For The Church Guitarist - An Introduction

I'll cover a lot of ground in this blog, but one of the areas I'll focus on is one that's close to my heart and relates to those who serve week in and week out in local churches. I've met musicians from around the world who offer their time and skills every week; who serve with the frequency of some professional musicians, are a volunteer and often have a full time job in another field AND a family. As one who is a part of this group, and one who directs the music at a church, I understand the challenges and greatly appreciate the service that many so faithfully offer.

Now, a "church" guitarist is not really different from any other guitarist. We all play the same notes, the same six strings. However, even though the songs are pretty simple, it struck me that the demands of Sunday morning often call for musical skills you might expect to see in a studio musician. You've got to deal with really quick rehearsals, minimal charts, be called upon to improvise the best parts or solos ever with little or no preparation, deal with last minute key changes, high expectations and don't forget to have amazing timing!  So, sure, the songs can be simple but to pull all this off well, you've really got to have your stuff together.

Improving your playing can be frustrating, especially if you don't have good direction, much time, etc. So, in whatever small way it may help, I want to offer a series of posts that will help you deal with the things we all have to navigate every weekend. I want to offer practical resources to help you be a more excellent, creativeguitarist and musician. You don't have to be a pro to serve the church, but we can (and should!) always be improving. So, thanks for serving your local church.

Stay tuned and I hope this will be helpful.

PA

Flying with gear (and saving money)

For all the fun involved in being a musician and traveling for gigs, if you don't plan ahead a bit you can end up spending tons of money in excessive airline fees that can really take away from whatever you're getting paid and/or bite into your bank account. And that's if your guitar makes it there in one piece (google "united breaks guitars"). This issue can be a huge pain. Its can be expensive and you can risk breakage. Here are some helpful things I've found though (and most of these companies make keyboard and other style cases as well, not just guitar):

1. Flight cases.

There are lots of great options here. They tend to be ultra strong, and you can check them with luggage with a lot of confidence. The downside is that they tend to be pretty expensive and either heavy or bulky (which can be a pain to lug around once you arrive somewhere).

Some popular options are the Calton cases ($$$). They are incredibly sturdy though spendy (around $1000), take awhile to make and are heavy.

http://www.caltoncases.co.uk/

There are others, even more expensive, like accord cases  (http://www.accordcase.com) if you'd like to spend thousands on a flight case (extremely light and strong). There are some cheaper as well, like Gator or SKB (I have an SKB case which is nice but not so much so that I'd trust to check it as baggage). However, in looking for a compromise (i.e. inexpensive and safe), I did come across a case made by a company called Case Extreme.

http://www.casextreme.com/

These are pretty great. The drawback of these is that they are huge. As in, imagine a giant rectangular box that you could probably fit in. HOWEVER, they are much much cheaper than many flight alternatives, very strong AND you can fit your own case, or even gig bag, inside of it so that once you arrive at your destination, ditch the giant box in your hotel room and just carry your own case around. Also, though they are big, they are relatively light. I have several of these cases and really like them.

2. Super gig bags

Here's a another route. Normal guitar cases are pretty large and its not always guaranteed you can get them on a plane as a carry-on in the first place. Also, typical cases don't always fit in the overhead bins and you are certainly taking a risk in checking them as things tend to get manhandled as checked luggage. One solution that many use is a case made by a brilliant company called Mono cases. Typical gig bags can be pretty cheap and, while these are gig bags, they are in a class of their own. Water proof, hip, very well designed for storage, ultra padded, built to protect specific parts of the guitar like the end pin and neck from breakage; they are not as protective as a flight case and you would not want to luggage check them but they allow you to get your guitar onto the flight itself as they are smaller than typical cases. I just bought the m80 after racking my brain over how to save money in traveling with gear.

http://www.monocreators.com/

So, really light, great storage, and they let you get your case on the plane more readily. Also, they are cheaper then any of the above options.

I've made national and international trips with the mono case and was able to get it on board in all legs of the trip. Make sure to board early, be polite and ask if there is available room in a closet. In some planes it will even fit in the overheard compartments. One time an attendant made me get a gate check tag but I just kept carrying it on board and asked politely if I could please check to see if it would fit on the plane. It worked.

3. Some things to think about in flying with instruments

• most airlines charge per bag. The flight case can push you into expensive categories when the first bag is $20, the second $30 something and the third $200!! Sometimes just a second bag gets you charged an extra $100. Think about it, with a suitcase, a pedal board and a flight case it easily costs +$200 for your luggage. Not great for your finances.
   
• airlines charge for weight too. Any bag over 50 pounds can incur huge fees. My case extreme with my electric was around 38 pounds, which was good. A mono case is considered a carry on. However,
   
• airlines also charge for dimensions (oversized). The electric case extreme case was underweight (good) but oversized (bad!) and cost me $200 EXTRA, just for that (only had that happen on one airline). Some clerks will waive it, many will  not.

Currently I check one suitcase, a pedal board and carry on the guitar and laptop bag. That minimizes the fees decently. Another thing you can do is upgrade your seat on your flight. Don't do it too early as it can be expensive (unless you don't mind) but if you wait a day or two out, I've even done it the day of, you can board earlier and have a better chance of getting your guitar in a closet or overhead bin (not to mention extra legroom!).

Anyway, just some things to think about. Check the airline you are traveling. As a working musician it can be a pain to travel with instruments but if you do your homework you can find some relatively inexpensive solutions that will help save you a lot of money.

Worship God UK (2014) - initial resources

Hello! This is a quick post for the Worship God UK guitar session folks. Here is a copy of the 60+ page Worship God Guitar Packet  I’ll be using for the guitar sessions (a few more resources are listed below too). Many, many updates are to come soon, but I wanted to make the packet available to you quickly. More to come!

