Life on Speed

I need to slow down.

There's a lot going on in all of our lives. Performing music and praising God is fun and rewarding, challenging and consuming all at the same time.

Most of us involved in ministry have families, loved ones, lawns, jobs, bills, and weeds. The oil in my poor car hasn't been changed in nearly 9,000 miles. I just haven't had the time. That said, I drive 35 miles each way twice a week (yes, 140 miles a week) solely for LIFE TEEN masses and rehearsals.

Often, I have to remind myself to slow down. Life will be okay... mass will go on, and for crying out loud, pick another song rather than staying up until 3am to write a new setting or transcribe one that OCP can't be bothered to put online.

Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI recently reminded us that being busy all the time can lead to spiritual hardness of heart. I know I've felt it. It's in those times that I have trouble experiencing Jesus' love in the everyday. I haven't given enough time to let him into my day, let alone those moments of ferocious panic trying to put liturgical music together because I haven't given enough time to sleep, let alone pray.

As teens, we're reminded to leave six inches for the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, this is said jokingly, but I think if you turn this around to our busy lives, it can be equally important - leave six minutes for the Holy Spirit. Leave an hour. Leave something for God to breathe into your life. How much better decisions, better living will we experience if we are spiritually and emotionally grounded in every day, not just the few hours of our week after mass.

God is there with us always. Let us take the time to acknowledge his presence, allowing us to let Him rule our lives. If we keep Him a priority, perhaps we'll come to terms with "busy" not being equated with "productive", "important", or even "good".

God bless you in your ministry.

Watch that tone of voice

Sometimes, it's the simplest things that get you. I hope this is old hat to most (both) of you, but if you're like me, and learned about vocal coaching for small groups by osmosis, experience, experimentation, trial and error, read on.

Having attended conferences, concerts and the like, I am always amazed at the great vocal sounds some other groups are able to get, and often horrified at the sound others get. Knowing our group was filled with talented vocalists, I was pretty confident the quality of our musicians wasn't an issue. The problem was in the architecture of how I had built our sound, and though great in theory, it didn't work as I had expected.

Small groups tend to lend themselves to tighter, more experienced musicians that can all lead given the opportunity. I believe in a smaller group, there is no safety in numbers. Every singer needs to be solid and be able to deliver on their own without the support of the group. What surprised me a little (as a budding vocal director) is that the individual doesn't need to deliver like this to be effective when in the group.

Over the years, we've worked on several exercises to get our blending to improve. What I've found over the last couple years are the following simple pieces of advice that, when put into practice, can make all the difference in turning a talented bunch of singers into a tight-sounding, gifted ensemble, truly capable of moving beyond filling the role of the cantor and really leading liturgical music.

1. Structure: one lead, others follow
2. All non-lead vocals need to back off when not explicitly leading in a cantor-like role
3. Non-lead vocals should refrain from using more than the bare minimum of vibrato
4. Non-lead vocals should use a soft tone of voice regardless of range expertise

I work with a small group of singers – usually 3 – 6 singers on any given week. Preferably it's half male and half female. I came out of an amateur background in music, doing theater in high school, various choirs since 8th grade, and the occasional vocal lesson.

Learning in high school, college, choirs, etc, I was taught that the way to give a good performance was to project. (That's prō-'jekt, not prä-'jekt). While this is true for almost any singing or presenting situation, this is not the case in the small choir in the role of a backup singer. As a soloist, this is a no-brainer. In order to be heard, you must project. There is no value in mumbling the Word of God. In a larger choir, the same is true, depending on the tonal quality desired – a larger choir operates without much of the aid of amplification to achieve its performance, therefore sing as you are best able!

But, in the smaller ensemble with the aid of electronic amplification, projecting is not typically going to be the right answer. I saw a great demonstration of contemporary worship music done badly with a female vocalist leading by singing into the microphone and a male tenor adding harmony. The woman led using her melody with soul, but not a lot of volume – but she sang directly into the mike, and was very effective in her duty. The male tenor on the other hand added his harmony far off the microphone, blasting all those around with his very good, but very loud and unbalanced microphone. Even with the sound system, the result was poor at best. The vocal performance was unbalanced, and ineffective – we were all distracted by the tenor. He protested that his sound engineer usually turns his mike down.

However, what I've found (and what others will tell you) is we cannot rely on the sound engineer to fix your sound. The job of the sound system is to re-enforce the sound, not deliver it en mass! While the volume may be corrected, the tone cannot be corrected by the sound engineer, and that makes all the difference.

