HELP YOUR WORSHIP TEAM DO THEIR BEST (PT 2A)
PREPARING REHEARSAL MATERIALS
People really want to do their best. They want to come in to rehearsal prepared, to play well, and to leave rehearsal having enjoyed the night. They want to feel prepared and ready for the coming Sunday. However, it's not only their responsibility to come prepared for rehearsal. It’s up to the worship leader to equip them with the materials they need in order to practice effectively.
If you are going to ask your teammates to take their own personal time to prepare for rehearsal by actively listening to and then learning to play or sing the music, then there are some essential worship rehearsal materials that you are responsible for providing to them.
To help them get the most from their practice time, you leaders need to make sure to provide the following resources to your team.
1. Timely notification of when and in what capacity they are serving on the team
Whether you have a smaller team that rotates every other week, or a giant team that is completely different from week to week, there needs to be a system in place so people know when they are scheduled to be on the platform. I suggest having two ways of doing this, with both ways operating at the same time.
We put together 3 main schedules during the year. There are the spring, summer, and fall schedules. One month before the new schedule is due out, we ask everyone about any conflicts or additional availability. From there, we distribute a master schedule to everyone two weeks out. Life happens, and we ask that if there are unexpected changes in their availability to let us know at least a week out, if possible. The next tool is sending out Planning Center Online (PCO) no later than 2 weeks out, preferably 4 weeks.
In PCO we indicate who is leading what song, list the whole song set, and a tentative service order. This lets everyone know before they start their personal practice time what songs they need to be ready to lead out on. They can then spend some extra preparation time on those particular songs.
The last major component of scheduling is putting in the call times, rehearsal times, and service times. The reason for this is so that everyone knows when they are supposed to be plugged in, warmed up, and ready to rock for rehearsal and service.
2. Accurate rehearsal materials
Please don't underestimate the importance of that qualifying statement ACCURATE rehearsal materials. There are few things as disempowering and deflating to a volunteer as scheduling personal time and sitting down to practice, only to find that the materials are either wrong, missing, incomplete, or changed at the last minute. This means that it's our job to sit down and make sure our materials are correct, in order, and accessible to our team.
Here are a few things to double check before you hit email all in PCO
Chord charts- Make sure that the chord charts are in the right key (especially important if you do the same song in different keys), that the lyrics are correct (especially if you copied and pasted off a lyrics website), in the order you are going to perform them, and that the chords are correct. In addition, you can create capo charts for your guitar players easily in PCO. If you use click tracks, notate at the beginning of the chart how many measures of click before the band kicks in. The best way to make sure that everything is right is to actually play through the songs yourself looking at your charts.
Click tracks- If your team uses click tracks, it's a good practice to make them available on planning center. Your drummers can practice along with the tracks and get used to staying with a fixed tempo. In addition, I typically put two different versions of the click track on PCO. One version will have the click and cues panned left and everything else panned right. This track is primarily for the drummers to use. The second version will have all parts in it, but the click and cues are muted. The second track is primarily for the keyboard players and drummers to be able to hear distinctly what is available in the track. This enables them to know what they would like to play live and have eliminated from the track, or kept in the track because it adds to the song but is not possible to pull off live.
Transposed audio tracks- We rarely play and sing songs in the original recorded key. I've gone round and round with teammates and other worship leaders about this practice, but have personally decided that to best serve our congregation and increase their participation in singing, I choose to transpose our music to fit the average voice range. However, because of this, I can't just upload the original recording for our team to practice with because it will most often not be in the “singable” range. There are two options for providing transposed audio tracks. The first option is built into planning center. When you hover over your original recording, there will be blue up and down arrows that allow you to transpose your file. You need to make sure to indicate in the arrangement what the original key is for the song. If you're not using planning center, they've made that feature available at transpr.com. The second option is to record your actual rehearsals. I recommend doing both. Your team members will have the original transposed recording to practice with as well as the rehearsal track to evaluate and improve upon. (Note: Make sure you're doing all of this legally! The streaming license by CCLI allows you to do all of this legally.)
Links to purchase- Due to copyright law, we do not allow our teams to download the music from PCO, so I make sure to provide the link to iTunes to purchase it. It's the best of both worlds because we support other brothers and sisters who are writing worship music, plus it's there at our fingertips whenever we want to listen to it! All the while, we are staying legal.
Youtube video links- There are tons of free videos available to link to, including but not limited to guitar, bass, keys, and drum covers, as well as tutorials. I always search and watch through to find the best ones that accurately reflect the songs we're doing and tie them to each song arrangement. In addition, if there are any videos where the artist talks about how and why they wrote the song, or a live performance by the actual artist, I will put those in as well. I think it's important for our team to hear the heart behind the song and the way it is performed with passion by those who make it well known. Here is a link to a great resource from Elevation Worship where they show how to play various parts of the songs they have released.
3. Additional rehearsal aids
In addition to the materials I've listed above, I have found that there are some great websites that provide resources that are incredibly helpful to our team. I know that these are paid resources, but if you think about what your time is worth, it's well worth the investment. It's like hiring a guitar teacher and a vocal coach without actually having to pay them a salary.
Worshipartistry.com- This is a resource I've just recently come across and I love it. Their website is filled with guitar tutorials that break down how to play the verse, chorus, and other riffs. In addition, there are videos that loop so that you can practice the part over and over again till it becomes second nature. They have multiple pricing options starting with a single person, then 3 people and up. For the price, it's an incredible resource.
Sheet music and lead sheets- In addition to chord charts, I like to make lead sheets available for my vocalists. I usually go to Praisecharts.com first to look for my charts. I like their charts because there are usually vocal harmonies already written. The only problem I have is if we aren't doing the song in the key they have available, then I usually check a couple of other websites. I like Lifewayworship.com because they have what they call supercharts, which have the song in every key.
