Musicademy's September 2008 Newsletter

Greetings!

This info is just too good not to pass along. Musicademy is a worship music training organization with some great people and some phenomenal products. They publish a monthly newsletter that is chock full of tips, tricks, and material to help you become a better musician, especially in a worship setting. Below is their September 2008 newsletter. I hope you enjoy!

Be blessed!
Andy Johnston, facilitator

musicsharegroup@gmail.com
musicsharegroup.blogspot.com

Dear MusicShareGroup,

Welcome to the September Musicademy Newsletter.

In this edition:

• Ask The Expert – what to do when there is no musical space
• Ask The Expert - how to create seamless flow in worship
• Guitar Styles - Hendrix Double Stops
• Workbooks for drums, bass and keyboard DVDs
• Submit a Musicademy product reviews and get a free Song Learner lesson!
• Worship train wreck confessional
• The Old Schoolhouse Magazine offer
• New T-Shirt Design - competition
• Win Five Free Song Learner Downloads

Ask the Expert – What to do when there is no musical space

Stephen Miessner from the US emailed to ask “What do you do when you're the keys player and there isn’t room for you in a song?”

Andy answers: Firstly I’d ask why isn’t there room in the song. Is it written in a way that is very guitar led so doesn’t work well for keys? Or is it actually that everyone else is overplaying and therefore there is no room left for you. If the second, then maybe don’t play in that section (its great that you are developed enough as a musician to be hearing that there is no space – so get out rather than adding to the mush). If there are too many instruments and everyone is just playing too much then as a band you need to work on the arrangements so that everyone creates some space and compliments each others’ playing – look back through our newsletter archive for some input on that. Communication and honest feedback is key here so that the band make space for everyone to contribute.

Its lovely when there is space for the keys player to work in some riffs, fills, passing notes and the like, but if you have lots of other musicians and vocalists all trilling and frilling its going to be a lot better if you refrain from adding to the “extras” mix and instead look to add in a textural layer.

Secondly the lack of ‘space’ may not be to do with general busyness but actually a lack of integrated grooves. I’ve often played in situations where the drums, keys and bass are all playing slightly different pushes and accents and it all just sounds like a bit of a mess. So again the key is to simplify but to get everyone to understand that they need to play together as one unit and not as a bunch of individuals.

If there is a still lot going on rhythmically there are some practical simple choices you can do to make it work:

If it suits the song a great choice is to use a Hammond organ sound. It works well with electric guitar driven songs and is the sort of sound you can hold long, vamped notes with minimal chord movements to create an overall sense of force and adding behind the rhythm but not clashing with it. Almost think of the sound like a backing vocalist singing long flowing notes to add to the harmony and using your draw bars to add vibrato.

Another obvious solution is strings and pads which will just add a textural layer. If you are using strings, be careful not to play full chords. It will sound more authentic in octaves or single notes. Again play using long notes with minimal changes or if you want to play more rhythmically focus on the groove and play a repetitive motif but try to again use minimal movement and note changes.

You can do something similar to Hammond organ with pad sounds but do make sure you are using a “quality” pad sound. A cheap and nasty keyboard an often give cheap and nasty sounds. So think about the type of song and a sound that works well with it – is your pad sound suitable for its style? For instance, if the song is fast and drives along, a pad may sound too sweet and sugary and would be better used in something more delicate.

Lastly, pads can be a bit like guitar effects, they sound great in the right place, but if you use them all the time you are going to give your congregation ear fatigue.

All the best with working this all out. Our experience with the live worship band training seminars that we run is that generally everyone is playing far too much, far too loudly, all the time. Focused work on dynamics, arrangements and honest feedback is the place to start and if you don’t have the skills in your band to lead that then maybe look to get some help from a really experienced musician who can identify the specific problems.

Ask the Expert – How to maintain a flow of worship

Chief Allan Hewey from Maine emailed us asking for advice on keeping the worship momentum going. He was particularly looking for some practical tips to keep the congregations’ focus heavenward.