So, what vocal tones work well? The items I listed at the beginning of this article were what I've found to work. The goal is to get a full sound with good clarity that encourages others to sing. Every person projecting, using vibrato leads more to a chaotic sound, which can be especially difficult if you've got a team of great musicians! As a director, it's often been hard for me to take the lead, because I see my role as a mentor and facilitator rather than a soloist. However, there are a lot of times that we just need good direction, and building that from the lead vocal spot is the best way to achieve that goal.

So, here's the quick breakdown of what I've found to work:

• One lead – one person gets to project on any song. If there isn't a sole individual projecting, then no one should be – just use good, solid diction to make the consonants heard well.
• Keep the volume down if you're not leading. No one should ever feel like they need to "steal the show". That's not the point of worship. We're all a critical part of a team of worshipers.
• Keep the vibrato down. You just want a fuller sound. The more vibrato, the more chaos will ensue. Vibrato helps the voice to stand out in such a small group, which should be reserved for a soloist / cantor, but even then, still with a healthy dose of judicious moderation.
• Everyone else uses hushed tones, even when adding harmonies or counter melodies. The point is just to add to the sound.

I use a couple terms to illustrate the parts as I've described:

• Lead – the one person leading the group. There should be a lead for major hymns. I don't assign a lead for the parts of the mass (primarily the songs that accompany the Liturgy of the Eucharist). Backing vocals are still used when we have a lead.
• Solo – one person sings the part completely on their own. No backing vocals. I only use this on occasion.
• Backing vocals – everyone else who isn't on the lead part.
• It took me too long to figure this out – and though I like learning by experience, this is one of those places I wish someone would have smacked me.

God bless you in your ministry.

Updating the "Standards"

I've been lax with my posting, and apologize. Just a few postings into it and I'm getting busy. Here's this week's tidbit, for those of you that haven't tried these tricks.

Most congregations like to sing what they know. Very few embrace new songs as quickly as we (as music ministers) would like. This can be especially true if you're coming into a parish that has never had a "modern" music ministry with a "Worship Band". Even well established bands may find that the most well sung hymns are ones that the congregation has known for years. You can tap that energy we lovingly direct to our Father by using some easy techniques to update the sound of the hymns, making them relevant to the hearts of the young and young at heart.

• Use 6/8 and 12/4 time
• Don't' change lyrics or rhythm
• Keep it simple

If you haven't used these time signatures before, they hold a great treasure for unlocking the potential of "modernizing" some old standards. I've heard great renditions of songs like "O Come, All Ye Faithful", "Come, Holy Ghost", and "Alleluia, Sing to Jesus" all thanks to these time signatures! You can swing an acoustic guitar easily in these signatures, bust out a killer groove, or do something else creative with the song.

Take something simple like, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel". To update this song, I wrote an arrangement around a 12/4 time signature. (If you're having trouble hearing it your head, think the groove to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears.) Since the original song is written almost entirely in quarter notes, the triplet subdivisions do not interfere with the melody. I then put a Bruce Hornsby-esque jazzy piano to the arrangement, along with some innovative bass playing from our bassist Rhoscoe, and we built what has to be one of our most complimented Advent songs. We made sure to keep the arrangement subtle, but made sure to re-enforce the mood of the song.

With this in mind, I do want to stress a couple things when updating songs. No matter how clever you are, the original (or well known) lyrics and rhythm must be left alone. Completely alone. Part of the advantage of using an older hymn is about familiarity, connecting to our eternal God, and leveraging people's knowledge of the hymn so they can direct their praise to Him, rather than a songsheet. If we change the lyrics, the rhythm, or the pitch of the notes, we lose a lot. The congregation still has to re-learn the hymn, you'll lose people's connection with the past, and it will cause a train-wreck of lyrical mush - hardly unifying. Instead, make sure to just keep the melody intact - you can freely changing the chords and voicing around the melody and make things fresh without abandoning the familiar.

Leave the mood of the song intact. If you can take such feelings like "anticipation", "joy", "remorse" or "patience" further in your arrangements, do so. Don't feel the need though to change the mood or setting. It'd be quite funny to hear Sum 41 do "Hail Mary (Gentle Woman)", but then it would only be a caricature, and not capture our focus.

When using an older hymn, you will almost invariably want to keep it simple. There was a time in the Church that the very idea of polyphony was branded as heresy. Your arrangement should not be complex, and the focus should still remain on the praise to God in the song itself. If you're updating a hymn, changing anything about the song will be enough, and it need not show itself in full force to be "new".

