The Praise and Worship Band Bassists Club part 23

[Jhengsman]

Originally Posted by NoisyFroggy

Hi there,

A few worship-related questions for you.

I introduced myself a long time ago so for the record I play bass for my Church's praise team in Lyon, France.
Lyon is the second largest French city, and our Church average attendance is around 200 every Sunday (Evangelical free Church), which is ridiculous by US standards but quite good by French ones...

We mainly chose our songs in a series of songbooks (I would not call them hymnals) called JEM (Youth With A Mission aka YWAM), which currently lists around 950 songs.
The Series started in the late 70s and know includes French translations of Paul Baloche, Chris Tomlin, Hillsong and the likes.

We do sing between 7 to 10 songs every Sunday (one weekly service so far).

The thing is, there is a fine line between introducing enough new songs to keep things moving and introducing too many songs to the extent of the assembly's not being able to keep up and correctly learn the songs.

So my question is: how do you guys select the songs? Have you determined a specific pool of songs to draw from, slowly introducing new songs and retiring old ones? If so, how large is the "pool"? How many songs?

With our 900+ songs and ten songs/Sunday, this is of course far too wide an assortment...

We play mostly contemporary worship, and old hymns in a "contemaporary" way (i.e. 99% of the songs are played with bass, drums, guitars and keyboards. No lone piano or solo pipe organ)

Thanks for your time!

Don't be fooled by the hype about mega churches the average American church has a weekly attendance of less then 100. In the more artist oriented congregations up to a quarter of the church are part of the leadership in a praise team role.

At my church normally the worship leader of the week selects the songs after consulting the teaching pastor on that weeks expected message. The worship leader/lead singer frontman also makes the final decision on adding new songs as he has to sell the lyric and presentation. I am not saying the band by itself can't get the congregation to rock, but the singers are most comfortable with songs which move them.

Sometimes an elder will say I want this song this week, or right now, so we start playing the song. It might not be as tight as a rehearsed song but most of the time it works even better then what was in the planned setlist.

[throughthefire]

We run 16 songs per quarter, with no more than three of them being new.

We always introduce a new song, so that the congregation are aware of it, and then it gets played for 2 or 3 weeks continually.

Yes, 16 songs means that we end up with a few tunes that the band gets a little bored with (we really need to wrest that 'Chris Tomlin' songbook from the pastors hands...), but we're playing for God, not for anyone else. I hope He likes it!

[NoisyFroggy]

Thank you guys for your answers, keep em coming!

Originally Posted by throughthefire

We run 16 songs per quarter, with no more than three of them being new.

We always introduce a new song, so that the congregation are aware of it, and then it gets played for 2 or 3 weeks continually.

Yes, 16 songs means that we end up with a few tunes that the band gets a little bored with (we really need to wrest that 'Chris Tomlin' songbook from the pastors hands...), but we're playing for God, not for anyone else. I hope He likes it!

Wow, 16 songs per quarter may be a bit too restrictive for comfort as far as we are concerned.
But yes, you may end up getting a bit bored, but I bet a few weeks in and you do not need any music stands, you should be on auto-pilot mode

[ExaltBass]

We've got a pretty good sized book and have done 103 different songs in the last 2 years. Learning 3-4 a month - some are only used 2-3 times.

[NoisyFroggy]

Originally Posted by ExaltBass

We've got a pretty good sized book and have done 103 different songs in the last 2 years. Learning 3-4 a month - some are only used 2-3 times.

You are then in a situation pretty similar to mine. How does the attendance react? Are they regularly singing their hearts out, or do you get the odd "deer in the headlights" state when playing some songs?

i get the feeling our church members are quite lazy, and quit singing as soon as they get the feeling the song is "kinda" new to them. I mean, come on, most contemporary worship music is deliberately very simple from an harmonic and structural standpoint, so that you may sing along very easily after hearing one verse and one chorus.
We are not asking them to sing background vocals "Bohemian Rapsody" style. And worship music is no Frank Zappa-esque material / end of rant.

[FellowBass]

Originally Posted by jmclearnon

Anyone get any sweet gear for Christmas?

I have some 1964 Ears (V3) on the way, hopefully by the end of the month. Can't wait to actually hear some bass tone (instead of just volume that single-driver universal IEMs provide).

