GUITAR
6 THINGS EVERY WORSHIP GUITARIST NEEDS TO KNOW | David Harsh
So, you want to be invited to play guitar on your worship team. What do you need to know?
Having led worship full-time, part time, and having overseen multiple teams even as a guest worship leader, I’ ve got 6 things I believe are essential to success if you want to be considered to play on your church worship team. I encourage you to watch the accompanying video to this article for maximum benefit, because I’ ll include some details there that I don’ t have space for here.
Worship guitar can be a vast subject, but today, I’ m going to simplify it for you with some pretty basic parameters. Today, we’ ll talk about rhythm guitar, as opposed to playing lead, and we’ ll talk mostly about strumming in Major keys, and occasionally using the capo as we sing, or as someone else sings. These are 6 things you need to know.
2. KNOW YOUR CHORDS. You’ ll want to play chords that sound good, that sound clean, and chords that you can swiftly navigate with as you play the songs you’ re invited to play. If you want some easier chords that require very little fretting hand movement, you may want to start with these four shapes.( Figure 1)
3. KNOW YOUR NASHVILLE NUMBERS. An effective way to learn chord numbers is through what’ s called the Nashville number system. Let me quickly walk you through a
Figure 1 crash-course for that. If you have chords in the key of C Major, for example, you’ ll be working with the C Major scale, which is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and we can come back to C. There’ s a chord based on each of these degrees, and the quality of each of the chords in a Major key is very important to know. The quality refers to Major, minor, and in one instance, diminished. If we number the notes from 1 to 7, we have the following chords:( Figure 2)
Knowing these chords allows you to recognize their context in a given key. This applies to every Major key.
1. KNOW WHAT THE EXPECTATION IS FOR YOUR PLAYING. Are you being tasked with playing the guitar and singing? That’ s a taller order for some. Maybe you’ re being brought on board to play your guitar as someone else sings. That’ s great. You can just focus on the instrument and provide a rhythmic foundation and really focus on a skillful offering that way. I definitely think it’ s important to play well with others, especially on a worship team.
Figure 2
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