Just got back from TWIST Music Conference in Sydney. It was an awesome time to gather with fellow church musicians from all over the country for some excellent teaching and hands-on music training. Mike Raiter - preach it how it is, brother! I’m sure his message will be available to order soon at the TWIST site.

I was greatly blessed with some lively and encouraging dialogue in my Music in the Smaller Church workshop, and I took away a lot of wisdom from people who have lived in smaller churches far longer that me. Thanks guys! I plan to post on a few of the topics we discussed in the coming days. If any of you who attended the workshop have questions / comments / feedback please feel free to email me.

I printed a 90-page booklet for the seminar which contains all the music training material here at www.reason.mu, bundled together in one handy reference. If you’d like more copies for your church, we’re more than happy to mail you some. Details for ordering are here.

Church musicians probably consume more sound gear than just about any other community group you can think of. So it’s hardly a surprise than the major audio gear companies are offering to help worship teams get themselves set up.

In hunting down some quality sites for our new Helpful Links page, I came across Shure Notes, a well-presented introduction to miking instruments at church (from the company that produces some highly respectable microphones, including the one that mikes the U.S President).

The site features lots of pretty flash animations to show you where everything goes. Check out How to Mike a Praise Band for a demo.

How important are the preferences of the congregation when choosing songs for church?

Recently at TWIST I advocated the use of “song surveys” at church, as a way of getting feedback from the congregation about the choice of songs. Catherine has just posted some helpful questions about surveys:

Hey here’s a question…the song survey is a great idea, but it started me thinking - should the song choice and musical culture of a church be driven by the congregation, or by the music team/senior minister etc? ie how much should we be responding to what the congregation wants, and how much should we be trying to lead and grow what and how the church sings? I guess it’s a mixture of both - what do other people think? I’d be interested to hear where people think the balance should lie…

Catherine’s question has implications for any kind of ministry at church. At the end of the day, who is responsible for what goes on at church, and how important are the preferences of the congregation when decisions are made?

Scripture is strong on the “pastoral model” of church, and (as far as I can see) not particularly strong on the democratic model. That is, there’s always a shepherd who is responsible, under God, for the good of the flock. He tends to its needs, leading it where it needs to go for its own good. Unlike a democracy, the flock does not dictate the shepherd’s decisions (the Big Shepherd upstairs does). However, it would be a very poor shepherd who did not observe the flock and respond to the needs of sheep who are hungry, thirsty, or tired.

And so, in choosing songs for church, what’s good for the flock?

As I’ve discussed in the section on a well-balanced song selection, I think there are five essential aspects of song selection (click on the links to read more):

» 1. Faithful to scripture
» 2. Emotive
» 3. Fresh and varied
» 4. Relevant to the service
» 5. Singable (and playable)

The responsibility of the music director (or whoever is given responsibility) is to ensure that the lyrical content of songs faithfully represents the truths of Scripture, growing people both in their relationship with God and with one another as His people. That has always been what the flock needs most.

But the purpose for music is for the flock to express the emotions of those things! So it is crucial for the music director to choose emotive songs that actually express those truths powerfully, both in the poetry of the words and in the musical setting. It’s no use singing about the sacrifice of Christ to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”! The music has to lift those lyrics off the song sheet and into our hearts!

In a creative and emotive area like music, the reality is that each song will affect different people in different ways. What one person finds uplifting, another will find uninspiring. What one person finds overly simplistic, another will find insightful and profound. And just because a song is your favourite as a church musician doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll do anything for your church. So you have to know your flock.

“In Christ Alone” has been in the top 10 in the international CCLI charts for the last four years. It is sung in every church I have visited in that time. When we first ran a song survey at church, we included that song and asked people to comment on how helpful they found it. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but there were a handful of people who commented that it didn’t do anything for them at all.

There are very personal factors that go into song preference, and we have complete freedom in Christ to prefer one song or style of music over another (see my previous post). But there are other factors that influence how a song affects people, such as:

1. how well the song has been taught,
2. whether it is easy to sing,
3. whether it has been well-played by the band,
4. whether it has been under or over-used, and
5. whether it has been used well in the context of church services.

The reality is, for all these reasons, music directors sometimes find it hard to be in touch with what songs are actually working “on the ground” (as opposed to “it has great theology”, “it sounds good on the CD”, or “the church band loves it”).

