KEYS
PICK A NOTE. ONE NOTE. | Ed Kerr
Like many of you, I’ve just been part of multiple
note of the C major scale.
Whenever you’re ready to make the transition
worship services at involving Christmas music.
to the new song, play the “And heav’n and
In those services, we presented new songs I hope you can situate yourself at your keyboard nature sing” melody shown above. Support that
about the birth of Jesus alongside songs that as you read the rest of this article. Get the melody with a C major chord. That’s all it takes!
been around many decades. Some of the feel for what I’m going to describe with your You’ve now moved seamlessly into the key of
songs have been around for centuries. own fingers. That’s such an important part of C as well as presenting recognizable material
becoming comfortable with musical concepts. from the upcoming song. It works beautifully.
There are specific challenges every worship Look at the last phrase of “O Come, O Come, Get your band involved playing these two bits
team faces when presenting these older Emmanuel”. It ends on the note E, and it’s of music. If you have a violinist or cellist or any
songs alongside newer worship songs. Those supported by an E minor chord. FIG. 1 other melodic instrument, have them sustain
challenges
involve
specific
arrangement
that E. Then have them play the “heaven and
techniques and are beyond the scope of my There are lots of way we could get into “Joy To nature” phrase while the band plays the C
articles here. But, there’s something I did with The World”. We could just have the band stop. chord. The impact is so strong.
my team at Christmas that you probably did, Let a moment of dead air pass and start the too. You might even do it throughout the year. new song. Or, we could think about that one Okay, but you might say you won’t be playing
I do. note, E. We played the melody of “Joy To The any Christmas songs for another 11 months.
World” in the key of C and looked for a phrase Yep. That’s true. But this principle works any
I’m talking about transitioning between songs. It that begins with the note E. Before long we time with any songs. I just browsed the top
would be interesting if I was able to quickly take discovered that this phrase does: FIG. 2 50 songs on SongSelect and quickly found
a poll of each of you to find out whether or not
two songs where I can apply this One Note
your worship teams work to smoothly connect Now that my team knew that the note E was concept: the number two song, “Who You Say
some of the songs in your worship set. At my important to both phrases, we made sure that I Am”, and the number six song, “Great Are You
church we share communion every week, and someone kept sounding that E. Try it at your Lord”. Here’s an instrumental line heard on one
during that intimate time we present two songs. keyboard. Play an E minor chord at a free of the popular Hillsong recordings of “Who You
In these moments a break between the songs tempo and let an E just above middle C sound. Say I Am”. FIG. 3
might distract someone coming forward to Then continuing playing the notes the E minor take the bread and the cup. So, we spend time chord perhaps moving to a higher E.
crafting transitions between songs, especially if
This song is played at a fairly fast tempo
FIG. 1
these transitions involve key changes.
I’m going to use an example from our Sunday
service just before Christmas. We were singing
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” in the key of E
minor and needed to come out of it into “Joy To
FIG. 2
The World” in C major. I could overwhelm you
with lots of techniques based on principles of
music theory that could achieve this transition,
but I’m going to make it very simple: one note.
One note made the change from E minor to
C major beautifully transparent. That one note
FIG. 3
was E. That note exists in both of the keys
involved in this transition. E is the 1 chord
of E minor, the first note of its scale. Not too
complicated, right? And, the note E is the third
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January 2020
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