WORSHIP SHIFT: The No-Band Band

I'm currently watching USA's "Burn Notice", where spy Michael Weston reveals how spies do the things they do - the secrets, if you will. Well, one of the main problems churches come to me with is lack of pieces for their band. Its a common moan and groan - one I've had myself at times. But, like most problems, there are multiple solutions.

The one thing you do not want to do in any worship transition is transition to something that is not done well. I've seen far too many churches switch to blended, contemporary or modern worship from traditional worship only to trend backwards again because the musical quality of the new style was poor. The poor quality can come from a variety of places - such as inexperience or congregational uncomfortability - but more often it comes from the band being incomplete.

Really, band incompleteness is no one's fault, but it seems to be a problem for most transitioning churches and the reasons are fairly obvious. Churches that are transitioning are transitioning FROM something - probably something most musicians (other than organists) are not attracted to. Second, many transitioning churches still fall into a quandary - paying organists/pianists while not paying band members who often do more and more complex work. Whatever the reason, the end result is that guitarists, drummers, bass players and pop vocalists are not prevalent in transitioning churches unless you're willing to pay for them to be there. But, attempting to play modern worship without the key instruments (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums) is unwise.

So what then? Find it or fake it.

Find It

If you take this option, there's a few rocks that are always good to look under. For instance, even though you might not have any electric bass players in the church, you might have high schooler who plays cello in the orchestra - the principles are almost exactly the same. Other good places to look for bass players: people who can sort of play a 6-string guitar and anyone who plays a band/orchestra instrument in the bass clef - trombone, tuba, etc. In fact, almost any band instrumentalist will be able to pick up electric bass with some time and a YouTube account. [Best bass player I've found: former bassoon player]

How about a drummer? Drummers are everywhere - they just need to be found. The only non-negotiable for possible drummers: lack of rhythm. Just don't start new drummers on a full trapset. Start them on a shaker (egg shakers are about $3). Then, move them on to a djembe or bongos (djembes have a nicer sound). Then, let them play with the trapset, but use a clicktrack in your monitors to help train them (easy to create through GarageBand or with drum machine listed below). [Best drummers I found: teenager in pep band at local high school who couldn't play at his Catholic church and 50-year-old drummer I found on BandMix.com who used to open for Alice In Chains]

Guitar players are more difficult, but the same rule from above apples - no one who can't keep a rhythm, which excludes more people than you think - rhythm is rarely learned. Can they clap on the beat - even complex beats? Start there. Check your local college for guitar players - find local teenage bands - kids are often just looking for a place to play. Good drummers often make the best guitarist, by the way - challenge them to make the progression if you have enough drummers. [Best guitar player I found: lead guitarist for local teenage death metal band who would play Sunday mornings after raves on Saturday nights].

Fake It

One of the most impressive things I've ever seen was a young man who was the self-described "solo musician" at his church. He played a kick drum with his foot, played bass with his left hand and piano with his right hand. What's funny is that it sounded better than many "full" church bands I've seen. And, while I realize most of us can't pull this off, it illustrates a couple points: 1)DO NOT compromise the rhythm section, whatever you do. Keep in mind the modern worship team hierarchy (above). 2)Less on each instrument still sounds like more when you have more instruments, or three instruments playing less is better sounding than one instrument playing three times as much.

Let me assert that I think you can pull off a modern worship band with one person. You have two, you say? Well then just insert your creativity and make it happen. How can I make this claim? Because I've done it. Here's how I run my solo rig:

Guitar: This one's hard to fake, so I play a rhythm guitar. What you CAN do is make playing guitar easier. Using a cut capo (right), you can turn any regular chord in the key of "E" into a one or two finger chord. Add a regular capo and you can now play any regular chord in any key with one or two fingers. What this means for the player is less concentration, less dedication needed on the guitar alone. And, since many worship artists like Chris Tomlin and Billy Foote write for the key of E, it works (trust me!).

Bass: This is also hard to fake and you could probably go without it, if you have to, but what's easy to do is pick up an octave pedal, which simultaneously doubles low notes an octave lower, in bass range. I use a Boss OC-3. You can also play on your low strings only during bass-driven parts of the song to create the same effect.

Drums: Many people hate the sound of drum machines, but they're not the worst thing in the world. As one of my vocalists said to me this week: "Wow, that thing never screwed up!" And he was right. But even if you don't like the mechanical nature of it - drum machines are better than no drummer (not to mention better than many real drummers). My drum machine is an Alesis SR-16 with two pedals - one for tap tempo (so I start the guitar, tap the tempo and it comes in at that tempo) and the other for on/off. I can also put in fills with the tap pedal.

