Blog
Tips, tutorials, and ideas for worship musicians. Chord theory, leading teams, stage setup, and more.
Light Church Olongapo — worship team
Numbers on a Metronome Did Not Help Me Feel the Song. This Did.
I could set a metronome to 74 BPM and play perfectly in time. But when I tried to describe that tempo to another musician, the number meant nothing to them. Here is how learning tempo feel language changed the way our team communicates about pace.
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Our Keys Player Asked Me for Chord Charts. I Did Not Know How to Write Them.
I had been writing chord charts for guitar players for years. When a piano player joined our team and asked for her own charts, I handed her a guitar chart and she looked at it politely and said nothing. It took me a while to understand the problem.
How Understanding Intervals Helped Me Harmonize Vocals Without Guessing
For years I added backing vocals by ear and instinct. Sometimes they were beautiful. Sometimes they clashed and I could not explain why. Learning about intervals gave me a framework that made harmonizing intentional rather than hopeful.
We Added Vocal Harmonies to Three Songs and the Congregation Noticed
We had been a single-lead-vocalist team for two years. When we finally worked out proper harmony parts for three songs in one setlist, something in the room changed during the service. Here is how we built those harmonies and what we heard from the congregation afterward.
Every Chord in a Key Is Already Decided for You. We Just Did Not Know That.
For years I learned which chords sounded good together purely by experimentation. Some combinations worked and some did not, and I had no idea why. The day I understood diatonic chords was the day a whole lot of music that had seemed mysterious became completely clear.