Fork In The Road Music

This used to be the way I did things when I was leading the youth worship team.

1. Find a song that the youth wanted to do.

2. Type up the lyrics

3. Use my awesome ear training skills to figure out the chords

4. Transpose the key if needed for the vocals to sing

5. Rehearse with the band

6. Create a powerpoint slide from the lyrics

6. Repeat

I guess I have done it that way for the longest time because there was really no other way to do it. There were some song books that went along with some CDs but they usually contained the full piano sheet, not really easy to use for a guitar player. So I continued listening to songs, chording them out, and my computer began to become filled with pages of these creations. That was until now…

Now there are many resources that come out with everything provided for you. There are many out there from different companies. I started out using SPIN or Student Praise Interactive Network. They provide CD’s with split tracks along with lyric sheets, chord sheets, piano parts and powerpoint or media shout ready lyrics.

Recently I have started using Vertical Music Worship Tools. These provide pretty much the same thing like split tracks, lead sheets, guitar parts etc. They also include a DVD that contains videos of each instrument playing their part. This is great for demonstrating how to play a certain song on a specific instrument. This Vertical Music resource creates its arrangements from a specific artists CD. The most recent one I received were arrangements from Lincoln Brewster’s “Today is the Day” CD.

As I said before there are tons of resources like this that are now becoming available. The ones I mentioned are just the two that I have been most familiar with. I suggest these because while it is great to be able to sit and chord out song after song, is it really the best use of my time? There are still many opportunities for me to hone my ear training, music transcribing skills like when I am writing songs, or when those songs come along that I don’t have a resource for. By using these resources though I can drastically cut my arranging time down.

Oh.. I don’t have powerpoint lyrics or split tracks but I do have the lead sheets for several of my songs available for you to download. Check out all my free resources on my resource page or by clicking on free stuff

More from rgmmusic

• How To – Youth Worship in a Small Church
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