I use about 30 songs in my regular rotation. This is probably on the low end for being the only worship band at our church. I would imagine most churches in a “praise band” setup would have a larger rotation, but I guess we’ll find out in this post. Our vision at LCC is to raise up multiple bands that have small rotations so we aren’t overlapping and if we are they are different arrangements. This results, hopefully, in a few things

1. Tighter set -  bands are playing fewer songs so they have more opportunity to experiment and perfect their arrangements.
2. Familiarity – Congregation gets to connect with songs better and have a chance at memorization so they spend less time staring at the lyrics and more time focusing on Jesus.
3. Freshness – when new songs come in, older songs are getting pruned instead of an ever growing rotation. This takes the pressure off the band for introducing new songs so they don’t feel like their work load gets larger and larger.

The last point is important because we want to keep bringing in new songs but typically it’s at the expense of an older song that just doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore. That’s not to say we don’t play any old songs, because we do. I’ll bring back older songs, hymns that bring diversity to the set and a freshness to the set as a whole.

So how many songs are in your rotation? And it would be great if you could describe in the comments what kind of worship band organization you use, praise band, multiple bands or something else.

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Why use a click?

I don’t want to assume we all know and appreciate the benefits of a click so I figured I’d start here. A click insures your band plays a song in the correct time and keeps your band in the correct time through the duration of the song. Without using a click it’s very easy to mess up both, either you start the song too slow or fast or you speed up and slow down in the middle of the song. Additionally, now that your band is all synced to perfect time you can use loops or visual effects like a timed lyric presentation.

How do you start using a click?

1. Drummer must get comfortable

If your drummer has never played with a click or metronome before this can be a difficult transition. You’ll quickly discover how good or bad your time is. Some drummers have a great internal clock and are just naturally able to keep great time. Others it takes a lot of practice with a click to stay in time. So first step would be some individual work with the drummer to make sure he’s comfortable and able to play with a click.

2. Monitoring setup

Monitoring requirements will vary greatly depending on factors like if you’re going to use loops, use timed visual effects, use click cued intros, etc… Some bands use in ears for all musicians so they can hear clicks and cues, others only have some players/singers with in ears. Quite simply the goal is to send the click to isolated(in ears or headphone) monitors for whichever players/singers need it and keeping it out of the main house mix so the congregation doesn’t hear it.

At the very minimum the drummer obviously needs the click in their in ears/headphones. The rest of the band would just have to follow the drummer closely and stay on his time because he can’t come off the click. This may be a major adjustment for bands that are used to speeding up(unknowingly) and the drummer typically sped up with them, but that wouldn’t be the case anymore.

For that reason I would strongly suggest the drummer and band leader have the click in their monitor. That will really help stabilize the band time wise. Even in this case you still would have musicians and singers with no click which can get tricky if that musician or singer is performing without any drum/band leader accompaniment. They could easily get off time, so what ends up happening is your drummer has to keep time on stage with the sticks and that just stinks and could ruin the vibe.

So we’re left with the optimal solution which is everyone in the band on in ears, everyone who needs the click has the option to have it sent to their monitor mix. This is the setup my band uses and it’s fantastic. We have quite a few songs where we all come in on 1, vocals and band. We’re able to hit these intros with no problem and without stick hits or other distracting cues. All our cues are isolated from the congregation and we know just where we are in a song.

3. Phase in

Start simply and slowly. Getting comfortable playing to a click takes some time and depending on the skill level of the drummer can take a looong time. Use a click in practice for a while before you start using it live.

Later this week I’ll post on various methods for creating click tracks and playing them live.

Here is our second installment of answers to questions on the post, “Why should I consider using loops in my worship service?”

How easy/difficult do you find it to break out of the song/set when using loops?

This was one of my main concerns when I started using loops. How was I going to be able to leave room for spontaneity? What if we absolutely needed to repeat the chorus again? Am I going to feel chained to some arrangement and wish I could break out of it live?

I’m going to use an oxymoron to describe what I’ve done but it’s the most descriptive phrase I have.

Planned Spontaneity

If you’re done laughing I’ll explain. There are typically two camps on the topic of spontaneity in worship.

1. Very little practice or preparation goes into the worship set and the band just follows the worship leader wherever he goes in the song.
2. Every part of the song is rehearsed and there is no room for improvisation vocally or instrumentally.