I once had a high school student demand that we "up the ante" in the group by doing some more ambitious arrangements like the setting of "Joyful, Joyful" as done in "Sister Act". While well intended, this type of arrangement is not really what we should be after - even in the movie, that arrangement served as a vehicle for the attention of the arranger. We must always are remember that we serve the community to provide it a means by which to praise our God. We cannot offer praise on their behalf. All present must be active participants in this Holy Eucharistic feast.

Stage Pianos / Performance Synthesizers

For the record, I started my first keyboarding article with the notion of solving the musical equivalent of world hunger in one shot – from to choosing a keyboard to choosing sounds to technique to phasing issues… so what you're getting here is roughly less than a tenth of what I had outlined. I just couldn't short change the depth of information here when this blog is supposed to be about getting into the details of music ministry. I just can't put out another Cliff's Notes® version of these things – those are already out there. Oh the joys of being a new, amateur, make-believe journalist (more commonly just called a "blogger").

I am a pianist by trade, and guitarist and whatever else by necessity, so I feel very at home when it comes to keyboards, piano and the like. There are lots of great things you can do with piano and keyboards, but I'll just take the time to scratch the surface of keyboards, playing and sound issues you've probably encountered. I've met some experienced keyboardists that weren't quite sure how to deal with some of these issues, and I hope these are a help to you.

Types of keyboards

There are a few genres of keyboards out there. Your local bookseller's periodical racks have entire magazines dedicated to help you figure out how best to part with your hard-earned money on their advertiser's products. I realize there are tons more models and hybrids of all sorts of keyboards available, including rack mount synths and software synths. No matter what you do, you need some way to interact and generate sound using some type of keyboard playing device. Here's how I'd break down the basic types of physical, hardware based keyboards on the market today:

• Performance synths / Digital Pianos (Yamaha S-series, Roland RD series)
  Music workstations (Roland Fantom series, Korg Triton series, Yamaha Motif series)
• Analog synthesizers / emulators (ex. Nord Lead series, Korg RADIAS, Roland SH-201, microKorg)
• Vintage Synths (Yamaha DX7, Roland D-50, Korg M-1, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, MiniMoog, ARP 2600)
• Vintage Keyboards (Hammond B3, Wurlitzer 200A, Mellotron Mark IV, Fender Rhodes 73)
• Vingate keyboard emulators (Nord Electro series, Korg CX-3, Roland VK-8)
• Controllers (Yamaha KX series, Roland A-series, M-Audio Axiom / Oxygen)

Portable keyboards (Yamaha PSR series – virtually anything with speakers)
Every one of these above types of keyboards has a purpose in mind from its inception, and certain keyboards are going to be more apt toward worship than others, but virtually all can be used in some way, if done correctly. Each one of these types of synths warrants an entire article unto themselves. This time around, we'll delve into digital stage pianos and performance synths.
Piano-based keyboard overview

For the worship team looking for the best, most flexible, useful keyboards for the worship team, these keyboards are the total opposite end of the spectrum from the specific use sounds of the analog modeling synthesizer. These keyboards typically lack workstation features like sequencers, sampling, and sound programmability, and concentrate of great instrument playability.

Piano emulation

These keyboards tend to excel primarily at their piano sounds. What makes these keyboards better sounding than others with their piano sounds is primarily how much of the machine's memory and digital signal processing (DSP) power is dedicated to recreating an accurate, expressive representation of a piano.

First of all, the piano must be multi-sampled. Multi-sampled instrument have recordings of their sounds taken from more than one pitch from the original instrument. In addition, they can have samples taken from more than one volume of the instrument being recorded. Today's best piano multi-samples have a minimum of three velocity (volume) levels recorded for every key on the piano. That's a minimum of 264 samples just for the piano sound! Traditionally, all the best piano samples had come from the industry standard Yamaha C7 grand piano. In the past two years or so, this has changed dramatically with manufacturers looking into less standard, but no less important and powerful grand pianos – specifically, the Steinway concert grand pianos. When I first heard the Roland RD-700SX, I was so moved by the dramatic sound of the Steinway samples over the Yamaha C7 I'd been hearing for years and years, I very soon afterward bought the RD-700SX.

