Hello to all my friends out in blogland! Just this past Sunday I called a meeting with my musicians and talked over several things that I feel we could benefit from working on. I believe reading what I am dealing with may benefit you and your approach to your musicians. Or if you are a musician it may give you pause to think about how you interact with the other musicians in your music department.
Here are the topics I covered in this meeting:
1. Musicians - if a singer(s) begin singing in a service and you do not know the song, there is nothing wrong with not playing your instrument during that song. What we were experiencing was well-intentioned musicians jumping in on songs they did not know, and inadvertently creating more musical chaos than positive contribution. Now I do not say this in a negative way, as my musicians all have good intentions (I have a great group I am privileged to work with) and only try to help by supporting the singer(s) with their instrument. However my message to them was this: if you don't know the song, don't play. The only exception I distinguish is the drummer (if your drummer is proficient enough it really helps most songs to have tempo and percussion involved) and the keyboarder (that is me in my department). So in my case I was talking to the bass player, electric guitar player, and saxophonist.
2. Each drummer has an assigned service to play - do not pressure the other drummers to play if it's not your service - this may sound elementary but I deal with young and zealous drummers (I have three of them) and many times they feel the need to play the drums at all times. :0) To solve this situation I have assigned each drummer a service they are the main drummer for. The only reason a drummer should be playing in a service that's not 'theirs' is if the designated drummer for that service is either absent or praying at the altar.
3. Each musician should be attempting to improve theirself outside of church services - I am working with my bass guitar player to locate an instructor to give him music lessons now. I encouraged my drummers to ask around for someone they may learn from in our community, and I myself have been talking to some musicians from a local church to identify someone I may learn from. Many church musicians make the mistake of thinking they only need to study their instrument during church services. This is fundamentally wrong; does a politician only practice giving speeches while behind the podium addressing a nation? Does the professional baseball player only practice swinging the bat while in a game?
4. During the week prior to a music/singer practice, I email out links to my musicians and singers of the songs we will be covering in our next rehearsal. They are usually Youtube links. I ask each singer and musician to listen to these music links diligently in order to familiarize their selves with the songs. That way by the time they show up to our rehearsal they are already familiar with the songs and possibly have even picked out their vocal parts. The musicians are already familiar with the intros, cuts/breaks, and moving parts to the song. In the past I have emailed out such links only to find my musicians/singers did not even take the time to listen to the songs prior to the rehearsals! This is very frustrating to me, as I put time and effort into distributing this information pre-rehearsal. So in this meeting I kindly asked all singers/musicians to make time to study my emailed song links.... Being a part of this church music department requires time at home (think homework) studying..... We will not just show up to rehearsals or church services and attempt the throw everything together in a sloppy fashion. God deserves our best!
I hope the above topics may benefit you in your music department. Do not be afraid to raise the bar of expectation for your singers and musicians!
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