This is a really interesting question and in unpacking it we need to consider how different churches approach this – it can be a very “culturally created” approach. For instance, the Vineyard and Soul Survivor will have typically an intensive worship time where the musicians will flow fairly seamlessly from one song to the next with very little in terms of spoken word or discernable gaps. Contrast this with a Baptist church where we were recently teaching. The (non musician) worship leader would introduce a song with almost a mini sermon, or certainly a verbal reflection on the lyrics. The band would then play and the worship leader would then verbally reflect again on the words, perhaps within a prayer before introducing the next song.

Either approach, and the many options within that spectrum can be equally helpful or unhelpful. It depends on what works culturally, and what is helpful to your congregation in drawing them closer to God, much of which will depend on what they are used to. We all tend to fall back on the familiar so it might be helpful for worship leaders to deliberately try a different approach from time to time perhaps learning from other church styles. Remember that people take time to adjust to change so you may need to try it a few times for people to get used to.

The key thing is to be aware of what you are trying to achieve. For many, a ‘time of worship’ is really like a musical based mediation where the act of engaging with a song’s lyrics helps people focus their thoughts, desires and prayers towards God and disengage from the myriad of other things going on in their brains. So therefore would repeating a verse of a song become boring or actually help people get a hold of the lyric? Would a prayer between a song help articulate people’s worship or distract them from participating? Would a faster song help them release the joy they are feeling towards God or would it make them feel like they are being ‘wound up’ when they want to be still and listen? Would silence allow people time to prayer in their minds or would it be uncomfortable? Would playing very loud put people off or cause them to move, dance, sing etc in an abandoned way? Would reading out a liturgy together with as much gusto as the congregation could muster be releasing and help people get excited about their faith or would it be cheesy and awkward? Would segueing between songs bring excitement as worshippers discover the songs meaning in a fresh way or would it make the whole set feel like one long boring, mid tempo song? Would reading a poem help bring a sense of community offering or would peoples minds wander as they couldn’t join in themselves?

For any of these the answer could be either depending on your congregations demographic, what they are used to, how often change is introduced, whether a different artistic expression seems new or clichéd, even the time of the day and how awake they feel!

So therefore don’t be afraid to try new things, but also don’t assume that an expression that went well last time will work every time. So you do need to look, listen and try to intuit how the congregation is responding and act accordingly – the job of the artist! But don’t be afraid to have a go! Mix it up; see how your congregation responds. Try to help them come off autopilot and realise that TODAY we are worshipping. Just don’t fall into the rut of doing something because ‘that’s what we always do here to worship’

Let’s look at some practical tips:

You can use different song tempos and speeds to help people engage – choose songs that flow well from one to another in terms of tempo or mood – Any sudden changes can throw people – which may be exactly what you want to do.

Say you don’t have the most technically competent band, they all need to have a chord chart, and are all quite nervous of improvisation and moving seamlessly from some to song. What can you do to help?

Firstly, you will need to work out and practice the segues in advance, its less likely to go wrong if you are following a formula that’s been rehearsed. Yes, it may not feel very “spirit led” or improvised, but it will be a chance for your novice musicians to learn and develop. The crucial thing here is to rehearse again and again, the junctions between the songs. They are the tricky bits so rehearse them lots more than you run through the full song.

In terms of keys it will help if you choose songs in the same key, or a key that you can flow easily into.

Some advice on keys:

• You can choose a song selection where the keys increase (get higher) to give the set a sense of lift and momentum.
• Conversely you can drop a key (hymns often lend themselves to drop a tone for a verse and then come up again - this works well for a hymn like Crown Him with Many Crowns where you create a nice sense of tension and release).
• Dropping or raising a tone and singing with more gusto will add nicely to your dynamics and flow
• Moving in fifths, for instance moving form a song in E to a song in B, feels quite natural, however the skill if you are keeping playing (i.e. not stopping) is to modulate into the new key so that your congregation have a sense of the new root note. There are lots of ways of modulating into different keys but an easy way is to use what is called a 5-1 cadence – this means that whatever key you go into you play the fifth chord in the new key just before you start on the root chord. So, for instance, in the Key of E if the song finished with the chords A B & E, and you wanted to go into the key of B, you could play A, B E then play the fifth in the key of B which is F#maj and then the B – this will give an audible cue that the song has modulated into a new key.