The disastrous scenario where the senior pastor or the music director’s own personal preferences are expressed in the song selection each week is all too common. I’ve been in one church where an audible groan ran through the congregation as a particular song came up on the overhead. (And no, I won’t tell you which one it was!)

Smaller churches often seem to have greater cultural and age diversity than mega-churches (which are often streamed for particular groups). And so a song survey is a very helpful tool that will give music directors some indication of what songs are working. It’s also a way for people to suggest great new songs that the music director may not have heard. My experience has been that people have appreciated the opportunity to give feedback, and found the activity of filling out the survey a lot of fun.

If you use the results, it will lead to some songs being added to your repertoire, others graciously “retired” from duty, and others tried again but taught more carefully or with a more skilled band.

My habit has been not to publish the results of surveys, or for the results to dictate the selection of songs each week. In fact, once you have the results, you should play the most popular songs less! (If you overplay your church’s all-time favourites it won’t be long before they start to lose their impact, or worse, start to aggravate people.) I have always let people know that the results help the music director choose appropriate and helpful songs, along with other factors such as the message of the service and what else is going on at church.

Whether you end up using a survey or not, if you are a senior pastor, music director or church musician, you owe it to your church to listen to how people feel about the choice of songs. It’s not enough that the songs chosen are gospel-centred (although this is essential). The purpose of singing is that people are emotionally moved – moved to know their God better as they sing about Him, moved to express their thanks and praise, and moved to encourage their brothers and sisters to live for Him.

This post is in response to an e-mail from Anna:

Just wondering - you stressed the importance of classically trained pianists learning to play from chord sheets. I have started doing this, but not very imaginatively - what is the best way to learn to do this?

Also, I have an 8 year old boy who is just getting interested in the piano and I have started teaching him a bit. I don’t particularly want him to be a classical pianist - I really just want him to love playing the piano and be able to play in church and improvise. Is it still best to go down the AMEB track, or is there an alternative way for him to learn?

Any tips you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the question Anna!

A friend who studied psychology once told me once that of all the extra-curricular interests that children take up, there are two that stand out as the best predictors of IQ: classical piano… and chess. No offense meant to chess players, but if I had to choose between the two for my child, I’d pick classical piano!

Having said that, the my whole background as a classically-trained pianist is a bit of an ambivalent one for me. In fact I still have slightly bitter feelings towards my parents for sending me to classical piano rather than jazz lessons as a 6-year-old, because jamming with other musicians looked like a lot of fun!

As classical pianists, we struggle playing in a church band because we’re trained as soloists and rarely taught how to play flexibly (fitting around other instruments, improvising, reading chords, and playing by ear).

I grew up on Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven and learnt to play every note on the page and not a semiquaver more. And loved it. When I arrived at church as a young Christian I balked at the idea of playing in the band. People at church didn’t play the “piano” – they played “keys”, which usually meant playing everything but the notes written in the music. And if they were really good, they played with all sorts of other sounds on their electric keyboard too.

I started playing at church out of necessity. It was a student church, and the summer break meant that we didn’t have a whole lot of musicians available. They knew I could play, so they asked me. Sigh. “OK,” I said.

I remember my first song: “The Servant King” by Graham Kendrick. I played it through each verse exactly the same, exactly as written. The guitarist wasn’t too impressed: “C’mon Yimmy! Liven it up a bit!” All I could do was play louder – I felt very inadequate.

Over time, I started to get the hang of reading guitar chords. I have to admit I’m not the greatest keys player around, but when I actually threw away the piano music, the skills came fairly quickly.

As I’ve mentioned in the section on arranging the structure of songs, the point of any song arrangement is to help the lyrical message of a song “unfold” in an emotionally meaningful way. You can’t really do that if you only play what’s written on the page. You’ll also aggravate the other musicians – the piano is an incredibly dominating instrument! (I liken it to the fat sheep of Israel in Ezekiel 34!)

I’ve already written about arranging instruments in a church band, and playing keyboards well, but here’s my advice to classically-trained pianists who want to be more effective church musicians:

1. Swallow your pride. When you stop following the notes on the page, you won’t sound as good for a while, but the payoff is worth it.

2. Learn what notes the basic chord symbols refer to. Buy a jazz piano music book or visit a site like www.gootar.com/piano which shows you a basic voicing for each chord. Add notes from there. Remember you need to pay attention to the bass part - for example “C/E” is a C major chord with E played at the bottom instead of the C.