The second, recent innovation around piano recreation is the DSP modeling of the piano's soundboard. The soundboard is the big, cast iron piece that suspends the strings inside the piano, and allows the string to resonate. The modeling for the soundboard includes control of the damper noise, sympathetic string resonance (when you hit an "E", the "E" strings above it also make a sound if the dampers are lifted, in addition to other strings, like the "B" and "A" strings to a lesser extent). It will also add an air of… well… AIR to the sound of the piano, using reverberation models not unlike those that model a small room – which is what the inside of a piano essentially is.

Third, is the keyboard action. With these keyboards, you will (in a way) get what you pay for. When playing keyboards of this type in the store, you will notice a distinct difference in the mechanical action of each of these keyboards as you go from the moderately priced models to the higher end models. The question is always, "what's going to work for you?" not necessarily, "what can you afford?" There is no doubt, the hammer action of the higher end boards is superb. It was another major factor in the purchase of my Roland RD-700SX over her less-expensive sister, the RD-300SX. The 300 is much lighter, but doesn't have the great hammer action, and so I sacrifice my back on occasion for a great feel! (Thank goodness I bought a case with wheels!)

Lastly, you'll want to pay attention to these finer points, which are often included on non-stage piano keyboards (but not all). For example: are the top strings affected by the damper pedal? (On all real pianos, they are not affected.) Also, in the last 7 years or so, manufacturers have paid attention to so-called "half-damping". This is when the damper pedal is neither all the way up nor down. This can include things like muting the strings, but un-damping them again before they have stopped resonating, allowing them to be sustained again. Or it can include partial damping of the strings with the pedal partially depressed as the string sustains.

More than just a piano
Beyond the piano sounds, many models include many goodies that make purchasing them unique, and would require careful consideration before purchase. First of all, there is the inclusion of over, useful sounds. Many stage pianos of old (and some current) only include a few sounds, mostly simple organ sounds, electric piano sounds and string-like sounds. In general, this may be all you need. Others may include more exotic organ generation engines (like the Roland RD-700SX or the Clavia Stage88). The Stage88 doesn't contain hundreds of sounds like the RD-700SX or S-90ES, but it does have fantastic Hammond, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes emulations, including full digital drawbars and great amp simulation! The RD-700SX has great capabilities as a multi-device MIDI controller, while the Yamaha S90ES, unlike the other two, is a fully programmable PCM-based synthesizer, able to save your patch settings, and program altogether new sounds.

What's right for you?

The first three models I have listed at the end of this article all have three things in common: great piano multi-samples (coming from Steinway and Yamaha grand pianos), soundboard DSP, and half damping. The other critical things I would listen to when choosing a keyboard that works for you: consider what other sounds you really need, what kind of control you really need, how does the keyboard feel to you, and how does the midrange of the piano sound to you? This last point, like the others, is totally a judgment call. The piano's range right around middle "C", the most used, useful and critical part of the piano's sound, is also one of the most difficult to reproduce in a keyboard instrument. Only your personal taste can determine what's right for you and your ears' perception of expressiveness.

One more thing in this area, and this is very important for worship musicians: How does the piano and the other sounds sound when mixed MONO?! Every time you plug into a system for playing live, if you aren't doing it already, you should in virtually ALL cases, be playing in mono, not stereo. This is because of the nature of stereo – it uses out of phase sounds in the listeners ears to recreate the sound of the real instrument by having the sounds be different in each ear. In a live situation, the position of the listener is for all but one or two people, never in the optimal position for a stereo sound. In fact, it is virtually always never optimal (or even good) for stereo. The music stores I frequent always have stereo speakers set-up near the keyboard for sale, or have headphones. A keyboard may sound great in the store in stereo, but get it plugged into the front-of-house, and you might as well be playing a Casio SK-1. (Please, just nod and say you know what that is.) This is because the listener is not positioned between the speakers, is hearing reflections off walls… any number of things happens live that will make your great-sounding, expensive stereo keyboard sound stale and cheap. You must have your keyboard set-up to output a mono sound, like that from a single speaker amp, or the mix of the entire band, and the sound of your keyboard will suffer from problems such as comb filtering and phase cancellation, otherwise known to the more novice reader – lousy sound.

I know I've touted the Roland RD-700SX. Mine has personally been used live by the likes of recording artists Kenny White and Matt Maher when they've visited the Seattle area. However, if I were to make this purchase again now, I'd give the Stage88 and the S90ES a serious listen to, since they weren't available when I bought my RD-700SX.

If you're looking for a lower-cost, bare-bones solution that can still sound good in a sound system, you may also want to look at the M-Audio line of stage pianos. Their piano sounds are reportedly good. I can't say that I've actually tried them out myself.
Models to check out: Roland RD-700SX, Yamaha S90ES, Clavia Stage88, M-Audio ProKeys 88, Roland VX-88 (discontinued)

May God bless you in His endeavors to minister to his people through you.