Keyboard: Although keyboard isn't essential to the modern worship band (see my previous posting), it helps, especially in this setup, to have some smoothing ambient sounds. But where is your favorite 80's synthesizer rocker? Nowhere....and that's just fine. Grab your laptop, download ambient pads for free in every key from this website [http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1006691], open iTunes and turn on the repeat-2 function. Suddenly, you've got yourself the best keyboardist you've ever played with. Run that signal through a volume pedal and suddenly you've also got yourself fade in/fade outs.

Other Options: There's many directions you can go with this - many things can be done with loops that you can download online that will essentially work like full background tracks, which allow you to add and subtract instruments as you need them. Get yourself a program like Reason, Cakewalk or even GarageBand on your Mac and you can produce an entire band sound without the band. You might also try a loop pedal, which allows you to make live loops (ie, smack your guitar for percussion, loop it, play the rhythm part, loop it, play the lead part, etc.). I've seen guitar geniuses do this and imitate full bands, as well - but you have to know what you're doing.

Whatever you do, do it well. And please, please repeat after me: "I will never allow my church to sing songs to a CD." There, we just made the world a better place.

Worship SHIFT: Piano As the Golden Calf

I’ve consulted on worship to what’s going on a hundred churches now from all different areas of the country and with all different issues, but there seems to be one commonality between most of them. If they say they have issues with their worship, the first thing I ask for is what the keyboardist is doing. Most issues can be traced back to a wrong role for the piano – trying to play Hillsong or Tomlin with piano leadership because the keyboardist won’t back down or because the church thinks it needs a piano leading to sing. It struck me in watching the “Hillsong Creative Training” DVD the other day, that modern worship has found a creative place for the piano on the stage: nowhere.

A little history lesson on worship as it relates to keyboards throughout history. For the first few years of the Church’s history, instrumentation wasn’t a key issue with singing, since much of it happened through chant or through basic accompaniment. However, with the advent of the pipe organ, the European church fell in love with four part hymn singing to that sound and it migrated with the immigrants to North America. Worship music was largely written for piano and organ for years, except for a few pockets of Great Awakening hymns drummed up by mandolin players in the Kentucky hills. But, a worship revolution coincided with a church revolution in the 1970’s-1990’s. Although groups like the Gaithers had been using popular instrumentation, churches across the country started to use guitars and rhythm instruments in worship. This change should not be taken lightly as many a “worship war” split churches and people. Around the year 2000, a more significant change for our discussion happened. Worship music became more of an industry, more mainstream and more focused on a few key centers of output with a few key leaders setting the tone. Worship leaders Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United emerged as the key leaders of today.

There is one other note that should be made. Many people equivocate “contemporary” with “modern” worship. I argue for a difference between the two, and the difference is key in understanding changes in the use of the keyboard. This difference can be seen very evidently between contemporary leaders, such as Michael W. Smith and Darlene Zscech versus their national successors – Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United (led by Joel Houston rather than Zscech). Whereas Smith and Zschech’s music makes heavy use of keyboard as a lead instrument, Tomlin and Houston’s use the keyboard only as an accent/support instrument, if at all. In many cases, especially in live performances, laptops are subbed for keyboards altogether for ambient effects. This change is laid out in great detail by both Hillsong Church, who replaced Zscech with Houston in the 2000’s to change their style and Smith, whose live worship CD released in the 2000’s, “A New Hallelujah” features virtually no original songs after his 1990’s releases “Worship” and “Worship Again” featured mostly original content. Smith’s songs have mostly dropped out of the CCLI Top 25 (most used music in the worldwide Church), while Houston/Hillsong’s music dominates it.

This leaves churches in a bind. The first thing to realize as a church is that you must diagnose what stage you are currently in and not try to jump two stages at once. If you are traditional, the jump to modern could kill your base if you don’t move to contemporary first. The move to modern must be done, as all changes must, well. If your church does not have a strong rhythm section (rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums), attempting to shift to modern worship is an almost impossible task. There is a reason the worldwide Church went through contemporary worship on the way to modern worship – it is a bridge style with some traditional elements, including logical versifications and piano-based leadership, in many cases.

In modern worship, however, the keyboardist is asked to step to the back and simply serve as a support or accent instrument. Even keyboardists for major leaders in the industry such as Hillsong United rarely use two hands on the keyboard – often playing one or two notes at a time or laying down ambient pads to undergird the sound.

