PERSONAL WORSHIP PRACTICE DONE RIGHT (PT 2b)
Imagine walking into the church building for rehearsal, plugging in your instrument, and flying through the next one and a half to 2 hours. You are having a blast playing with a great sounding band which personifies passionate worship.
This scene is IMPOSSIBLE to accomplish without EVERY individual on the platform coming to practice having personally prepared and effectively practiced on their own prior to rehearsal. (Note: Even one person not coming prepared dramatically affects the entire team.)
Worship practice preparation is essential if you want to enjoy your time together, play well as individuals and as a group, and to help serve your congregation with joy and without distraction.
There are two steps to making this happen. The first is actively listening and taking notes, so that when you start your personal practice you have a good idea of dynamics, melody and harmonies, and overall shape and form of the song. Check out the post on active listening.
The second step is to refer to your notes and start learning parts. This is in order to build muscle memory.
Here are some tips to help your team get the most out of their personal practice time.
Try it out- Most people start here and skip the active listening and note taking. However, let's just say you did your due diligence and now it's time to start playing. Grab your chart, keep a pencil handy, turn on the recording in the key you're doing the song in, and mess around. If you are a guitar player, I suggest that you do it clean with no FX. This way you can hear distinctly the clarity and precision of each note and riff you play. As you're playing, make sure to mark any trouble spots you are having, so that you can come back to and work on those spots.
Search YouTube- After you've played through the song a couple of times and identified the trouble spots, I recommend checking to see if there are any video tutorials or covers of the song you are playing. If you have a great worship minister, they have probably linked to some in Planning Center or sent you some links to tutorials on YouTube. If not, no problem! Just look it up yourself. There's some great stuff out there for most of the modern worship music that is being done in churches on a regular basis. I'm a huge fan of not reinventing the wheel. If there is someone on line who can show you how to play the licks and riffs, then go ahead and save yourself some time.
Pull out the metronome!!!- DO NOT SKIP OVER THIS! Practice is primarily about muscle memory. Most people, in an effort to get it over with, crank right through their practice at full speed. There are two problems that occur when you do this. The first problem is that you reinforce mistakes and the second problem is that you never learn to keep a solid tempo. This applies to every musician, but especially to drummers. Drummers are the engine of the machine in modern worship. If you aren't firing steady and consistently, you will cause wrecks on a consistent basis. My suggestion is if you have an Apple product, get a metronome app.
Practice trouble spots slowly- Just in case you missed it, this means pull out your metronome and set it to half the tempo of the song you are practicing. If you can't play it correctly going slowly, don't even attempt it at a faster pace. This will allow you to build the muscle memory and keep from learning any bad habits. Start with whatever musical phrase you are working on and break it into pieces. Practice a piece over and over again until you've mastered it. Then add the portion of music which is just before or right after it. This may mean starting with one measure, then adding one measure and over and over again until you get the full riff down. Then slowly begin speeding up your tempo 5 beats per minute. If you can play it well all the way through the hard section, add another 5 beats per minute. Keep doing this until you're actually playing the song faster than the original tempo.
Dial in the patches and effects- Now that you know you're able to play the song well without all the bells and whistles, it's time to add them in. You should have already made notes about what effects you need for each song. Start to put them in order if you have a keyboard or multi effects pedal so that you can switch quickly without thinking about it when it's time to switch. Now practice through the song and switch back and forth between patches where appropriate. Try to create as seamless a transition as possible between the patches.
Ditch the stand and charts- Jon Nicol calls it the stand zombie effect. You know what I'm talking about. When there is a music stand in front of us, even if we know our music, for some reason we are drawn to look down at the music just like moths are drawn to a flame. It seems to suck the life out of playing music. This is what makes the difference between LEARNING MUSIC and KNOWING MUSIC. Knowing music is having it memorized. There are some tips and tricks for making this happen. Unfortunately, they're not sexy or even fun, but they are effective. If you are a vocalist, sit down with a piece of paper and write out the lyrics over and over. For almost everyone, it just means repetition, repetition, repetition. And you never know how much you really know until you try to do it without your charts. It might surprise you how much you already have memorized.
Listen again- I know it sounds a little redundant, but I've found that after sitting with your instrument for a while and getting a song into your fingers and voice, it really helps to put your instrument down, sit back, and listen to the song while looking at your chart. Many times it will help the song cement itself in your mind. It will also help you hit a mental refresh button and see or hear things in a new way.
Make it yours- Up until this point, you've been getting the riffs and technique learned and captured by muscle memory. Musicianship is about taking what you've learned and making it your own. A lot of people want to take the easy way out. They say that they don't want to be copycats, so they don't do the work of learning how to play or sing it like the original artist. Or they make up their own part, for the same reason (not wanting to be copycats). However, I encourage you to learn the song the way it is played on the recording. Then after you've done that, if you have a way you like it better, than do it your way. Learning the song the way the original artist performed it gives you an insight into the how and why they chose to do what they did. After you know that, it makes you able to decide if you want to do something different. You know it's time to make it your own when you don't need the charts and you're able to play and sing it as if it were your own song. Turn it up and “rock out” however you feel like playing or singing it, then see what happens. Look for ways to put your own style into it and make it yours.