I try to find some balance between the two. I think you must have a mindset and heart that God will speak and lead you in the planning, preparation and practice just as He would during the actual worship set. When you get out of balance on this you over emphasize one place to the exclusion of the other and you act as if the Spirit leads only in preparation or only in execution. So if we believe God can and does do both how do we accommodate this musically and specifically when using loops?

I’ll play, practice and most importantly pray over songs and see where there are good spots for instrumentals, breakdowns, extended refrains, etc… If it’s a slow song that may be used in ministry time it would most likely be the end of the song that can loop over a few bars until ministry time is coming to an end. There are a few ways to so this in Ableton, I won’t get into the technical details in this post, but it can be done dynamically where a section loops until you tell it to stop.

If it’s a song being used in the middle of the set it’s more likely a breakdown in the middle of the song where there’s an opportunity to sing out what God has put on your heart, but that time is more strategically assigned. Perhaps it’s a 12 bar breakdown, so you got that amount of time to say whatever you felt led to say. Putting these kind of parameters I’ve found is very helpful for the band and congregation. I think a lot of times bands don’t realize that their extended spontaneous riff moments don’t come across nearly as good as they think. Quite often they are confusing, uninteresting, repetitive to the point of exhaustion and it can cause a disconnect between the band and congregation.

The more planning you do around these times the better. The Holy Spirit won’t leave you because you’ve tried to put some musical structure around your “spontaneous” moments. Many times my band will practice the breakdowns musically so we know exactly what’s happening, what we’re all playing and get the instrumental side real tight. But I’ll give my vocalist freedom to sing what she feels led to sing, or I’ll lead it or we’ll both kind of weave our vocals together. Many times a melody we’ve done spontaneously will get incorporated into the song as a permanent piece if it went over well.

Rarely if ever, will I give instrumental freedom to the band, that is just ripe for disaster. It’s not that I don’t trust my band’s taste or ability, I just want us to put the work in practice where we find what sounds best and we can all count on each other to play just that live, don’t surprise me. My bass player isn’t going to be happy if the drummer all of a sudden surprises him with a new groove he just fell in love with. If it’s that great of a part, then prove it in practice and let the band work off it.

Thanks for the question. I hope I answered it at a strategic level. I’m going to start a series soon on how to get started looping that takes care of the technical side. Stay tuned.

I received some great comments from a reader and good friend Barrie on my last post about why worship leaders should consider using loops in their worship service. They were so good they each deserve their own post, so here’s the first one.

Have you found any sense in which [using loops] might add to people not engaging since they’ve “been there, done that” exactly the same way last week?

There are quite a few factors that come into play when talking about congregational boredom in worship.

1. How many worship leaders does your church have and how similar or dissimilar are they stylistically?

It would be my hope that churches would raise up leaders to lead with the musical gifting and talent they have and not try and shoe horn every musician into the same musical mold. Sadly this often isn’t the case and week after week, service after service you hear different people singing the same songs with the same inflections, same arrangements, same riffs, same fills, same same same same and that’s neither interesting or inspiring.

2. How large of a rotation does each worship leader have?

I don’t think you need a large rotation, in fact I’d advise against it. In my church I lead every week currently and I have a regular rotation of about 30 songs and we do 5 songs every service. That means we do each song about once a month and I’ve found that to be a pretty good sweet spot. There is still familiarity where people know the song but it hasn’t been beaten into them every other week where they get sick of it.

3. Level of excellence. Quite simply, great music isn’t boring.

Lazy, uninspired, copy cat arrangements with little musical creativity can get very boring very quickly. This is one thing I think loops help address. You can spend a lot of off stage time writing parts, looking for new elements, textures and sounds for a song that you couldn’t do with live instrumentation.

Just looking over my iTunes list at all the great songs I listen to, the play count reaches the hundreds for some. The congregation over the span of a year may sing the same worship song 15-20 times. That’s nothing compared to how we listen to music normally. If anything I’ve noticed the congregation wanting to sing the same songs more often than I do.

After introducing loops to the band and congregation about 10 months ago I’ve noticed an anticipatory attitude in the congregation. They are eager to hear how we’re going to play new songs and how we’re going to remix older ones. They get excited about the new things they hear and are introduced to. I know not all congregations will respond that way and I feel somewhat spoiled in that sense so it’s up to each leader to use wisdom in how they do this. But I hope to encourage you all that stretching yourself in creativity can be done in a way that stays relevant to culture but doesn’t isolate your congregation or lose them to boredom.

