YOUTH WORSHIP TEAM
SWITCH IT UP ! | Vance & Michelle Shepherd
In today ’ s modern worship , the songs have a more produced sound , and consist of more and more musical parts . There are multiple keyboard tracks , synth loops , anywhere from 3-6 electric guitar tracks , double acoustic guitar parts , drum loops in addition to the acoustic drums , and often times synth bass in addition to a stringed bass . What great training ground this is for your youth worship team as future worship leaders and recording artists and musicians , to hear how all of 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 parts around between your players . It really helps to round them out as a musician or singer , whether 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 , Boston , and other bands from the prog-rock era . We had a rhythm guitar player and a lead guitarist . It didn ’ t take long to figure out that the lead player couldn ’ t play rhythm guitar to save his life , nor could the rhythm player handle a lead guitar part of any kind . Neither one of them could have ever covered the gig by themselves if they were called to do so . So with our students , I might challenge our electric guitarists to play a finger picking style on a song one month , and then the next time they play that same song , play the power bar chords instead , teaching them two completely different techniques 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 learning 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 build up your team with players that are multi-instrumentalists , and can also speak the musical 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 only comfortable singing 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 planned a night out with some of our students to attend 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 and got them excited 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 of switching up instruments with For King & Country ’ s stage show .
On one of our worship events with our student band , we had the keyboard player that usually covers synth , B3 , strings , brass and leads instead 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 quite a learning curve for both keyboard players to switch their roles , because they ’ re two totally different styles of playing . But they both rose 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 are in their youth , 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