Posts Tagged worship
How to Become Your Worship Leader’s Favorite Musician
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on April 3rd, 2009
Have you ever thought about what it would take to be your worship leader’s favorite musician? Unfortunately, many guitarists never do, but it can be a great mental exercise for us as guitar players and servants. When we do, we start thinking outside ourselves. When we start thinking outside ourselves we encounter paradigm shifts. When we have paradigm shifts, we start to grow. Here are some pointers to help get you started.
1. Always be on time. It communicates that you take the worship ministry seriously. If you take it seriously, your worship leader will take you seriously.
2. Ask yourself the question: “How can I make the ministry better in my worship leader’s eyes.” This will mean you will have to pay attention to your worship leader’s vision for the ministry, both in musical style and in worship expression. Sometimes we can think that by latching on to someone else’s vision we forfeit our own ideas. That is completely wrong. By latching on to our worship leader’s vision we give our own ideas more credibility.
3. Always tune up.
4. Come to rehearsal knowing your parts. Don’t treat rehearsal time as a time to learn your parts. Know them already. Your worship leader will love you for it.
5. Play for the song. Don’t play for a friend. Honestly look at what makes the song work and what it needs rather than what would impress someone you know in the audience.
6. Have good-sounding gear. Gear matters. I cringe whenever I hear someone refer to a well known player like John Mayer and attribute all of his good sounds to his hands. People completely look over the fact that he plays a $10,000 amp. Tone is in the hands, but it is certainly not all of it. If you don’t think your “hands sound good” than give yourself an advantage by surrounding yourself with high quality gear. If you have “good-sounding hands” then just think how much better you will sound when you have a good amp, instrument and pedals.
7. It is worth repeating: Always tune up. Have a quick, convenient way to tune (in other words, buy a pedal tuner) so you can easily tune during a song without interrupting the flow of the song.
8. Don’t just play the song, lead worship. You are not just a guitar player. You have a part in leading worship. Your role is beyond just playing a song like on the CD; your role is to inspire your congregation to worship. You can’t lead where you don’t go. Are you yourself worshiping? If you are not and simply settling for providing a live backing track then you are not doing everything you can do to serve your church well. In addition, you are missing what God has in store for you during worship.
The goal is to be the person your worship leader never has to worry about. When your worship leader sees you on the list of musicians playing this week he or she should feel a little better knowing you are on the team. That is the secret to becoming your worship leader’s favorite musician.
Oh, and one more thing: sound good.
-Jed
How to Program Your Fingers into Greatness
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on March 17th, 2009
Do you remember the scene in The Matrix when Neo is “training?” Morpheus looks over at Neo strapped to a chair with a jack in his head and Neo says with tired surprise in his voice, “I know Kung Fu.”
Neo had Kung Fu programmed into his mind like a computer program. What may surprise you is that your fingers are not so dissimilar. In order for our fingers to learn they have to be programmed.
Unfortunately for us we can’t just plug a jack into our fingers and use binary code to program them. The way we program our fingers is by repetition. Remember the Law of Guitar Playing: the way we do things once is most likely how we will do it again.
This brings up an interesting dynamic to playing guitar: if you play it badly once you are more likely going to play it badly again. Before you get depressed you need to know the exception to this rule: just because you play something slow doesn’t mean you can’t play it fast next time and vice versa.
The question is how can we use repetition to “program” our fingers to do what we want them to do? Here’s how.
• Play it slow and perfect. To play an unfamiliar passage “perfectly” you have to play it slowly.
• Use a metronome. Unlike us metronomes are perfect. To program our fingers perfectly we need to play to something that is perfect.
• Don’t attempt to play it fast until you are satisfied with how you play it slow.
• Relax man. Muscle tension is like a computer virus. Debug your muscles by practicing as relaxed as possible.
Programming your fingers can take longer than it took Tank to program Neo’s mind, but the effects are just as significant. Start the process now and you will be a Guitar Fu master sooner than you think.
You can sound good.
-Jed
To solo? Or not to solo?
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on February 17th, 2009
That is still the question. And I know someone who knows the answer.
And so do you.
This seems to be on the forefront of every guitar player’s mind. There is something about solos that really captures the moment. It’s like there is some emotion that is building in the room being inspired by the words, the melody, and the sounds of the song that just can’t really be expressed until…
BANG!
It’s like a shout in your head saying “INSERT PERFECT GUITAR SOLO HERE.” …and you hesitate.
Why? It is the same question and doubt that has been asked since the dawn of electric guitar in church: to solo? Or not to solo?
If you haven’t experienced it yet, you will: the tension between what you want to do and what you should do. It’s like a mini-Lincoln Brewster is sitting on one side of your shoulder telling you to crank it up and go for it and on the other Paul Baloche is giving you “the eye,” which strangely enough looks a lot like your worship leader’s version of “the eye.” (Just so everyone is clear, Mr. Brewster and Mr. Baloche are friends.)
To get over this you need clear communication and direction. And the person to give it to you is: (you guessed it) your worship leader.
I don’t know what it is about being worship leaders, but it only takes a couple of weeks on the job for them to get an uncanny pulse on the congregation. My guess (and my experience) is that they hear all sorts of feedback from worship services from pastors, deacons, and that one guy who has never said a nice thing in his life and whom we musicians never hear.
Here are some tips for this communication.
1. Make it clear that your motivation is service. This is scary because it totally puts you at the will of your worship leader, but that’s okay. In fact, that can be very pleasing to God and become its own expression of worship (but that’s another post). When you make it clear that your motivation is to first serve your worship leader, the song, and your congregation, it eliminates any doubt of a show-boating, self-glorifying motivation (i.e. sinful motivation).
2. Try to develop a reputation of service. If you have one, great. If you don’t than take a close look at yourself and why you are playing worship to begin with. You play with your worship leader and band every week. You can’t fake service with them. So don’t.
3. Instead of talking in terms of how “cool it would be” talk in terms of what the song needs. The song might need a ripping solo depending on the arrangement, setting, and what your worship leader is going for. The song might need a popish “anti-solo.” The song might just need the guitar to stay on the progression while the vocalists do that improvised ‘yeah’ thing. When the discussion is about what the song needs instead of what you want to do, then it isn’t a “you vs. the worship leader” discussion. Trust me; you will lose those every time.
One thing that always helps is to follow the number one rule of guitar playing: sound good.
So sound good.
-Jed