I’ve hit the wall with my current music selection, I need a refresh. Enter my friend John Mark McMillan. We were chatting about him coming out to Phoenix again to play some shows(gonna be off the chain BTW) and he mentioned his former bass player’s new band Flagship (formerly Flagship Brigade). Check Flagship out on myspace, they are incredible! I’m just bummed that there newer stuff doesn’t seem to be released yet.

But you can get their older EP “We Are Lions” on Amazon and Snocap downloads on their myspace. Here are some live videos of them performing. Killer stuff and ironically some tunes come across very Killers’ish, as in the band.

holy ghost live

cautious eyes live 2nd show ever

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.

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.

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?

I had the great pleasure recently of interviewing Ryan Delmore of Vineyard Music and 5 Cities Vineyard. Ryan has a new cd coming out in October entitled The Spirit, the Water and the Blood.

In Part 2 Ryan and I discuss more on his band experience in the church and outside the church, we riff a bit on worship band improvisation and how the Vineyard has cultivated that atmosphere in its worship bands. I also asked Ryan about his songwriting technique and if he has 2 creative avenues, one for the church and another less creatively binding avenue for songs that might not be intended for corporate worship. His answer was humble and profound and I think is something a lot of new young worship leaders should pray on.

“If I get a good melody, or some good chords, I don’t wanna waste them on something that doesn’t point people to God.” -Ryan Delmore

If you’re a worship leader that plays outside the church in other bands I think this statement is a challenging one. There’s much more to that answer in the interview so listen up!

 

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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.

I grew up on late 80s and 90s worship music. My father was a worship leader and later pastor at a Vineyard which was cutting edge worship music in those decades. I remember those years fondly and here’s what I miss:

1. Wind instruments – There are a lot of flute and saxophone players out of work in ministry. I mean there has to be a line around the block for those guys collecting worship band unemployment checks. I really do miss those soft flute intros and funky white boy sax solos that just took the songs to a whole new power pop level. I think it was every worship pastor’s holy dream to get Kenny G saved. Can you imagine how powerfully the spirit would have moved? Unfathomable.
2. Streamers and Banners – At its peak churches were removing rows of chairs just to make room for this tornado of twirling silk. They should have been surrounded in caution tape cause they were dangerous. Those wooden dowels were like holy swords waiting to impale you or gouge your eye out in accordance with scripture. I dunno about you guys, but you give me a banner team and a hard core sax solo and that’s heaven on earth. I never could get a beat on the males who joined the banner wavers though…that always gave me cause for concern.
3. Transparencies – Who can forget the giant glowing box sometimes strategically placed smack in the middle of the stage for the backup singers to operate. I honestly miss the feel and even smell of those transparencies, shuffling through the accordion folder to find the songs and get them all lined up. Was there ever a professional way of handling these? I certainly am familiar with the bad way, the blank transparency with dry-erase handwritten words and the operator who seems to always make the slide appear upside down no matter how many times you try to explain mirrors to them.
4. Percussion – Rain sticks, triangles, cowbell, congas…what isn’t appropriate for a worship song? Even the rocks will cry out, and Lord knows we tried to see what beating a rock with different sized sticks would sound like. The big churches share in culpability for this pandemic, but the smaller churches took it to a new level. I mean really, who isn’t qualified to play percussion? As long as you have a heartbeat and 2 hands you can beat things with, you should be on stage right?
5. Constant 3 part Harmonies – Picture with me if you will, vocal arrangements as a mixing board with sliders for each singer. Usually you’d think of these sliders moving up and down as the song progresses through the arrangement, layering nicely in parts, muted in others. Well back in the day this picture was more of a giant switch. Vocals are either all on or all off. Hey those words on the transparency aren’t for looking at, if you got a mic and there are words up, sang those things sister! Oh and you know your part, it’s the same harmony you do on every song, it’s easier that way and we also took the liberty of color coding the windscreens so you know which mic is yours.

I need some help, what’s this list missing?

Last week we kicked off a poll asking “Is it ok for non-Christians to play in worship bands?” So far the results are very interesting, 50% say no it’s not ok, and the other 50% either say yes it’s ok, or in some cases it is ok. You know you have a good poll question when you split 50/50 in the results

This past Sunday I had a meeting with my worship team that would have been absolutely disastrous had any of my team not been a mature Christian, being discipled and united in vision. Perhaps some other time I’ll blog about that meeting, which was one of the most amazing moments I’ve ever had in ministry. For now I’ll talk about why I think it’s important that if we are leading a congregation in worship that only mature, discipled, called and gifted Christians do that.

The criteria we use for any position of leadership uses this set of criteria in order of importance:

1. Character
2. Calling
3. Gifting

Anytime we get those 3 things out of order we put our self in a dangerous situation. I’m not even going to discuss the practical problems and dangers though they are many, instead I’ll focus again on what’s more important and that’s the spiritual problems. I’ve played in a lot of worship bands and many of the times not all were mature, discipled, called Christians. Some of those were gifted and effective musically but none of them had a chance of being effective spiritually because we were modeling that gifting was more important than character and God’s calling. If confronted with that we surely would have said, “no no we don’t believe that“, but then why are we modeling that?

Some might say, “but we’re a missional worship band so for us it makes sense.” To that I’d say then it’s even more important for you to get this and not have non-Christians on your band. Because now the lost is looking at you, and from experience, here’s the 1 question they’ll have that you’ll never be able to answer:

• How important can it be to give your life to Christ if that’s not even a requirement to lead in the worship of that same Christ?

Please re-read that question if you didn’t get it the first time. Now re-read one more time. Worship leaders, let’s model what’s right, let’s not compromise in what’s most important in the kingdom to which your worship band should be leading people to. I’m not promoting legalism, maybe there’s some confluence of circumstances that it makes sense, I’m just saying let’s examine the heart of the issue and keep an eye on what’s most important.

Thanks everyone for all your feedback, I value it greatly.