This is part one in a series of posts entitled “Back to Basics”.
Maybe this is familiar. You are listening to the radio or latest worship CD and hear a great new song. You go home, type out the chords or find them online, grab the CD and head to rehearsal. You then play the CD over a few times, have your band play along with the chords and you are ready to go. Sound familiar?
I think that too often I have put the emphasis on learning songs instead of learning basics. Learning the songs is great, in fact that is what the group is there for. We learn the songs so we can lead our congregation in worship. But a youth band should be more than that. We have a chance when working with youth not just to teach songs, but to teach them how to play their instruments, learn some theory, and give them the tools they need to play as part of a group and to be a strong musician.
This is hard to do though for a few reasons.
#1 No one really likes learning basics like scales or patterns
#2 Often there is little time to devote to basics in rehearsal
#3 It’s just more fun to work on songs.
So why are basics important?
#1 Basics create the ground work of skills that can be applied to any song, not just one situation.
#2 Basics teach that the learning process is as important as the end result
#3 Basics help a group gel as they work together.
Over the next few weeks we are going to begin this process with our youth worship team. I will post up what we are trying and how it worked. If you have suggestions on how to help youth learn basic worship and music skills used in worship please send them to me and I will post them here.
Here is an example:
1. Pick a chord pattern used in a song you will be doing. For example G C Em D
2. Teach the pattern and chords to the instrumentalists
3. Have them play the pattern over and over.
4. Have them come up with 2 different ways of playing the pattern. One should be louder and fuller, the other softer and more open.
5. Pick a cue for each way, and have them play the patterns with you cuing them on which one to play.
You have now helped them to learn to watch you, or whoever is leading for cues. This lesson can be applied to any song. What exercises do you use with your youth or adult worship team to work on basics?
What do you do in the summer time with your youth worship bands? Does it just depend on how many of your kids are going to be gone a lot or do you take the summer off? We wound up taking the month of August off because after a busy summer, I needed some recovery time, and we had some kids that were not going to be here. I’ve heard some say we should take the whole summer off since kids are often gone on vacations and it’s hard to get everyone there.
My concern is that we lose too much of what we’ve learned and after 2-3 months off we will be rebuilding the band rather than picking up where we left off. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas? What do you do in your church?
Jason, my suggestion to you would be to encourage a bit of a break during the summer for your team members (especially if you have a large number of kids participating) and then come back strong a couple weeks before school starts with a few weekend practices, devotion times, maybe a bonfire, or an extensive worship workshop. Don’t come back with business as usual, but with a new vision for the spiritual and musical excellence of the team, new tangible goals (like maybe playing events outside of the youth group or hosting a worship outreach) or even committing to learn more difficult songs or committing songs to memory. Give them new reasons to commit to the worship team and expand the heart of the team by requiring them to reach new heights with their worship. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty pumped up about all this. I’m coming off of a six week worship “break” with my worship team and I’m headed to meet with my youth pastor in an hour to talk and dream about what we’ll expect out of the kids this next year. We plan to come back strong with many of the above ideas that I mentioned. After all, if you’re doing it for God, then you gotta do it big 🙂
We took the summer off. It was a good break. Our worship team is me and two kids who play. So retreats, bonfires, and all that lose their mystique with the small number. We are currently working to build the worship team up, but we have a small youth group. Thanks for your input.