I deal a lot with worship loops on this site as you may have noticed. More and more worship leaders are becoming interested in using loops but many still don’t see the point, think it’s too complicated or a waste of time, or don’t understand why anyone would use instruments that aren’t live. All of those are valid questions and I’d like to attempt to answer them. The purpose is not to convince everyone that they should use loops but rather to explain the idea, concept so you can make a more informed judgment on whether you should consider it.

Move in Creativity

Worship leaders need to push themselves, stretch and reach creatively. You’ve been blessed with a musical gifting, you’ve been called to lead a body in that art, you serve a creative God who is deserving of all praise and you have been appointed to reach the lost. The culture around you is moving creatively, music is not stagnant, if you stand still you make yourself increasingly irrelevant to the culture around you and isolated in your church bubble. The tension between leading a congregation and staying relevant to culture musically and reaching the lost is intense and we shouldn’t ever shy away from it.

It’s a challenge and balancing act we probably won’t ever get right, but we have to seek God in it and not just rely on where we feel comfortable.

Raise the level of musical excellence

Loops help raise the level of musical excellence in at least a few ways.

1. Repetition in arrangement

Now this might be a reason many don’t consider loops due to the thought of playing a song with a set in stone arrangement. First off if you use Ableton to play your loops you aren’t set in stone on the arrangement, you are more set in moldable clay. Secondly if you come from an environment where there’s a lot of spontaneous elements like sermonettes and random prayers and such in the middle of your set then you’ll have a harder time programming loops, it’s not impossible but much more difficult.

Playing with a set arrangement makes your band much tighter and actually allows for more creativity within the parts because there’s less to worry about in the overall song arrangement. Musicians know when you’re moving from verse to chorus, what gets repeated and what doesn’t, so your band spends less time staring at the worship leader wondering where to go next. Additionally not only will your band spend less time staring at the worship leader but so will your congregation. They will know where the song is going without you singing intros to each section or waving your arms and can worship with much less band distraction.

2. Instrumental and Tonal Diversity

The church has been accused of many things, but being musically diverse is not one of them. A problem all bands will face is how do we make this song fresh, we’ve played it a lot, people are tired of hearing it played like this so how can we breath life into it. There are things you can do arrangement wise of course or changing the tempo and overall feel that may work, but that ignores the greatest tool you have. Introducing new tones, sounds and textures does a lot more for reviving songs than any arrangement change could do.

Introducing these new instruments and sounds not only helps songs individually but also prevents sets from becoming monotonous tonally which causes tired ears. Tired ears occur in the congregation and band when your set has no tonal or instrumental diversity. The same frequencies are being hit continually and eventually people’s ears stop hearing what you’re actually playing, in other words they unintentionally tune you out.

Spending time programming loops allows you so much room in experimentation and creativity. You have an avenue to add texture and layers to your songs that you’d never be able to do with your live band configuration.

3. Playability

Your loops will be mistake free, have perfect pitch and perfect time. I don’t care how much your band practices you’ll never accomplish all 3 of those. This assumes you actually take the time in your loop programming to insure they are mistake free, you’re playing the correct notes and you are quantized.

There is an added risk layer and learning curve for those who don’t regularly play to a click however. You may find a lot of your past mistakes are now being exposed with a click or that your harmony you always sing is actually flat now that you have some accompaniment in the loop. There is also risk of computer melt down, but that’s why we only recommend Macs here.

Feedback

I hope those loop skeptics out there at least consider what I have to say here. I’d love feedback from skeptics and supporters of loops on any pros of loops that I’ve either misrepresented or missed. In a follow up post I list the cons of loops and why some shouldn’t consider introducing them. Have you considered using loops? Why or why not?

Fanband aims to allow bands to sell digital copies of their music directly to fans at gigs. Fans enter their email address and myspace user name, select the songs they ‘d like to purchase, pay and the songs are sent to their email address. An additional benefit for the band is now they have collected an email address and myspace account to build their fan base with. No internet access or credit card terminal is required. I see that as a benefit in some situations but it would be much better if it was able to work with card terminals so you could accept credit cards as well as cash.

I think this is a great idea but unfortunately it looks like a bit of a hack. First off it only works on Windows and the design, at least aesthetically, is pretty poor. It looks like a crappy modified Myspace page quite honestly. So while I think it’s a good idea and something a lot of bands would find useful, including mine, it needs a lot of work. The fact that they are charging $39.00 for this is laughable. Spend 5 minutes and you can capture an email database with someone’s desired songs in Zoho and distribute the songs yourself for free.

