How To Avoid Song Killers
Every week, our team sets about the task of creating music to worship with. We create spaces where our congregation can meet with God. And we do it primarily through the tool of music.
Everyone has their personal excuse for not making more engaging music that's easy to sing along to.
“I’m not a professional.”
“I like to make it my own.”
“I didn’t have time to practice before rehearsal.”
“We’re not a big church.”
“It’s just church.”
“We’re all volunteers.”
“We’re not trying to sell our music.”
"We don't have the same number of musicians they do on the recording."
"We like to be Spirit-led."
Ok, whatever. I get it.
But I bet you want to make it EASY for your congregation to sing, right? You want them to feel comfortable enough to close their eyes and belt at the top of their lungs, whether in tune or not. You don’t want to be the distraction.
But where to start?
What CAN you do?
Two things. Use the right tempos for songs and learn to replicate. I’ll unpack that.
Tempo
Every song written and recorded was done at a set tempo, a specific number of Beats Per Minute, or BPM. I’ll call that the “right” tempo for this Fertilizer. Slow songs are often in the 60-90 range, medium in the 90-110 range, and fast 110 and up. It’s not rocket science.
But being off that tempo is like doing a chemistry experiment. Before getting my music education degree, I started as a Chemical Engineering major. My grades made sure that didn’t last, but here’s a great example from the www.
Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. It contains heme groups, and at the center of each heme is an iron atom. (musicians, stick with me!) This iron is normally in the +2 oxidation state (written Fe²⁺). Fe²⁺ in hemoglobin binds O₂ effectively. BUT if Fe³⁺ forms, it can’t bind oxygen, leading to hypoxia.
One electron difference = life vs. suffocation.
Not to be dramatic, but you will kill a song if the tempo is off. Why?
The strumming pattern on the guitar, the approach on the piano, the drum groove, and even the ease of singing are affected. What happens is that the song gets crammed into the playing style of the musician rather than the musician adapting to play the style of the song. That’s why chord charts can give you false confidence. You might be playing the right chords, but if the tempo is off, it won’t feel like the same song. And it can be the death of singing, maybe even the death of worship. For that song.
Which leads to the second thing you can do, even with limited… everything.
Replicate
“Replicate before you create,” a couple of wise musicians from Vertical Music once said. What does that mean? That before you “make a song your own,” go through the discipline of learning the parts.
A song is made up of the sum of its parts. And each musician needs to learn the parts, or the song won’t be complete.
Learning the discipline of learning the parts will have three very important effects.
Simply studying the song will make you more comfortable and confident with it, two of the greatest contributors to making great music together as a team.
When I play what my team has expected to hear (because they have been listening to the reference recording to learn their parts), they will be better able to lock in.
Our congregations LOVE the familiar. They’ve probably listened to many of the songs we sing on Sundays throughout the week, and when they hear “the intro” to Holy Forever, something clicks inside and helps them get ready. They might not even know it, but familiar trumps artsy 9.7 times out of 10 in terms of their engagement.
Now, of course, you can change an arrangement, so something unique and creative, follow the nudge of the Holy Spirit. But for your team and congregation's sake, make sure the lion's share of the songs are recognizably "stock."
The bonus is this: practicing at home with a metronome (you can type in “metronome” in any browser to use a free one) and going through the discipline of replicating will make you a more effective, compatible, useful musician that flat out has more fun!
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
How To Avoid Song Killers (Nº 432)
