. Every CD you listen to has what seems to be an infinite amount of sounds happening at the same time and it sounds so full. If you ever watch hillsong perform you'll notice they have a good 50 people on that stage and it sounds amazing.

But I assure you, while it sounds full on a cd, it sounds crowded in worship.

Part of the problem is intention. A CD is intended to stand on it's own, while a worship team is there to back up the congregation, the focus must always be on the words (when there are words). Someone in the congregation wondering how you possibly got your keyboard to sound like a 90 piece orchestra is not worship (though it is cool).

It seems counterintuitive to back up on your instrumentation to sound fuller, but is often the case. There is only so much space to use in audio, if your instruments are constantly overlapping and fighting for the same space its going to sound crowded. If each instrument stays nicely in their own corner then the listener will easily hear the whole spectrum of sound....and thats sounding full. The same goes for rhythm. If you have a drummer, praise the lord, because that means that you (Mr. acoustic or Mrs. piano) are no longer responsible for keeping rhythm; that's the drummers job. So when he's doing his thing back there in his silly looking plexiglass cage, back up on the rhythm. When rhythms are not competing with each other the listener can easily find the rhythm and the key...fullness.

So when you find yourself on that valiant quest for musical fullness in your worship, the answer may not be playing more, but playing smart. Back up.

The Art of Worship

I am reading "The art of worship" by Greg Scheer for one of my worship art's classes, and it turned out to be a great resource for worship leading.

The book focuses mainly on contemporary worship and its issues. He goes over starting a contemporary service, interview, planning, and very detailed sections on song selection and improving musically qualities. He goes as far to have sections on each instrument in the band and how best to use them.

As a straight read through it might be a it dry as it borders on textbook style instruction, but with me being new to worship leading, it was captivating the whole way through (since it was pretty much all new or expanded on knowledge for me). It is probably better used as a reference. I would recommend that all worship leader have a copy of this book around when they have questions such as "How high can my congregation sing", or "how do I make this hymn not so...hymny".