Music/Worship Leaders

[deltaguitar]

I play guitar in our worship band and sing some. When our youth band plays or we are out at other churches I co-lead. I would recommend getting Paul Balouche's worship band instructional DVDs. They are very helpful and teach things like flowing and transitioning between songs and playing with others.

I am not sure your experience level but usually it is not technical ability that most bands suffer with but with learning how to play together and as a team. The truth is that it doesn't take a lot of talent to be a pretty good band as long as folks stick to the basics. Good intros, transitions, and overall tightness of the band will allow the congregation to relax.

One thing that we need to get better at is our music interludes. If I do a guitar solo I want to at least have a basic plan ahead of time so that we sound professional. At our old UPC church there was a lot of that but we didn't have good intros then.

Our band usually receives the songs through email and we practice separately and then come together with the vocals for practice.

There are times when we have to work the music out but our band leaders usually have the music worked out ahead of time so if their are any questions we can usually take care of it with the vocalist there. We have lead sheets because we don't spend a lot of time practicing and we have a book that we keep all our music in. Our band leaders are very organized so they keep my book for me and add songs as needed.

Our service starts at 10:30 so the band tries to practice from about 9:40 to 10:15. If we learn new songs sometimes we will practice on a friday night or after Wednesday night bible study.

We have been playing together for two years and those first few months were rough because as a new church we didn't have our set list well developed. Now we can choose from many different songs.

We do a lot of the same music you do, usually the top songs by Tomlin, Israel, Planetshakers, and several from Paul Balouche. We don't do much black gospel or pentecostal style music because we are mostly rockers but we do a few every now and then.

Our keyboard player/worship leader is a member here. I will let him know about this thread.

Overall, I think our band is pretty good and I am not embarrassed when we play out. We are all experienced musicians. Our drummer and bass player are asked frequently to help other church groups at times because of their experience and they are both in their early 20s. Of course every baptist church has like 25 guitarist so they never need me so I don't get asked that much. Our keyboardist rocks out on the organ in a very rock/bluesy way.