I’ll give you a little hint behind this one.  This post comes directly out of personal experience.  Keep that in mind as your reading. 🙂

There are probably going to be times when something is out of tune.  Badly out of tune.  It could be your own instrument.  It could be the instrument of an inexpereinced player.  Regardless of whose instrument it is, something that’s out of tune is a major disctration that keeps us from focusing on Jesus.  If something is slightly out of tune it will distract any skilled musicians in the congregation because they can pick it out.  It will distract average non-musical people in the congregation as well because they know something is wrong but can’t quite figure out what it is.  If something is badly out of tune, everyone notices and everyone is distracted.  So what do you to when this happens?

Plan Ahead

Like yesterday’s post on screen projection, it is so important to plan ahead.  If you are the guitar player – make sure you have fresh strings and you are in tune.  Get a tuner or ask the church to buy you one (preferably a pedal tuner that you can use during the worship time to always make sure you’re in tune.)  If you are the piano player know how to tell when the piano is out of tune and make sure the church is on top of getting it tuned.

If you are overseeing guitar players always make sure that they tune before rehearsal, before soundcheck, before the worship time and during the worship time.  Ask your church to be able to budget for new strings for the guitar players.  Buy your guitar players tuners if they don’t have them.

A Personal Account

These things seem fairly obvious to most of us, but let my share a story that happened when I was a bit more inexperienced.

We made plans to bring Arlen Salte from Break Forth Ministries to do a worship team workshop at our church.  We had planned well and there were about 300 people from different states coming.  It was an exciting time for us.  Our worship team agreed that we would do a worship set in the afternoon and them let him critique us.  Unfortunately, in my excitement about the workshop, I forgot to plan ahead so that I would have new strings that weekend.  My strings were old.  Ancient.  It was bad.  In my rush to make sure all of the logistics were worked out for the weekend, I completely forgot about the fact that my strings were not going to stay in tune.  We started our set with “Blessed Be Your Name” with a driving acoustic guitar part.  After about two measures I thought, “Uh-oh.  This is bad.  Really bad.”  What did I do?

What To Do If It Happens

I could have kept going and played through the whole song with a badly out-of-tune guitar.  But I knew it was a major disctraction – especially in a room full of musicians.  So, I stopped the band, addressed the problem, admitted that I was out of tune and had the band restart the song without me.  Things went well and Arlen mentioned that it was better that I took a couple minutes to address the distraction and then move on, rather than letting the disctration keep going.  That night, I bought new strings and restringed my guitar as Sunday morning worship was the next morning. (Although, I hate to admit it – I bought strings from Wal-Mart.  They’re the only place open at 10:30pm that sold guitar strings!)  What I probably should have done is just let the band keep going without the guitar.  At the time, they relied heavily on the guitar leading things, so sometimes if I would stop, the whole band would stop.  So, if you’re the one out of tune, drop out in a non-distracting way, tune if you can and then come back in.  If you can’t tune, be able to communicate to other musicians that they need to lead the music.

But, what if it’s not you that’s out of tune?

Work out a signal before hand that might be able to let your guitar players know that they are out of tune and they need to drop out (hint, don’t use the hand cutting through the throat signal!).  Find a subtle gesture that says “sit out” to someone.  If you have an opportunity to lean over and talk to them quickly (during a prayer time or instrumental interlude) tell them that they need to retune and ask for a thumbs up or some sort of signal that lets you know they’re back in tune.

Being in tune is so important in music and is a skill that we should always take care to remember.  Do you have any suggestions for a situation like this or any stories of your own experience?

This past Sunday at Living Word we had a bit of a minor technical difficulty where the wrong song was put into the schedule for the day and we didn’t have a backup of the correct one.  Although it was humorous and everything else went well, there was a bit of an awkward moment and it would be good to know how to avoid any awkwardness when things like this happen.  So, what do we do to avoid the awkwardness?

Plan Ahead

The first thing to do is to make sure that you’ve planned well enough ahead of time.  Check and recheck things.  Very often there are several worship songs (or even hymns) with the same title.  Check with the data entry volunteer, the volunteer who proofs and/or runs projection and yourself that you have the right song entered in.  Remind the volunteer who enters the songs that when they are in doubt which is the right song they should put in both (or all five) with the same title.  That way, if the wrong song is on the screen the right song can be found quickly (with the use of decent projection software anyway).  It is especially vital to triple or quadruple check things when you are working in a church plant and several different people in several different places are putting the elements of the service together.

Teach Everyone What To Do

It won’t really help much if you as the main worship leader know what to do when a situation like this happens but the rest of your team is clueless.  Teach them some simple ways to keep a musical flow going while you lead the congregation through the distraction.  Teach the team to:

• Keep playing through the verse of the song that isn’t up on the screen (or the chorus, if that’s where the team is currently playing)
• Be ready to keep playing through that song if the worship leader feels led to use it as a solo
• Be ready to find an ending point if the worship leader feels led to go to the next or a different song

Main worship leaders need to be able to do these things while the team is doing the above:

• Recognize that the song is not correct.  If you can see the projection screen or if you have a confidence screen or monitor that will be an easy way to tell.  If you can’t see the projection screen, watch people and see if they’ve stopped singing.
• Don’t focus on the problem.  Quickly and gently inform the congregation that the correct song is not on the screen, then move on to what you feel the Holy Spirit is leading you to do.  A short, “It looks like we have the incorrect song up at the moment” is sufficient.
• Use this as an opportunity to let the congregation pray and worship on their own.  After you’ve informed them that the wrong song is up, you could say something like “While we see if we have the right song, take a few moments to pray and worship God silently or with your families.”  Lead them through a couple minutes of corporate prayer or praise.  This also gives the projection volunteer time to find the correct song and get it up if they can.
• If the projection volunteer can’t find the correct song, it’s obviously time to either move on or inform the congregation that just the worship team will be singing this song and the congregation should worship by listening to the words.  Only do this if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vocalists are always clearly understood through the sound system. If you sing with no words on the screen through a muddy, unclear system, no one will be able to worship without being distracted by the fact that they can’t understand the words.
• If you feel led by the Holy Spirit that having the congregation listen isn’t the right fit for the moment, decide to move on to the next song for the morning.  Hopefully you’ve taught your team to keep playing the verse or chorus for a bit while you’re waiting to know what to do next.  Give them a cue to end the music at an appropriate spot (not in the middle of a verse!) and then lead the congregation into the next song.