Four words of caution:

• The first chord in the song is often but not always the root note! Go to our article from April 2007 for advice on working what key a song is in.
• If you are changing songs into new keys to better suit your flow, then do make sure that a) your musicians are all aware of the new key and b) that the top and bottom ranges of the song are still singable. And do check them out in advance, even if they are singable, not all songs work well in every key
• If your intention is to move seamlessly from one song to another, its not going to work if you are needing to put a capo on or wait for your keyboard player to hit the transpose button – so make sure you can all play in the key its written inIf your musicians are using chord charts, make sure they have them laid out side by side on their music stands so you are not interrupting the flow scrapping through reams of paper.

One other suggestion on helping with flow is to introduce some “bridges”. There are sections of songs (such as the chorus from the Hillsong song The Stand) which dovetail well into all sorts of other songs. Again, just adjust the key of the bridge song to suit the original. You could bring in elements of old hymns – the chorus from Oh Come All Ye Faithful perhaps. These are well used examples but keep your ear out for sections that you could lift to bring new life to another song. And take notes from other worship leaders you may see at conferences – those song choices and sequences can feature in your future set lists too.

Guitar Styles - Hendrix Double Stops


This month we’re going to look at probably my favourite playing style, which is called double stops. Double stops means playing two notes at the same time and was employed to great effect by a certain Mr James Hendrix. Hendrix is known by non musicians for his wailing solos but this style used on gentler songs like Little Wing and Castles Made of Sand is perfect for playing in worship settings.

The easiest way to understand double stops is by fretting a chord and playing any two adjacent strings. Then as the sound rings, use a spare finger to fret another note in the key on at least one of those strings. If you can add hammer-ons and pull-offs it will add to the overall texture too.

The key to this style is to think of it as lead guitar but using chords as a base rather than scales. It works very well with the CAGED system I talk about in the Intermediate Guitar DVDs but even if you’re not familiar with that you can still get some good results from a couple of basic shapes.

To demo this we are going to play some licks around an E chord. Barre your index finger across strings 1-5 at fret 9 leaving the low E open. Now place your ring finger on the G string (3) fret 11 and play the two middle strings. The combination of pulling that third finger on and off will give you the notes of E, F# and B.



The same can be done for any other note in the key of E using this same shape, so keep your index finger at fret 9 and play any of the other notes marked with a red dot. Try any two adjacent strings and see what results you get. It will work particularly well if those red dot notes match up to any of the notes in the chord you are playing over. You are doing what’s now known as little winging it.



Even though we are in E this shape is based around the G shape in the CAGED system so bringing the barre up to fret 12 will help you play around in G, fret 7 will be D, fret 5 is C Fret 2 is A and so on. So give it a try.

For the minor chords start off by using an Em minor barre chord up on the 7th fret which is an Am shape. Start again by playing any 2 strings and take on and off fingers 2, 3 or 4. So really any finger apart from the barred index finger. Next use any free finger to play other notes in the key of Em as outlined in red. Once again find other minor chords by sliding the barre up and down so Dm is fret 5, Bm fret 2 etc.



So, if you are playing lead guitar this is a great textural alternative to using pentatonic scales which can sound pretty ‘widdly-widdly’ in the context of a lot of modern worship song styles. Use a clean slightly driven sound with long reverb for great results and even add delay or chorus effects to taste. If you use a pick play those two strings hard you’ll get some really percussive guitar tones.

Apart from the Hendrix classics also check out a James Taylor song called Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha. The double stops licks played by Michael Landau are some of the sweetest you’ve ever heard!