3. Learn alternative forms of chords (sus2, sus4, add9, minor7, major7) and work out which ones sound good in certain situations… then don’t overuse them.

4. Practice at home with the lead sheets to songs you already know. When you come to play at church, don’t be tempted to use the piano music.

5. Practice playing by ear. Try playing along to recordings of your favourite songs, without any sheet music at all. Practice NOT playing the melody, but fitting in around the other instruments.

6. Listen to the way pop songs use pianos. The parts are often very simple.

7. Try playing one-handed. It’s easier, which gives you extra attention space to develop more interesting parts such as riffs (repetitive patterns – Coldplay’s music is full of piano riffs).

8. Less is more. You’re not playing as a soloist, so you don’t need to fill up the sound yourself. At church, it’s not just you – there’s the congregation singing and you probably have some other instruments too. If you’re in a band, there should be whole sections where you’re not playing at all.

9. Think in layers – bass, mid, treble. You don’t have to exist in all three layers at once. Try isolating your playing to one layer at a time. Add layers to build a song or work around other instruments, such as an acoustic guitar – which exists mostly in the mid range.

10. If your kids are learning piano, send them to a teacher who will give them a solid grounding in music theory, but also train them to play flexibly. AMEB is great for music theory but as a system it won’t train you to be a good church musician, so it really depends on the teacher. On the other hand, Jazz piano teachers often neglect music theory and technical skills which are essential. Talk to musicians you know about where they went for training. Apart from the telephone book, music stores are another good place to find teachers (usually not classical ones). I agree that the most important thing when teaching kids music is that they enjoy it, and get a sense that their playing is appreciated and valuable. Get them involved serving at church early on, even if it’s in small ways at first.

11. While you’re at it, get a few formal lessons for yourself.

12. Finally, thank God for your gifts and use them in humble service of His people. Your gifts as a classically trained pianist are also valuable, but whether you get to use them at church really depends on the opportunities and needs. You could play some classical arrangements of songs at church (there are many good ones out there, see Sibelius Music for some examples). There are also often opportunities for solo items, and some classical pianists I know have played at outreach events and as background music for church dinners. Talk with the leaders of your church ministry teams and let them know you’re available if needed.

Song-leading from behind a guitar is not just a trick for saving space on the stage, or a last resort when your other song-leaders are sick! There’s a wonderful synergy that happens when two different musical parts are created by the one mind. They often complement one another and express the message of a song far better than parts from two individuals.

But doing two things at once can be a challenge at the best of times! And it’s even more true when you’re doing a job as important as song-leading. If you’re playing guitar at the same time it can be difficult to give the actual worship-leading the attention it deserves - first, because you have to concentrate on your guitar parts, and second, because you haven’t got any free hands to gesture with. Communication with the band can also be an issue when you’re “tied up” in the guitarist/song-leading role.

Here are some tips:

1. Your role as song leader is more important that your role as guitarist. People follow people - if you suddenly stopped playing guitar but kept singing confidently, people would continue singing with you. But it definitely wouldn’t happen the other way around!

2. So work on your song-leading before adding a guitar to the mix! If you’re new to song-leading at church, you should work on getting this right first (without guitar). Check out what I’ve written on “confident, expressive song-leading“.

3. Remember your job is not just to play and sing, but to lead. This is very different to what you see at a solo gig where there’s a “performer” and an “audience”. At church, the song leader is one of the congregation, helping the congregation sing to God and to one another. What you do up the front should help people know what to sing, know when to sing, know why they’re singing, and most of all help them want to sing with all their hearts!

4. Be a good rehearsal member. Know exactly what the band is doing, and plan how you will communicate with the other musicians throughout the songs so you move as a unit together. Then you can have complete confidence to take the congregation where they need to go.

5. Learn the words and music to the songs by heart. This frees you up to express the song as you lead it rather than checking the sheet music all the time.

6. Keep your guitar parts simple. Leave the difficult bits for other musicians.

7. If you’re playing with other musicians, don’t play the guitar all the time. As is always the rule when arranging a band for church, if you are playing from start to finish, you are playing too much.

8. Lead with your eyes, and your breathing. Song leaders often rely on their hands to gesture and lead (which is good), but connecting with people happens more through the face and breathing, as you phrase the words to a song, express its message, and invite people to join you.

9. Be genuine. Don’t put on an act. Be yourself as you worship your Creator and encourage your brothers and sisters.