[FellowBass]

Originally Posted by NoisyFroggy

Hi there,

A few worship-related questions for you.

I introduced myself a long time ago so for the record I play bass for my Church's praise team in Lyon, France.
Lyon is the second largest French city, and our Church average attendance is around 200 every Sunday (Evangelical free Church), which is ridiculous by US standards but quite good by French ones...

We mainly chose our songs in a series of songbooks (I would not call them hymnals) called JEM (Youth With A Mission aka YWAM), which currently lists around 950 songs.
The Series started in the late 70s and know includes French translations of Paul Baloche, Chris Tomlin, Hillsong and the likes.

We do sing between 7 to 10 songs every Sunday (one weekly service so far).

The thing is, there is a fine line between introducing enough new songs to keep things moving and introducing too many songs to the extent of the assembly's not being able to keep up and correctly learn the songs.

So my question is: how do you guys select the songs? Have you determined a specific pool of songs to draw from, slowly introducing new songs and retiring old ones? If so, how large is the "pool"? How many songs?

With our 900+ songs and ten songs/Sunday, this is of course far too wide an assortment...

We play mostly contemporary worship, and old hymns in a "contemaporary" way (i.e. 99% of the songs are played with bass, drums, guitars and keyboards. No lone piano or solo pipe organ)

Thanks for your time!

Now that we have a big selection of modern-infused hymns and modern worship tunes that the whole congregation is familiar with, we introduce one new worship song per quarter. It used to be more than that, but now with a solid base of tunes, we are very selective about adding new stuff.

[SoVeryTired]

We currently have a list of 21 songs (it was 20 but somehow grew!). Songs are dropped when they are getting tired and replaced by something that is at least as strong lyrically and musically. Last year we introduced 6 new songs. We met up as a core team last night and agreed on two new ones in and two old ones out.

In introducing new songs we use the church Facebook site to link to YouTube videos. We usually post a video each week of a song that we're singing on Sunday - it tends to be the newest song.

[ExaltBass]

Originally Posted by NoisyFroggy

You are then in a situation pretty similar to mine. How does the attendance react? Are they regularly singing their hearts out, or do you get the odd "deer in the headlights" state when playing some songs?

i get the feeling our church members are quite lazy, and quit singing as soon as they get the feeling the song is "kinda" new to them. I mean, come on, most contemporary worship music is deliberately very simple from an harmonic and structural standpoint, so that you may sing along very easily after hearing one verse and one chorus.
We are not asking them to sing background vocals "Bohemian Rapsody" style. And worship music is no Frank Zappa-esque material / end of rant.

When introducing the song it is mentioned that it is new. Sometimes we'll run through the song while people are seating themselves... extended sound check, (and do it again in its place), and sometimes we just go for it. Most of the time they sing on the chorus only. We track the melody on the chorus and don't break into big harmonies for the first or second week, so people don't struggle with the melody. We'll typically do it 2 weeks in a row and then give it a week or two before a repeat.

They are used to that and seem willing to give it a try, and some know the song from other sources and sing along. Participation is usually pretty good.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by jmclearnon

Anyone get any sweet gear for Christmas?

My wife bought me Mainstage (recent experiments with an iPad got me interested in live computer processing again). Amazing value for thirty bucks, when you see the amount of samples, plugins, etc., that come with it.

Not really a Christmas present, but my back has been bugging me on long gigs lately. So the bass you see in my avatar has gone under the chisel again. I took it down to 11lb 8oz from over 12 a few years ago, and this time, I'm aiming to get into the very low tens. We'll see how it goes...

[3mrhythm]

anyone in the group us the planning center app? our worship team started using it a year or so ago and now we have the music stand app.. I'm stoked to no longer have to print songs. I can pull up the pdfs for any of the songs when i need them. saves tons of paper

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by NoisyFroggy

...i get the feeling our church members are quite lazy, and quit singing as soon as they get the feeling the song is "kinda" new to them. I mean, come on, most contemporary worship music is deliberately very simple from an harmonic and structural standpoint, so that you may sing along very easily after hearing one verse and one chorus...

While I agree that most contemporary material is simple in terms of structure and harmony, I find that relatively little of it is written with congregational worship in mind.

I guess I'm talking about phrasing, mostly. A lot of songs have little pregnant pauses or odd syncopations that change throughout the song, making it feel unpredicatable for people who aren't musically inclined.