Resources for the resourceful

I'm just going to list a few of the great resources I've used over the years that have helped me in my music ministry. As this blog grows, I'll be citing many of these references.

Next week, we'll discuss keyboards in music ministry – an area close to my heart.

Publications

• LIFE TEEN Liturgy and Music Planning Guide (Available by subscription from http://www.lifeteen.com/)
  
• Worship Musician Magazine (Bruce Adolph Publishing)
  
• Christian Musician Magazine (Bruce Adolph Publishing)
  
• The Liturgy Documents Vol. 1 – includes the GIRM, and "Music for Modern Worship". You can get some of these online:
  
  
  
  • Music in Catholic Worship – a MUST READ for every Catholic music minister
    
  • General Instruction of the Roman Missal – A MUST read for every music leader / director
  
  
• Handbook for Creative Church Musicians - Harold Owen (G.I.A.)
  
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Songwriting – Joel Hirschorn
  
• The Catholic Lectionary
  
  
  
  • Week- by-week NAB readings available at http://www.usccb.org/)
  
  
• Grape Vine (Indenendent)
  
• The Catechism of the Catholic Church
  
• Integrity's Songwriting DVD – other than being short, incomplete, impractical and vague, it's a good starting point for budding Christian songwriters.

Web Sites:

• http://Worshiptogether.com – Get sheet music, instructions, and inspiration
  
• http://Spiritandsong.com – OCP's contemporary Catholic music site
  
• http://Ocp.org – Oregon Catholic Press, Catholic hymnal and book publisher of Tom Booth and Matt Maher among others
  
• http://Giamusic.com – Catholic music publisher or David Haas and Marty Haugen, among others
  
• http://Wlp.jspaluch.com – Catholic Music publisher of Ed Bolduc and David Yackley, among others
  
• http://Liturgy.com – OCP's online Liturgy planning service
  
• http://printandpraise.com – OCP's assembly edition printing service
  
• http://ccli.com – Christian Copyright Licensing, Inc. – Chief place to get reprint licenses for many favorite

Conferences / Organizations

• National Pastoral Musicians – Annual regional / national conferences for Catholic musicians
  
• LIFE TEEN Priests and Musicians conferences
  
• LIFE TEEN – LIFE on the ROAD conferences
  
• Christian Musicians Summit – National Christian musician and songwriter conference held in Seattle area

Non-Christian based sources worth reading:

• Performing Songwriter – Monthly magazine
  
• Sound On Sound – Great magazine for the advanced musician and amateur recording engineer
  
• Confessions of a Record Producer – Moses Avalon

Copyright © 2006 by Arthur C. Leonard, 10936 157th Ct. NE, Redmond, WA 98052. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced without the expressed written permission of the author or his assignees.

Planning a sing-able liturgy – vocal range

Since this is my first article, I'm going to give a little background here. When dealing with planning liturgies, you should plan music around several things:

• Christ focused


• Relevant to the action of the liturgical rite


• Relevant to the teaching / readings of the day


• Full, active, and conscious participation

This article will pertain specifically to the last point: full, active and conscious participation. A lot of the parameters going into making a decision about how to approach this will depend greatly on the collective state of the assembly you serve. Therefore the tips below may serve as a guide, but only you and your liturgical ministry can determine their relevance to your liturgy.

Let's consider a song I think is one of the more common offenders when it comes to conventional congregational vocal range: "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble" by Martin Smith. I've heard LIFE TEEN and worship bands do this song, and they tend to perform it well, and the people do enjoy the song. When I ask those who were there if they could sing with it, they almost universally respond, "Not really, but I like to listen." If you look at the song as written, the range of the song easily exceeds the range of the congregation, soaring all the way to an "F#" an octave above middle "C"! Martin Smith has a lovely tenor voice that can really soar beautifully with this song, but this becomes hard, if not impossible to follow for the less vocally trained.
Unfortunately this misses the point of a full, active and conscious participatory liturgy. It is not enough for the music ministers to act on behalf of the community, but rather the congregation must participate, as mandated by the Catechism –

Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people," have a right and an obligation by reason of their Baptism.1

We, as music ministers, must choose songs that enable all to participate in their role in the mass, not just observers, but holy participants in union with the Holy Spirit. Our job is to support the assembly, not supplant it with just superior musicianship.

