MANDO
ARRANGEMENT THIEVERY CASE STUDY: “MY VICTORY” | Tyson Bryant
Welcome to another edition of Arrangement after choruses. If your worship team has some well-placed rhythm accents. I would
Thievery Case Study! I go to this from time to another instrument (like piano) playing the recommend accents on the beats 1, 3, and “3-
time to pick apart the arrangement of a song, Theme during any given section of the song and.” Listen closely to the kick drum to hear
specifically listening for parts that your Worship you can fall back to playing the lead hook on where those accents fall.
Team’s mandolin player can claim as her own. your mandolin—or even playing a rhythm (I’d Often our songs don’t have parts purpose-built suggest sharp accents on the 2 and 4 beats The bridge in “My Victory” gives us a palette
for the mandolin, but with a little preparation during that Intro and the turn-arounds.) of options as well. Starting off is that lovely
and creativity we can seamlessly integrate with
even the biggest modern worship sounds.
melodic movement that the piano plays as
During the first verse you’ll likely back off to the song’s dynamics fall out of the big chorus
give the song some dynamic variety, but you’ll into the bridge. If your piano player is unwilling
For this issue I’ve chosen Crowder’s song hear The Theme come back very prominently or unable to play that part, it could easily be
“My Victory”. in Verse 2. In fact, you can even hear another covered by a mandolin as a riff based around
mandolin play an octave higher alongside of it. the chord changes. As the vocals come in on
That can be replicated on your worship team the recording you can hear the acoustic guitar
with mando/guitar, mando/piano, mando/sax, start a drone cross-picking pattern centered
whatever. Play that part on your own, or find a around the ‘C’ and ‘G’ notes. That’s a great part
friend to play it with! If you must play a rhythm for mandolin, either by itself or, if the acoustic
on the verses, the recording has a very clear guitar is playing it too, then up an octave to
acoustic guitar rhythm with accents on 2 & double the guitar. Finally, if neither of those
4 that you can pattern your mandolin rhythm two optio ns suits your band’s arrangement
after. this Sunday, come in strong with the kick
This is not only an excellent song for worship—
it is also a great example of how Arrangement
drum during the second half of the bridge. Use
Thievery can work in multiple directions. We’ll As with most Crowder songs, as we move into sharp, precise accents on each beat to help
explore the different elements of the song the choruses the song’s dynamics increase emphasize the rhythm.
that are potential parts you can play on your significantly. The Theme comes back in again, mandolin and add them to our grid. Then, but is played by a banjo, which is unlikely to be I love this song because it has built-in parts for
when we arrive at worship practice, we can an instrument on most of your worship stages. your mando, but it also lets us trade those parts
determine which of those parts are open and Fret not! (See what I did there?) You can cover with other instruments. It is a great lesson that
available in our band’s arrangement for us to that part on your mandolin too! For the sake of in any arrangement a given part does not ever
play. Easy as pie! variety, consider moving up an octave to play it. have to belong to only one instrument. We can
Or, for even more variety, go ahead and pass shake things up and let different instruments
THE THEME this part off to a keyboard or other instrument. trade back and forth, which gives your audience
We can’t get far into the discussion of this If you do that you can play a pad-like tremolo something new to listen to.
song without running into what I will call “The based around the ‘E’ note through the chorus. Theme,” so I can easily refer to it in the grid. You also could help the drums feel bigger with
Listen carefully. Play passionately. Happy Thieving!
This Theme is a four-note, repeating riff that
shows up all over the song. The notes in the riff
are C-D-E-G and are easily fingered on the G
and D strings of your mandolin. Make sure your
Tyson Bryant
Grew up in a bluegrass
family but has spent the
last 20+ years adapting
mandolin techniques
to modern worship.
He rotates between
mandolin, guitar,
and cajon at Graham
Emmanuel Baptist
Church in Graham,
Washington.
fingers can play that riff up to tempo because
you will be coming back to it often.
The Theme appears first when you hear the
mandolin playing it during the song’s intro. It
can also be played during the turn-arounds
July 2018
WorshipMusician.com
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