Tag Archives: How To

The Importance of Teaching

December 09, 2009   Russell Martin   No comments

basic mathWhen 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?

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What Should I Sing?

July 10, 2009   Russell Martin   1 Comment

dark questionWhen I am a guest worship leader at a camp, or retreat, one of the hardest things I deal with is figuring out what songs I should sing. This seems like a small thing, but I can’t help but think, “Are they going to know these songs?” or “What songs mean the most to them?”
Here are three ideas about how to choose songs in that situation:

1. Talk to leaders and participants ahead of time if possible. When you first are contacted about leading worship, ask about what songs they use. Find out if they use hymns or worship songs, gospel, cutting edge, emerging? Ask what the worship service is like at their church or churches? Do they have a band, or is it more acoustic? This doesn’t mean you have to change your style, but this information can help you to choose songs that are more representative for the group.

2. Have a suggestion box- The first time I tried this I was skeptical about it. I was leading worship for a college work camp and the program director put out a suggestion box in the back. She told the group that if they had any suggestions for worship to put them in and we would try to accommodate them. It turned out working great. The song suggestions they had let me know what they were familiar with, and by their choices told me what they were needing to hear. We were able to use most of the songs, many of which I was already planning on anyway. Some of them were ones I did not know, but learned, and not only used there, but have used many times since and have become a regular part of my repertoire.

3. Well I don’t have a third one.. what would you suggest?

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Contemporary vs Traditional? Enough Already!

March 24, 2009   Russell Martin   1 Comment

toysoldier

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?

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My Five -Posts Since August

March 22, 2009   Russell Martin   No comments

I’ve been writing posts for this blog since August of 2008. So after 9 months I wondered what my most popular posts are… well I wonder no longer cause here they are. Apparently so far a lot of people are looking for free backgrounds. Tune in later for my 5 favorite posts.

Past Year (Since August)

Free Stuff:Angel Background
Youth Worship: Worshipping Without a Band
Free Backgrounds
Cardboard Testimonies
How to Make Your Own Worship Background 

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Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 3

March 07, 2009   Russell Martin   No comments

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.

If you like this article then consider subscribing to Fork In the Road music by email or using your rss reader. Visit my contact page for more ways to stay in touch.

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Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 2

March 06, 2009   Russell Martin   No comments

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?

If you like this article then consider subscribing to Fork In the Road music by email or using your rss reader. Visit my contact page for more ways to stay in touch.

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Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 1

February 21, 2009   Russell Martin   4 Comments

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?

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I Missed My 100th Post

November 28, 2008   Russell Martin   No comments

Apparently I missed one of my first milestones in the life of Fork In The Road Blog. Two posts ago was my 100th blog post. I guess that would make this 102. In this brief time of I have learned much about blogging and have apparently written some things that others have learned from and enjoyed. Here are my top 10 viewed posts so far.

Youth Worship: Worshipping without a band
Cardboard Testimonies
Free Stuff: Angel Background
Free Backgrounds
Resources
Music Ministry
Removing Distractions
How to- Make Your Own Worship Background
Free Song: Awaken Our Hearts
What To Do With a Youth Worship Team

Do you have a post on Fork In The Road that was extremely helpful or inspiring for you?

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National Youth Workers Convention- Part 1

November 22, 2008   Russell Martin   1 Comment

This weekend I am attending the National Youth Workers Convention in Nashville TN. I have attended many of these events in the past years, especially when I was the youth director, but now since I have moved into a different role, (I am a volunteer and work with the youth band) I am viewing this conference differently. I used to come with my seminars already chosen about being a youth director, or setting up a youth group, or the best games for youth groups. Now I am looking at things like the course I took yesterday on how to be a transformational leader, or spiritual disciplines, and things like that.

The thing that always awesome are the general sessions and times of worship and teaching that occur there. Yesterday they started off with Mercy Me, David Crowder, Joe Castillo (The sand art guy) and Frances Chan.

Well… we are about to head off to lunch and a super seminar. I hope to share some of the lessons learned with you in future posts. Oh.. and for all you twitter folk you can follow what’s going on by searching the tag #nywc.

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Youth Worship: Making Your Job Easier

October 23, 2008   Russell Martin   No comments

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

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