Vocal Range of the Assembly

I will assume here that the reader is dealing with a Catholic congregation. Some congregations can get behind songs with a wide mantissa (vocal range from low to high notes), but in general Catholic assemblies have a more narrow range that our Protestant brethren in Christ. I follow a few simple guidelines when selecting music or adjusting the key of a particular song, enabling all, not just your congregational tenors and sopranos to sing!

In practice, I've found my congregation's range is limited to what you see above – a "B" below middle "C", to a "D" one octave above middle "C". You'll notice, this is a very narrow range. Most every singer has a range of at least an octave and a half, with some, more gifted singers sporting over three octaves. I can sometimes get away with an "Eb" or a low "A", but if those notes are sustained at least one person will let me know they had difficulty after mass.

In Protestant congregations, it is not uncommon to find a wider range – "A" below middle "C" to an "E" an octave above, with some select songs as high as an "F".

This totally reminds me of my role in "Brigadoon" back in high school. I played the part of "Charlie Dalrymple", the local boy about to get married. The song "I'll Go Home with Bonnie Jean", has one note that was a "G" an octave above middle "C". (If you've heard the song, you know the note on the key lyric, "I'll… "). After having sung baritone for three years, I had to exercise my newly discovered tenor voice to hit that note. As it turned out, I was really a tenor 1 in hiding, and after some work, this was no longer a problem.

Your congregation does not have the same luxury of vocal lessons, practice and patience. We as music ministers need to engage them here and now, and to do that, we can't exclude them and their perceptively lazy voices through our selection of music.

This means picking songs that fit the range of the congregation (sometimes at the exclusion of other, otherwise good songs), adjusting the keys of songs we love to sing, and making sure we lead where the congregation actually sings.

It goes without saying that when leading an assembly, it is best to lead in the range they are expected to sing in. This means your altos and lower tenors will get more exercise leading in church since they tend to represent the average assembly singer's range. A soprano leading the congregation may be sometimes more difficult. I'll cover things like this in future articles, but include as little vibrato as you tastefully can. It encourages participation rather than passive listening.

Conclusion

There is a lot that can be said about leading the assembly, and if you'll allow my long-winded explanations to continue, I'll write more on this in the future. The basic idea is lead them where you want them to go, and where they can be lead. We should not be passive in our worship, just as no other of our brethren present, acting in unity with the Body of Christ, should remain silent in worship.

Thank you for reading, and God bless you.

References
1 Catholic Catechism, 1141

Tips for Mondern Music Ministry

So, I don’t claim to be an expert or have it all together when it comes to putting together a LIFE TEEN music group. I do however have years of experience doing this and love doing it. A lot of people have come to me with questions over the years, and while many are covered in the LIFE TEEN planning guides, conferences and many, many other resources, not everyone reads them, can afford to attend, or realize they have options and opportunities. I’d like to take this space and dedicate it to advice and discussion of putting together a quality music ministry at your church, hoping to spare you some of the pains that I and others have gone through.
Some growing pains are GOOD – you have to go through them to appreciate what you have.
Others are best not to go through for so many reasons.
I'll be inviting some of my fellow musicians to guest-blog on here as well, doling out advice obvious and sublime.
Here are some of the topics I’d like to cover in upcoming in-depth posts: (in absolutely no order… this is a blog after all!)
· Liturgy and LIFE TEEN
· Sound Reinforcement
· Playing techniques
· Technology in liturgy
· New songs to listen to
· Songwriting – oh the places we’ll go
· What makes a song GOOD for liturgy
· In-depth planning
· Group dynamics – oh yeah, there are people here too!
· Building your new team
· What makes a music minister different from a musician
· Mechanics for good arrangements
· Resources, resources, resources!
· Directing from guitar
· Directing from keyboard
· Mass etiquette / attire
· Being present to Jesus in each other
· Being present to Jesus in the liturgy
· Knowing your place in ministry
· Copyrights 101 (no, you still can’t copy the sheet music)
· Event production, planning
· Vocal techniques
· Drumming
· Bass
· Piano
· Guitars, guitars, guitars
· Leave space! 6 measures for the Holy Spirit
· Monitoring
· The art of a sound check
· Mixing for the room
· Wireless systems
· Keyboards – what not to buy
· Guitar sound ideas
· Dialing in your compressors
· Planning around the congregation
· The business of music – why you generally don’t want to quit your day job, even if it is for ministry
· Moved in the moment - Being open to the Spirit & being prepared for it