This change in the keyboard’s role will, obviously, be felt the most by the keyboard player. For churches who are transitioning, recognize that all keyboard players will not be happy with the change. Traditional piano players are used to playing with both hands, laying down bass, treble, alto and soprano lines, setting the rhythm and leading the congregation. To shift from that to simply playing accent notes and laying down ambient chords is not only difficult to swallow, it can be downright insulting (not to mention many churches pay organists/piano players and modern worship means their paycheck goes away).

Recognize that you may have keyboardists that may quit and that isn’t the end of the world. In some ways, training new keyboardists for the new style is optimal compared to trying to fit traditional keyboardists into a modern keyboardist role. It is important to realize, however, that keyboardists are artists and, when pushed aside or asked to do something limiting, will react harshly unless they are blessed with a high degree of humility. I cannot tell you how many churches this scenario repeats itself in. At conferences, I’ll often mention the “piano Nazi” and someone jumps into everyone’s mind because the experience is so common to all of us.

The key is to approach worship change as necessary and with love. If you love too much and let the keyboardist run you over, they will. If you are too adamant about their role, you could run off a very good potential band member. Do not be afraid, however, to move forward if your keyboardist will not come with you. Find someone else (you can fake keyboard in a modern band with very limited knowledge if you have good rhythm and knowledge of notes, using the right keyboard patches) or simply download some ambient mp3 sounds from the internet and use a laptop in the keyboardist’s place. Often, it sounds better.

Make sure everyone realizes that, in this style of music, keyboard is not lead. That needs to be said and said again. If your band and church isn’t comfortable with that – play some 80’s/90’s music that’s written for piano leadership. Muddying the waters will only hurt you in the long run.

Worship SHIFT: Why the Word “Blended” Scares Me as a Worship Style

Churches suffer for many reasons. In some cases, they are subject to moral failure, to stubbornness or to attacks from the devil. But, nothing kills a church or ministry faster than the greatest devil of them all: ambiguity. When people don’t know what the boundaries or definitions of terms everyone’s throwing around are, other people get hurt. When words like “blended” enable everyone to attach their own particular meaning, people fight.

The ironic thing is that many churches strive for ambiguity under the guise of “freedom” or “inclusivism”. What’s interesting is that we fail to take into account our theological perspective on human depravity – that, given ultimate freedom with no boundaries, we fail every time. Boundaries don’t necessarily limit freedom so much as they provide an open space within which to create. You spend less time worrying about what is “acceptable” and more time focusing on continued innovation on the norm, which is key to worship in any style or context.

I’ve seen far too many churches choose “blended” for the wrong reason. You’ve generally got the traditional camp thinking to themselves “how much are we willing to give up to appease the contemporary side?” and the contemporary camp asking themselves “how far can we push the limits before the traditionalists bite back?” Of course, the problem with all of this is that no one is thinking about the bigger issues – how does God want to be worshipped? How does our immediate neighborhood/target demographic want to worship and what sort of music to they listen to?

Really, it brings out the selfishness in everyone – each side determining to themselves that they’ll define what sort of blend we’ll have – 80/20 instead of 50/50, for instance. Both are blended – but both include concessions from one side or the other. You can call my latte a blended drink regardless of the percentage of milk, espresso or flavoring.

So what’s the positive solution? There could be many, but I’ll propose one. If you truly want a mix of traditional, contemporary and modern elements – try on this word: eclectic. Unlike “blended” which simply implies the presence of two elements (99/1 is still blended), eclectic has qualitative degrees. For instance, something with 10 elements is more eclectic than something with 2. To be eclectic is to notice when the presence of a particular element is under-represented or simply missing.

How would you describe your church’s worship?

Worship SHIFT

Some of you may have noticed I haven't blogged in a while - some you definitely have not. Well, one of my 2010 professional goals is to take up blogging once again, now that I'm settled in the Republic of Texas.

For the upcoming months, I'm going to do something people have been asking me to do for a while - espouse a little on the topic of shifting worship in a traditional, established church towards a more contemporary or modern style. I'm calling it Worship SHIFT and they'll start coming hot and heavy since I get passionate about this stuff. This blog will feature topics that are more philosophical in nature. If you are looking for more nuts and bolts type advice, feel free to email me [mark@sunriseaustin.org] or join us on the new CRC Network, if you're CRC, of course. Post questions in the Worship forum and I'll be happy to take it from there and we'll have the luxury of hearing more voices. But here, you only get mine. Lucky you.