GUITAR
6 WAYS TO COMMUNICATE WELL WITH YOUR TEAMS FROM YOUR GUITAR | David Harsh
Did you know that as a guitarist onstage , you ’ re always communicating something , whether you ’ re trying to or not ? Your presence on the platform , especially as a worship guitarist or band leader , puts you in the middle of a conversation .
Will you communicate well ? If you listen to what I have to share with you today , I think you ’ ll gain some solid tips that will make you much more effective .
I highly recommend watching the accompanying instructional video , while it ’ s available . This will allow you to see and hear me demonstrating several of these strategies .
You can find the video right now at this link : www . guitarsuccess4u . com / Communicate6
After leading worship professionally on staff for over a decade and touring all over North
America as a guest worship leader for almost three decades , I ’ ve picked up a few strategies that have really enhanced my process and blessed the people I ’ ve been serving with , both musicians and technicians . And most of these involve non-verbal communication .
Here are six ways to communicate well with your teams from your guitar .
1 . CUE AND ESTABLISH THE TEMPO . Tempo is essential . How do we achieve consensus for how the song begins ?
The worship guitarist can count in . I ’ ve seen several approaches , but if the song is in 4 / 4 time and the worship leader ( who may also be playing the rhythm guitar ) wants everyone in on beat one , and chooses to count 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , is there any ambiguity about when the downbeat of the first measure is ?
“ exalt ,” for example .
We could say , “ Let ’ s lift our voices together as we exalt our Lord in song .” Cue the click .
2 . KEEP THE TEMPO . Some of us have people on our teams who like to rush . If the whole team or band has IEMs with a click , this keeps things more manageable , but without that infrastructure , we need to be able to signal our team with our foot , especially if the tempo is accelerating unnecessarily .
We can stomp our foot , or we can lightly tap our foot , but if we have a solid feel and ability for communicating the tempo , our team should be able to visually “ check in ” and see if they ’ re on track with us .
Obviously , they need to be able to have line of sight to our foot for this .
Nope . It ’ s super clear .
Some worship guitarists would rather not do this – they don ’ t want to verbally start the song . A subtler approach could be to tell the drummer to “ click in ” with his or her sticks , or start the click , by cueing them with a code word . Like ,
3 . MOVE TO ( AND FROM ) THE MIC . Let ’ s assume that you ’ re leading worship as you sing and play rhythm guitar . Do you need to be at the mic when you ’ re not singing ?
My answer to that is : “ no .” 64 July 2023 Subscribe for Free ...