Workbooks for Drums, Bass and Keyboard DVDs

We are currently working on some student workbooks to go with the Beginners Drums, Bass and Keyboard DVDs. These will be phased in over the next few months. We have found that the workbooks really help students get the most out of the DVDs (all the drum loops, backing tracks and worship leader interviews as well as the main teaching). They are also great for teachers using the DVDs to teach in groups as the workbooks split each DVD into 10 lessons.

The Beginner Guitar Workbooks are already available – click through to our webstore to buy.

The New Musicademy Website – Beta Testers Required

We are currently putting the finishing touches to a new look Musicademy website with better store integration and lots of wonderful “Web 2.0” features that will enable more interaction with and between the people who visit our site and use our DVDs and downloads.

Central to the site will be a Blog which will feature lots of free video clips, advice on worship and musicianship, guest articles and a good dollop of humour. Our hope is that the site becomes a significant and helpful resource for worship musicians. If you would like to contribute to the blog in any way – by writing an article, recommending a YouTube clip or even just commenting on the content or our DVDs then please email us.

We are currently looking for volunteers to be beta testers of the new site – you will be sent a link and asked for your feedback on the user experience. Please Email us for more information.

Worship train wreck confessional

You remember those train wreck moments when it all goes horribly wrong – your band starts in different keys, you sing the wrong lyrics or worse. Do you have any of these moments you would like to confess either on audio or video? If so please please send them our way. We’ll reward any we publish with some free stuff from our store. We’re also really happy to have You Tube code if you’ve found something great online.

Submit a Musicademy product review and get a free Song Learner lesson

If you would be willing to write a few lines by way of a Musicademy product review for our new website, we will send you a voucher for a free online Song Learner lesson. The review can be of a whole DVD course, an online lesson, our vocal care products or any of the CDs. We’d ideally love to have a little photo as well so don’t forget to attach one to your review.

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine offer

We know that our DVDs are often used by homeschoolers so we’ve teamed up with The Old Schoolhouse Magazine to bring you a special offer which will help your home and homeschool run smoothly. You want suggestions, encouragement, and practical how-to information. You need a storehouse of helpful articles for those days when you yearn for a fresh idea, a little boost, or facts to share with potential critics – all from a solid Christian perspective. That's where The Old Schoolhouse Magazine comes in.

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has just launched their fabulous Fall Special for new U.S. subscribers and you'll want to respond early. It's a 50% savings off of cover price and they even have a homeschooling tote bag for the first 1000 to respond!

Right now, during their Fall Special you can subscribe for only $39! You’ll receive 2 years of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine (8 large quarterly issues), the current issue (so you get a quick jump start!), and 6 fabulous Bonus Gifts (for the first 3000). PLUS, the first 1,000 new subscribers will also receive their Homeschooling with Heart tote bag!

View the full details and subscribe online at

www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com/US_Promotion.php.

New T-shirt Slogan/Design Competition - Win 2 DVD Box Sets!

We are launching a competition to win two Musicademy DVD box sets worth over $160. We are looking for a cool/funny slogan or if you’re feeling arty a funky design. It might feature the Musicademy name but doesn’t have to. So have a brainstorm and send in your slogan ideas – we’re happy to receive more than one entry per person.

We mainly sell t-shirts at worship festivals and conferences and the average buyer is male aged 18-40. Any entry which ends up made into a t-shirt will win two box sets of their choice. Email your entries before the end of August 2008.

You can view current entries on our blog. Do email us and let us know which you like best.

Win Five Free Song Learner Downloads

We really like to know what you think of our newsletter and the Musicademy products so please take a couple of minutes to answer these questions and e-mail them to us. One respondent will win five free song learner downloads and we’ll let you know what they think of them in the next issue.

1. What did you think of this newsletter?
2. Which articles did you particularly enjoy?
3. Any questions for our “Ask the Expert” feature?
4. Any suggestions for content that you would like to read in the future?
5. Any suggestions for websites we could recommend people?
6. Have you bought a Musicademy product or downloaded a lesson and what did you think of it?

Please e-mail your responses to enter the draw!

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