It can be awesome to create music with other musicians who share the same heart values. But when we step on one another’s toes musically, the result may be a sonic jumble that only a mother could love.
We face several complicating factors:
- Jobs and responsibilities reduce time for personal prep and worship-band rehearsals.
- A large and ever-changing song repertoire stretches what is already a limited amount of time for preparation.
- Rotating band rosters, substitutions, absences, and guest musicians cause us to continually adapt our parts.
- Many target versions of songs that we seek to replicate use either complicated layers of instruments we cannot access or skill sets we lack.
- The levels of musicianship and experience vary significantly among the team.
Overcoming these challenges can forge us into better musicians.
One help is to make room for each other musically. My book, Born for Worship: The Best You Can Be in Worship Arts Ministry, mentions the Pie approach to arranging that I learned over the years from Glenn Kaiser, Dan Wilt, and Paul Baloche.
“Basically, the Pie approach to arranging goes like this. Think of all the music notes that belong to a song, the melody, harmonies, rhythm, everything. They are the pie’s contents. If you are playing the song all by yourself, you’re responsible for the entire pie — all the notes. If another musician is added, they play their portion of the notes. Those notes are not your responsibility anymore, so you don’t play them. Add a vocalist, and their slice contains the melody; your slice gets smaller. Add a violin or harmony singer; your slice gets smaller. Every time another musician joins in, your slice is reduced.” (p. 228)
By offloading some of the notes, you have less to learn and practice. Your focus can become razor-sharp. But you have to know which notes to give away. It helps to understand the underlying role that each instrument plays in a song’s arrangement. Read more about this in the inSync article, “The Eight Musical Roles in a Worship Band.” [LINK]
While each band develops its approach to playing together, this list can be a helpful starting place.
Drums
The drums control the power of the band, and the snare is often what we clap to. Drums determine and provide continuity and consistency to the groove. They drive the dynamics within and between song sections.
Pro Tip: The drums can signal the other musicians when to build and pull back dynamically.
Bass Guitar
The bass locks the drum’s groove to the chordal foundation. While it keeps our feet tapping, it also helps the listeners’ ears move from one chord to another. Having a good, consistent tone helps the sound engineer place the bass in the mix with an impact that can be heard and felt.
Pro Tip: Keep things simple and limit the number of fills you use. Emphasize rhythmic fills rather than melodic fills. Play dynamically to move the song along its journey.
Rhythm Guitar
The rhythm guitar (acoustic or electric) builds the song both rhythmically (like a shaker or high hat) and dynamically (by using intense palm mutes, open chord strums and diamonds, or arpeggiations). It can add density by filling in missing chord notes. It can provide atmospheric tones to pad the overall sonic texture (especially with effects pedals). If both electric and acoustic guitars are playing, except for a driving section, the electric should avoid simply doubling what the acoustic is doing and can switch instead to playing diamonds, arpeggiations, pads, or color.
Pro Tip: Using a midrange-focused distortion/overdrive like a Tube Screamer can allow a rhythm guitar to cut through a mix, while a scooped tone tends to get buried in the full mix and create sonic mud.
Lead Guitar
In many ways, the lead guitar functions as a second lead vocal. It plays hooks and countermelodies or doubles the melody (but sometimes with fewer notes) when the lead vocal is singing. If the voice is silent, then the lead guitar gives the ear something to focus on or adds color. Beware competing with the lead vocal or overplaying!
Pro Tip: At any given moment when another instrument is playing lead, the lead guitar should double, echo, sit out, or switch to another supporting role.
Piano
The piano can function as a song’s primary instrument or — as a truly band-in-a-box instrument — cover almost any other missing element. The challenge is to avoid invading the limited spaces where other instruments live. When not functioning as the primary instrument, the piano often ends up filling the upper range above the rhythm guitar or moving down where the rhythm guitar typically sits when the rhythm guitar moves higher. (Consider playing the rhythm guitar and the piano opposite one another rhythmically with one instrument doing faster notes and the other doing slower notes or diamonds.) The piano can interfere in the midrange with thickly voiced background vocals or overwhelm the melody. It can also add mud when layered near the bass, so play sparsely or with contrasting rhythms — if at all — in these areas.
Pro Tip: Picture the potential notes of a song as in a master score. Remove any notes played by other musicians. Cut out some room for the song to breathe. What remains is the piano part.
Keyboards
Keyboards function like a Swiss-Army-knife instrument to provide air, reinforce another part, double a melody/harmony, fill in color to add character, or add textural pads that widen the overall sound and glue the mix together. Auxiliary keys often use pads to support the vocals and the primary instrument. Keys face midrange and bass challenges similar to the piano. Playing thinly in these ranges or with contrasting rhythm or timbre will allow the audio engineer to maintain a stronger keyboard volume level in the mix without muddying the overall sound.
Pro Tip: Understanding how acoustic instruments interact can bring realism to keyboard parts. For example, synthesized horns sound more realistic when played in open fifths, and strings when played in parallel fourths and sixths.
Lead Vocal
The lead vocal sings the melody and functions as the primary communicator to engage the congregation and model passionate worship. Moving away from the melody can confuse or distract the congregation if the melody is not maintained by other instruments or BGVs, especially on songs that are relatively unfamiliar.
Pro Tip: The lead vocal can often set the pace and tone for the rehearsal and the set by how they support and interact with the other team members.
Background Vocals
BGVs support the primary vocal. They double the melody in unison or at an octave or add harmonies. In contemporary worship music, BGVs keep the song fresh and build the song dynamically by singing only when the melody needs enhancing. Generally, BGVs should match the lead vocal’s pronunciation, diction, tone, note length, and vibrato. BGV singers also function as secondary communicators with the congregation to engage and model passionate worship.
Pro Tip: It’s very important for congregational participation that the BGVs remain engaged when not singing into the mic.
Being Quiet
Sitting out can be a musician’s true test of self-control, kind of like following the “No noodling!” rule during rehearsal. But doing so allows you to have a big impact when you enter later in the song.
Pro Tip: When not singing or playing, add something to the song visually by remaining engaged physically.
Of course, instruments can trade roles. But using this list as a starting place can help keep you from overplaying or inadvertently trampling over another instrument’s role. The key is to allow your songs to breathe while providing the listening ear with something to focus on rather than being overwhelmed by a wall of sound. When you practice on your own, the parameters listed here can help you create your parts with a more accurate anticipation of what others will be playing. That way, the instruments will be more likely to blend better at rehearsal. Plus, this foundation gives you a springboard and a landing place creatively. When the band listens to one another’s parts and communicates what’s working and what isn’t, you can play the music that you love and that other people love, too.