The absolute best thing to do would be to plan ahead well enough to avoid these situations but if they do arise these are some simple things you can do to help minimize the distraction and keep people’s hearts and minds focused on Jesus, not on the technical difficulty at hand.

We’ve looked at the role and importance of a producer in the music industry.  Now let’s apply this to us as worship leaders in the local church.

Every week we choose songs to use during our worship services at our churches.  These songs could range from popular songs that are heard on the radio every day to more obscure songs that no one knows about to classic hymns from whatever hymnal our church might be using.  What we choose to do with those songs is how we make ourselves producers.  We’re now the ones who will be taking something very good (volunteers who love music and love God, but might not necessarily know exactly what to play or how to play it) to something excellent. So what are our choices?

In General

One of the most common mistakes many worship teams make is that when the music starts everyone plays.  A worship leader as a producer takes the each part of the worship team and helps them to know when to play or when to sit out.  The worship leader helps the piano player to play in a higher register when the guitar is playing in the middle.  The worship leader helps the drummer know when to ‘kick it up a notch’ or tone it down.  The worship leader helps take a potentially muddy, chaotic sound and polishes it.

Popular Music

When we choose music that is currently popular on the radio we fall into a great temptation – do the song exactly like it’s done on the radio or on the CD it came from.  We think we have to do every repeat, duplicate the exact guitar or piano part, feel it’s required to sing the bridge (that in most cases always goes too high for the average congregation) and possibly even copy the exact vocal fills that are on the original recording.  This might seem like a good thing to do so that your band sounds professional but a couple of problems occur when copying the original:

• Originality – a skill that producers really need to have – is gone.
• Flexibility – a process that is so important if we desire to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading – is gone.
• Expectations – depending on the skill level of your musicians – might be too high.

Work with what you have to create an original arrangement, be flexible to change the order or length of a song, and communicate expectations well and make sure your musicians are comfortable with them.  You can’t expect a high school guitarist with not much experience to pull off a Lincoln Brewster solo!

Hymns

Most classic hymns were written in times where a keyboard instrument (either an organ or piano) was the dominant instrument.  In today’s culture, that’s not always the case.  Learn to simplify the chord structure of hymns so that a guitarist can easily play with them.  Perhaps rewrite your own piano part to a hymn so that the piano player is not playing every single note and the melody.  There are countless possibilities.

Be Deliberate

This next week as you plan your music, be deliberate in planning who will play what and when.  Make decisions to be creative instead of just copying what’s on the CD and take joy in the fact that you get to help produce a polished sound week after week!

(photo by Richard Smith)

Have you ever wondered when you read in your CD jacket, “Produced by so-and-so” what that actually means?  When I was first getting really into music I never understood what that meant and who the “producer” was.  These next few posts aim to educate a little bit on what a producer does and how important it is for worship leaders to know.

What is a Producer?

A producer is someone who does just that – produces.  A music producer produces the overall sound of the music that is on any given album.  The producer works closely with the album artist and songwriters to decide what the best sound will be for any given song.  The producer has the final say in whether or not guitar or piano will be used on a certain song, how long a song is, if there should be backing vocals or just a solo voice.  Honestly, the producer does a lot more than he gets credit for!  Sure, he gets his name in the CD jacket – but beyond that, did you know that most artists wouldn’t be where they are today without having a producer?

The Importance of a Producer

Sure, the artist and/or songwriter on any album has some say in what the music will sound like.  But, what most of the listening public doesn’t realize is that the process of making an album goes something like this:

• Songwriter writes song.  It could be amazing right out of the gate but most of the time only parts of it are amazing.
• Songwriter submits song to producer.
• Producer listens to song and says, “You need to change that line, move that note somewhere else, shorten the verse, lengthen the chorus…” or any number of different things.
• Songwriter wisely agrees to do what producer says and also tries to explain any type of sound or feel he wants in the song.
• Producer works with songwriter to figure out what instruments should be in the song and what and when each instrument should play.
• All parts are recorded (under producer’s supervision).
• Songwriter’s song hits the radio and is now amazing.

Of course, the song needs to be decent in the first place to even make it to a producer, but the producer is the one who makes it polished.

Recent Example

For those of you who watch American Idol© and for those of you who listen to KLOVE radio, you’ve probably witnessed this process take place without even knowing it.  Chris Sligh, a contestant on American Idol from two years ago made the top ten.  He didn’t end up winning and has now gone on to have his own album.  A while back on the KLOVE morning show with John and Sherry Rivers Chris Sligh sang one of his songs he wrote.  It was just him and a piano.

While it was quite nice to listen to, something just wasn’t quite “right” with the song.  Fast-forward about a year.  Chris is able to have his album produced by an award-winning producer, Brown Bannister.  The new version of his song is now played on KLOVE and it’s a completely different song.  A few notes were changed here and there, different instrumentation was added and the song was arranged in such a way that now it is stellar.  It is amazing what a good producer can do.

Brown Bannister took something that was decent and made it excellent.  As worship leaders, we act as producers every week as well.  How do we do it?  We’ll look at that in the next post.

(photo by Jacob Bassing)