Anyone used this and disagree?

What’s Next?

This one question I am asking various worship leaders and pastors. The context is what’s next in corporate worship but beyond that no guidance has been given for appropriate response. Part 5 of this series is Christian City Church Worship Pastor Andy Bennett’s response.

Christian City Church in San Diego celebrated their 3yr anniversary this past Sunday night by recording a live worship album. Andy’s band House Red was on stage leading worship comprised completely of original songs. We’re blessed to have Andy take time and respond to this important question, here is his response.

1. It’s not about “The Gig”. It’s about God’s House. It’s about the fact that Jesus carried a cross for us, so we will praise Him and worship Him with everything we have. People are always surprised that none of our musicians and singers are paid. Many of our team members have been involved in large scale recording and performing projects, but Praise and Worship at church is totally different.

We are servants way before we’re musicians. Moses was faithful in ALL God’s house, not just the parts that he enjoyed. Its the same with people in praise and worship. Whatever we can do to make church the most mind-blowing place on planet earth. That’s what God’s house should be! A lot of worship teams are comprised of “hired guns” who just come in and play at church on a Sunday, whether or not they are members of that church (or any church for that matter). Jesus pointed out the difference between hirelings and sons. We are raising sons in our church, not bringing in hirelings. Its an honor to play on the platform in the house of God, not something you need to be paid to do. People will do a lot more for something they believe in than they will for a paycheck.

2. No Compromise on Excellence. How many times have I been in church and seen a dance, “drama”, mime, song, poem, “song of the Lord”, skit etc that is of such poor quality that I would not dare bring any of my friends to see for fear of them laughing and walking out?! We go to the movies and are rocked by special effects, brilliant acting and enthralling storylines. We pay to see artworks that are masterfully painted and sculpted. We go to the theatre and see extravagant singing, dancing and musicianship. Then we go to church and the shrill, off pitch wailing of the worship leader makes you cringe. You try and push through the barrage of noise to be able to worship God in the midst of the cacophony, but struggle to feel anything but frustration at the fact that the music is so off putting. But we excuse by saying, “Its for the Lord”, as if that’s an excuse for shabbiness. Or we say, “that was so anointed”, like there’s some indefinable (more like incomprehendable) reason for having someone who cannot hold a tune to save their life lead God’s people in His glorious worship.

We only allow people on stage who are able to contribute to a sound and atmosphere that is musically excellent. Just because someone is a volunteer doesn’t mean we can’t expect something big from them. After all, they’re not doing it for us, like some kind of favor. It’s our service to the One who has redeemed us by His very own blood. God only gave us his best. He didn’t look around heaven for a shabby old angel with a busted wing and send him down to do the dirty work. He showed us His extravagance by sending us His only beloved Son, perfect in every way. We can give nothing but the very best back to Him as His awesome church!

We are constantly verbalizing this culture in our church, so people end up serving where they have some kind of strength, wherever that may be.

The way the message is communicated often becomes a bigger message than the message itself. Shabby communication – unimportant message. Excellent communication – a message that’s worth hearing.

A few weeks ago I broke up my band and reformed with a different configuration, that entire experience is worthy of at least a few blog posts(stay tuned). The new band is myself on guitar, keys and Ableton duty, Josh on bass, Jonathan on drums and Kendra on vocals. I spend most of my week now programming loops and accompaniment on Reason and Ableton Live. This Sunday was our first set and the band did amazingly well. I was so encouraged by every aspect, instrumentation, congregational participation…it was awesome, God was at work.

Our music is certainly not traditional, pop, contemporary worship sounding so I was very nervous how this next step was going to be received. It was a big step forward for the band and the church. My fears have been laid to rest and I got a good nights sleep last night, which often isn’t the case Sunday nights. This set list is part of Fred McKinnon’s Sunday Set List:

1. Rain Down – Delirious
2. I Am A Temple – John Mark McMillan
3. Gloria – Tim Smith (Mars Hill) arrangement
4. Our God Reigns – Delirious
5. Who You Are – Desperation Band

I Am A Temple was the only song that did not have any loop with it. I liked the raw rocky drums, electric, bass for that tune, it’s as it was meant to be.

For anyone who was at LCC this past Sunday how did you think the worship music went?