The advent of display screens has had an impact, as well. In a hymnal, even if you don't read music, you can see how the words in the verses line up relative to each other. This provides a visual guide to timing and pronounciation.

In contrast, most churches I have attended, are sloppy with on-screen text layout. The words for long, legato phrases may be bunched together in a way that contradicts what the reader is hearing, line breaks are not in intuitive places, etc.

Last but not least, IME a lot of bands suffer from "Chris Tomlin-itis". Maybe it's just where I worship, but the last few years I've run into a lot of young male leaders with high tenor voices who don't know when they're asking too much of the congregation.

[steve_rolfeca]

Originally Posted by 3mrhythm

anyone in the group us the planning center app? our worship team started using it a year or so ago and now we have the music stand app.. I'm stoked to no longer have to print songs. I can pull up the pdfs for any of the songs when i need them. saves tons of paper

Been using Planning Center for about three years, but we never tried Music Stand.

Just switched to another church, where they use OnSong on iPads. Loving it, even better than .pdf's, because you've got easy on-the-fly key changes, simple editing, post-it-notes, etc. The whole 173-song library rests in the palm of my hand.

When it works (wi-fi access in some venues is iffy) the synchronization feature makes it even better. The WL takes over everyone's screens, and we see the page turns (and sudden song substitutions) right as they happen.

[3mrhythm]

thats pretty sweet. instant key change is sweet. Our library has the pdfs in the other keys usually so i can just change the pdf used on the fly. also allows for annotations and you can save and share the annotations with the other users.

having wifi access is key to the on the fly stuff.. but i'm certainly liking the technology

[SoVeryTired]

Originally Posted by 3mrhythm

anyone in the group us the planning center app? our worship team started using it a year or so ago and now we have the music stand app.. I'm stoked to no longer have to print songs. I can pull up the pdfs for any of the songs when i need them. saves tons of paper

We use it but we're standless - which is easy to pull off with a small song list.

[kbaxter26]

I asked our WL if I could get the "charts" to up coming songs. What he sent me were simple guitar chord charts. Is this the norm? Do I need to come up with my own bass lines? Sorry, I have never played in a church setting before. Thanks.

[5StringFool]

Yep... that's the norm. And if it goes like it did you'll find that the keys are different front he recorded versions the majority of the time, plus the drummer will rarely be playing the recorded drum part you hear.

Playing in the P&W band has been one of the most challenging things I've ever done as a musician. Imo it's much more challenging than playing in your average bar band.

[kbaxter26]

Originally Posted by 5StringFool

Yep... that's the norm. And if it goes like it did you'll find that the keys are different front he recorded versions the majority of the time, plus the drummer will rarely be playing the recorded drum part you hear.

Playing in the P&W band has been one of the most challenging things I've ever done as a musician. Imo it's much more challenging than playing in your average bar band.

It is looking more and more like it will be MUCH tougher than the band I played in 30yrs ago. We wrote all of our stuff therefore what I played, I played. Just had to be sure band mates were good with what I did. HMMM!!!!

[english4bw]

Originally Posted by kbaxter26

I asked our WL if I could get the "charts" to up coming songs. What he sent me were simple guitar chord charts. Is this the norm? Do I need to come up with my own bass lines? Sorry, I have never played in a church setting before. Thanks.

Originally Posted by 5StringFool

Yep... that's the norm. And if it goes like it did you'll find that the keys are different front he recorded versions the majority of the time, plus the drummer will rarely be playing the recorded drum part you hear.

Playing in the P&W band has been one of the most challenging things I've ever done as a musician. Imo it's much more challenging than playing in your average bar band.

Do yourself a favour and write the numeric notation (1-7) method next to the existing chords in any song you get a chart for. That way the changes stay the same no matter what key it gets transposed into. You merely have to change your root note position.

For example; I'll print something like this and paste it to the actual chord chart of the original song -



Really saves me time and is a great cheat sheet if the WL switches keys on the fly (which happens ALL of the time, especially if the WL's are a mixture of M/F vocalists).

[BlueLine1]

Welcome, 3mrhythm! I currently have 4 Washburns, including an ABT I made fretless. It's a great playing bass. If I have to read music for studio work on the fly, my B90 almost plays by itself. My 6-string, pictured, is my fave..
Once again, welcome and share your thoughts....
Alan