Fork In The Road Music

The Importance of Teaching

Dec 9, 2009 Youth Worship

When working with my youth worship team I often find myself emphasizing rehearsing the songs. After all, we generally have one event or another to prepare for so that means creating a songlist, and working up that music to perform or lead with.
I have realized, however, that there is a huge benefit to teaching, and not just rehearsing. When I first started to teach guitar lessons I told myself that I wanted my students to learn why a chord was what it was, what the names of the notes they were paying etc… Instead of just “play this chord”
I believed by teaching them how to learn to play guitar, then they could continue to learn whether I was teaching them or not.
The same thing should be true for worship teams. We should work with them to teach the basics of chord structures, rhythms, balance, tone, song structure, etc… So that they begin to recognize these things.
What’s cool is that when your group starts to learn these things, they begin to play musically together. You don’t have to explain every part of every song, but they begin to feel it.
For us this has resulted in more productive rehearsals, and more enjoyable ones too.
So what basic lessons would you teach a beginning praise band?

Tags: band, Event, guitar, How To, lessons, Music, praise, rehearsal, sing, song, Songlist, Songs, Team, work, Worship, worship team, worship teams, youth, Youth Worship

Instrumental Reflection Break

Jul 20, 2009 Free Stuff

For one more week I will take a break from posting an instrumental reflection. I unintentionally went on break from them during My weeks of summer camp. I I tended to record some of me playing piano at camp but seems like all I aged was guitar. That being said look for new reflections and othe regular blog posts to resume shortly.

Tags: break, camp, guitar, Instrumental, piano, reflections, summer

Working With Youth Bands: Point and Play

Mar 27, 2009 Youth Worship

Here is a little exercise we use with our youth band to work on playing together, keeping rhythm, following a leader and learning to listen to other parts. We took a repetitive section of a song, in our case we used the first part of “Undiginified” and we made sure everyone knew it. Then I told them that I had an on off switch. When I pointed to them they should play if they weren’t playing or stop playing if they were. I started off pointing to the drums and bass, then added guitar, keyboard etc. Then I switched off the drums to see how the rest of the group would keep beat. We played for about 10 minutes with this and I let my vocalists take a turn at telling members when to play or not.

It was something simple to do, but they really had fun.

What fun exercises do you use with your youth praise team?

Tags: band, drums, guitar, Team, work, youth, Youth Band, Youth Worship

Contemporary vs Traditional? Enough Already!

Mar 24, 2009 Worship Planning

Part of me wonders why we are even still discussing this. The other part knows It will never go away. As long as we have churches we will be fighting the same battle and asking the same questions. So instead of giving my argument on the side of why we should worship one way or another I thought I would give a few suggestions on how to help bridge the gap.

1. Realize God doesn’t care. No there were no guitars or keyboards in the bible. But the fact is that there were no organs either. We need to realize that the instruments we use and types of songs are our preference, not God’s.

2. Understand we are all different.  Different types of services meet different needs. Do you have one Sunday school class for everyone? Probably not. We need to understand that just as we learn in different ways, we worship differently.

3. Acknowledge others worship style is just as valid as yours. Just because someone else worships different than you, doesn’t make them wrong, and doesn’t make you right.

4. Worship together. We have two styles of worship but one of the best things we do is to worship together on occasion. We have done this two ways. First we have done some services that utilize elements from both the traditional and contemporary service. Second we have combined services but left the basic elements the same, dependent on the location. This has helped to introduce members to the other style of worship.

5. What’s contemporary now is traditional tomorrow. I have already seen that what we used to call contemporary has become the tradition in many churches. What used to be innovative is now predictable. In fact I could argue in some churches the “Contemporary Service” is more traditional than the “Traditional Service”. And now we even have “Emerging?”

So those are some of my suggestions. What ways does your church help bridge the divide between contemporary, traditional and other worship styles?

Tags: Church, guitar, How To, Songs, Sunday, Worship

Sunday Setlist 3/8/09

Mar 9, 2009 Worship Planning

Tags: band, CD, Church, Free, guitar, Setlist, Songs, Sunday, Sunday Setlist, work

Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 3

Mar 7, 2009 How To

This week was our 3rd week of guitar lessons and I wanted to get to the point of what most people want to do with their guitar, which is playing chord. I included in their worksheets a basic chord chart. I figured since we learned how to read a chord chart last week that they should do fine and I was right. I started with a basic chord progression of 1 4  5  4  1 and we started in the key of C so they played  C   F   G    F   C. Then I said I would just add one chord and we would play in a different key. I asked them to learn D. Then I asked what the chord progression would be in the key of G and we figured it out G  C  D  C  G. Then I added the A chord and we played the progression in the key of D which was D   G  A  G  D.  It was a great way to build on a progression having to only learn one new chord at a time.

After that we worked on strumming patterns. Started of just playing down and upstrokes 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. Then I taught them to keep the same pattern but only actually strum at different times. I had half the class play on down beats only, and the other half play on upbeats only. We will build from that and add different patterns over the next three weeks.

