YOUTH WORSHIP TEAM
LET ’ S SWITCH ! | Vance & Michelle Shepherd
The modern worship songs today consist of more and more produced musical parts ; consisting of multiple keyboard tracks , anywhere from three to six electric guitar tracks , double acoustic guitar parts , multiple drum loops in addition to the acoustic drum set , and often synth bass in addition to a stringed bass . What great training ground this is for your youth worship team as future worship leaders , recording artists and musicians , to hear how all these different multi-layered parts work together to make today ’ s contemporary worship sound .
It can be very beneficial and valuable to your team to take your top 20 song repertoire and switch the instrument parts around between your players . It really helps round them out as musicians or singers , songwriting in the studio , or assigning parts on a live worship team .
In one of my first touring rock bands , we would cover songs by Journey , Styx , and other bands from the prog rock era . We had a rhythm guitar player and a lead guitar player . It didn ’ t take long to figure out that the lead player couldn ’ t play rhythm to save his life , nor could the rhythm player handle a lead part of any kind . Neither one of them could cover the gig by themselves if they were called upon to do so . With our students , I might challenge our electric guitarists to play a finger picking electric style on a song one month , and then the next time they play that song , do the power bar chords instead , teaching them two completely different styles of playing on the same song .
When a student starts to show signs of boredom , not practicing , or not being enthusiastic about playing , we also encourage them to try picking up another instrument . This seems to always give them back their excitement , and re-kindle their love for music . It also lets them see how other instruments are arranged and executed in a musical piece . Being that our goal is to raise up the next generation of worship leaders and musicians , what a great thing to have players that are multi-instrumentalists and can speak the language of the other players on the team .
With our singers , we encourage them to sing different styles , with different vocal ranges , to help round out their sound . You will find that there are singers who are only comfortable singing in their head voice , or they can only sing in full voice . We challenge them by switching out their vocal parts for each worship event . One singer might sing an alto harmony on a song one month , and then sing the soprano part the next time . In our experience , this has been proven to be one of the most valuable things we can do in their training .
We hosted a night out with some of our students to the Road Shows Concert event in Las Vegas featuring Bethel Worship , Zach Williams , Natalie Grant , Matthew West and For King & Country . What a night ! The highlight of the evening was the band For King & Country . They were hands down one of the most amazing live stage shows that we ’ ve ever seen , secular or Christian . What really impressed our students is that most of the musicians on stage were multi-instrumentalists , switching parts and instruments all throughout their set . It was great to see this being done with another professional touring band , as we have always done this with our students , and they got to really see the benefit with For King & Country ’ s stage show .
For this month ’ s worship event with our student band , we had the keyboard player that usually covers flute , synth , B3 , strings , brass and leads take all the piano parts in the worship set , and also play bass guitar on one song , as well as
lead a song vocally , and sing alto and soprano harmonies throughout the set . We had our keyboard player that usually plays piano parts take all of the other keyboard player ’ s parts . It was somewhat of a learning curve for both keyboard players to switch their roles , because they ’ re two totally different styles of playing . But they are both rising to the occasion and are being challenged to be great musicians in any type of circumstance . Don ’ t fall into what is easy as a leader and always let your pianist be your pianist – think outside the box , and challenge your team with new parts , even if they ’ re not as good at it right away . We feel that this is extremely valuable training while they ’ re young and will set them up for many different types of playing situations in their future .
May you be blessed as you pour into or become the next generation of worship leaders and musicians !
Vance & Michelle Shepherd Founders of The Shepherd School of Music in Las Vegas , NV , where they work with youth to raise up the next generation of worship leaders and musicians . facebook . com / shepherdschoolofmusiclasvegas www . ShepherdStudiosLV . com
50 May 2023 Subscribe for Free ...