One of the most difficult challenges in working with youth bands is dealing with students who are in the beginning phases of learning an instrument, particularly guitar or bass players. This can be frustrating for a youth worker/band leader who is an experienced player because you don’t want to spend a large portion of band rehearsal giving guitar lessons. Also, with a busy ministry schedule and family time, it’s difficult to start giving music lessons on a regular basis as part of your ministry program. So, I am entertaining the idea of using modern technology for teaching purposes.
I don’t know if this will work, but it sounds like it would. These days you can buy a webcam for about $30 or so. Would it be possible to buy a webcam and record one’s self playing various songs? With a webcam a person can see on his computer screen what he is recording. In theory could I record a fair resolution recording particularly with close-ups of chord fingerings of several guitar songs and burn them to a DVD using Windows Movie Maker? I know there are thousands of guitar instruction videos posted on youtube, so I know it can be done. I’m just not sure how.
Do you have any suggestions if I want to proceed with this? Also, will I need to buy a microphone in addition to the webcam, or does a USB webcam have audio capability? Also, would I be violating any copyright laws by recording a few chord progressions on a webcam?
If this works, in an hour or two, you could give an instructional guitar lesson on several worship songs that your students could rewind and play over again. What do you guys think? What advice can you give? Will it be more trouble than its worth?
Jason Huffman is the Director of Youth Ministries at First United Methodist Church in Palestine, TX. For more information visit the youth website www.reachyouthministries.org Or the church website www.fumcpalestine.com
Jason.. I think that would work well. My suggestion would be to teach chord progressions instead of songs. This should avoid any copyright issues and there are many many chord progressions that are the same for many songs. This would also make a great addition to this site… simple online lessons. Cool.