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Tags: fork In the Road, guitar, How To, lessons, work

Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 2

Mar 6, 2009 How To

Last Thursday we had our second guitar lesson for the class. I actually gained one student, and everyone else was there as well. I asked the question at the beginning how many practiced and most of them said they spent atleast a little time working on stuff during the week.

I took some time to review and then we talked about tuning. The previous week we tuned using a tuner, but this week we talked about tuning using the 5th fret method. I think they actually took to it easier than the tuner. That may have been because they had been using the tuner for a week and the guitars were already close to being intune.

Afte that we reviewed how to make a scale and we played the G scale two octaves all the way up. Then we went over how to make a chord. I told them that making a chord was like carving a statue of an elephant.  To carve a statue of an elephant you take a block of marble and chip away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant. I then said making a chord is the same thing. We wrote down the three notes that make a G chord and then circled all those notes on the guitar fretboard. Then I showed them the fingering for a G chord and it made sense. My goal is to show them why something is not just what it is.

Finally we ended with chord progressions, and talked about what I IV V etc meant.

It was a great class. I had some requests to tape the class and put it up online. There are lots of online guitar classes out there but what do you think?

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Tags: fork In the Road, guitar, How To, lessons, work

Appreciating Your Band- Today is the Day

Mar 4, 2009 Uncategorized

Today I passed out a rehearsal CD to our band. I spent some money and purchased everyone in the band a copy of Lincoln Brewster’s Cd “Today is the Day”. The songs are great, different from what we have traditionally done, and the style fits our group. Plus I have a sophomore kid playing guitar who can pretty much nail all the guitar parts.  It was something simple that cost a little bit of money but that i hope goes a long way. Since we recently stopped making “reheasal cds” for our team, buying them a copy of a worship CD helps them to continue to learn songs, plus increases their worship music collection. 

I am not sure if we will continue to buy CDs for the team but it seems like a great way to show a little appreciation and to stay within copyright regulations as well.

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Tags: Appreciate, band, CD, fork In the Road, guitar, rehearsal, Songs, Team, Worship

Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 1

Feb 21, 2009 How To

On many occasions during the past year I have been asked to teach individual guitar lessons. Instead of doing private guitar lessons, like I have done in the past, I decided to try a different approach. I put a small article in our church magazine indicating that I would be teaching a 6 week class for beginning guitar players one hour, once a week. I had never tried teaching a guitar class before but I thought it might be fun, and at least be different. 

I advertised for about 3 weeks. I told people if they were interested to email me and let me know. I had a few inquiries on Sundays, a phone call or two and an email. I really was wondering what I should expect. Would anyone come? Who would they be?

Thursday night we had our first class. I had 12 students; 3 kids, 2 youth and 7 adults. As I was warned by a fellow blogger and worship leader, the first 20 minutes we spent on tuning. But we also were able to cover the parts of a guitar, how to hold a pick, alternate picking, the names of the strings, what half steps, whole, steps are, what makes up a major scale, how you get a triad, and how to play a G and C chord.

It was alot for one night and I will be interested to see how much they retain for the next week. I plan on using video to put demonstrations on our church website and using video to answer questions they have during the week. When I get some of those up I will definately show you the links.

So if you have taught or were going to teach a beginner guitar class, what would you cover in your next lesson?

Tags: Church, guitar, How To, lessons, Sunday, video, Worship, Worship Leader, youth

Older Songs Still Resonate

Feb 18, 2009 Worship Planning

Last summer I led worship for a group of college students at a work camp. They take a week to spend together repairing homes in the area where they are working. I was leading worship for their evening services. The first night I got up with a great songlist. Some new songs from the up and coming worship bands leading worship out there. The response I got back was mixed. There were some who knew the songs and sang along, but overall there was not a huge participation. 

That night we announced our suggestion box. If anyone had a suggestion about camp, including song requests, they could put them in the box and we would try to work them in. What I saw both comforted and suprised me. The majority of the requests were not the new upcoming worship songs. Most of the requests were for songs like, God of Wonders, Here I Am to Worship, Heart of Worship, Light the Fire, Lord I LIft Your Name on high. To be honest I had overlooked alot of these when I was preparing for the week because I thought they might be too old, too overdone. That clearly was not the case.

I wondered. Maybe in the drive to hear, learn, play and write the newest great worship songs I had stopped using some songs that really resonate with people. Maybe it was because these were the songs that this group grew up in with in youth group. These were the songs they had come to faith to. They were the songs that they were introduced to at church camp. They were songs that are known by heart, no words needed, nothing to learn, just worship. I can tell you it was great to get up in front, strum one chord, sing the line “Lord of all creation…” and then sit back and play guitar. 

What I learned from this experience is that it is important to find out the songs of the group you are leading. I wish I could have had the song suggestions before camp started, instead of after the first night. I will not stop introducing, or writing, or singing new songs. But I also will remember that some old songs still resonate loudly and not leave them out either.

What are some songs you may have passed by that still resonate?

Tags: band, camp, Church, guitar, preparing, Songs, summer, work, Worship, youth