Voicings - Open Chord Packet

Voicings - Power Chord Packet

Voicings - Triad Packet

Scale - Diatonic - C - CAGED v2

Scale - Diatonic - G - CAGED v2

Patrick

Guitar Tutorial: "Show Us Christ" from Sovereign Grace Music

I had the pleasure back in December to work with Sovereign Grace Ministries on filming some guitar tutorial videos for a handful of their songs. I've appreciated so much what they've been doing in creating gospel saturated, biblically rich, and musically compelling, congregational songs for the church to sing and it was an honor to be a part of the project. These tutorials are geared towards acoustic players and give you options for how to play if you are in a variety of circumstances, i.e. just acoustic to playing acoustic in a band setting. We cover things like chord voicings, capos, fingerpicking, strumming, timing, etc.. Hopefully you'll find them useful!

"Show Us Christ" is one of my favorite songs from SGM (I explain why in the video) and, musically, Bob Kauflin did a uniquely beautiful job playing this on piano. As guitarists, it can be frustrating to try and take such a beautiful arrangement on piano and translate it convincingly to the guitar. We just don't have the same range as the piano. But! With a few changes we can model it after what Bob played so beautifully while making it sound at home on the guitar. I show you a finger picking solution for just that with some chord voicing ideas.* Also, I offer some tips for going from fingerpicking to strumming and/or what choices (including not playing!) you might make if you were playing with a piano player here and in a band. Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_kVqw3qL0w *I came up with a solution to play the intro exactly like the piano but it involves right hand, plucked harmonics. It can be done but its not necessarily what you want to be focusing on while you're leading the song! When I'm leading a song I try to minimize the ways in which I could potentially train wreck it by doing something too fancy or distracting :).

Worship God 2013 Homework - Chord theory you can understand (and use . . .no, really)

Hey everyone, Here are a few more ideas about how to actually do the stuff we talked about in the guitar sessions of Worship God 2013 (East and West*). For your convenience, here is a link to all of the sessions from WG2013 East and WG2013 West.

I'll be going into much more detail in upcoming posts but for now:

Simple Chord theory (I - IV - V etc. . . ) or "How to understand chord progressions"

A lot of people shy away from music theory, but trust me this is so useful and really easy once you get it.

Every chord in a key gets a number and understanding how to think about this can really unlock chord progressions for you, help with using a capo, transpostion (changing keys), etc..

Think about a scale in C:     C   D   E    F   G    A   B

In music theory, the notes get numbered like this:

C   D   E   F   G    A   B

1   2   3   4   5    6   7

Well, the chords you play in the key of C are based on those same notes with the same numbers. So your chords (in C) get numbered like this:

C    Dm   Em   F   G    Am   B diminished (you don't play diminished chords much in basic pop music)

1    2    3    4   5    6    7

Stay with me. Different approaches to theory use different numbering approaches. Really, they just tell you if a chord is major or minor. Here are a few of the most popular:

1) Traditional

C   Dm   Em     F     G    Am    B diminished

I   ii   iii    IV    V    vi    vii°

(Uses Roman numerals. Uppercase/big for major, lowercase/small for minor."°" is diminished if you ever use it.)

2) Nashville

C   Dm   Em     F     G    Am    B diminished

1   2-   3-     4     5    6-    7°

(Uses plain numbers. A "-" sign tells you a chord is minor. "°" is diminished if you ever use it.)

Do you get the idea? Your chords take on number names. Certain chords are major and certain ones are minor and that is where the traditional or nashville systems come into it, but f that throws you off, just think numbers for awhile until things click.

Let's try a real song. A song with chords like this:

|  C    |  Am     |  F       |  G        |

Can also be thought of like this:

|  I    |  vi     |  IV       |   V        |   (using the traditional method)

or

|  1    |  6-    |  4          |   5        |   (using the nashville method)

You'll hear musicians talk all the time about "the one chord" or "the five chord" etc.. They are just talking about the numbers associated with the chords.

So, just take your chord charts for the next couple months and write the numbers that correspond to the chord nearby until you don't have to think about it any more. Even just think about it as you encounter charts. Even better, pick one song a week (of course you can do more) and work out the numbers for the chords. You'll find it starts to come easily as most sections of songs repeat over and over again.

This is the first step. With consistent work it will become second nature and be very, very useful. Trust me. The next step would be to use it while playing to change the key of a song by sight without having to write the chords out. More on that later.

Practice!

*There is some overlap but I did talk about different guitar related issues in the West and East conferences. It interested, it would be worth checking out the recordings for both.

Worship God 2013 Homework - Open chords

Hey all, Here are a few more ideas about how actually do the stuff we talked about in the guitar sessions of Worship God 2013 (East and West*). For your convenience, here is a link to all of the sessions from WG2013 East and WG2013 West.

I'll be going into much more detail in upcoming posts but for now:

CAGED - Open chords

-As mentioned before, the CAGED system represents the voicings that you can  use up and down the neck, but also, and very simply, it represents the keys you will play in all the time (and the "keys" or shapes you play in when using a capo). So, it is really, really useful to get to know the "families" of chords in the keys of C, A, G, E, and D. You might think, "Ya, I already know my chords," but I guarantee you this can get pretty deep and you'll be thankful you spent time looking for new voicings (i.e. chord shapes). Think of it like building your vocabulary. Here are categories I think in:

     Basic - your simple, maybe "go to" versions of chords you know

     Common tone - these have notes that stay the same (therefore "common tone") on the higher strings while the base notes change from chord to chord. Nice and clean sounding. They blend well with the rest of the band.

     Big - Chord voicings I use when I want to play loudly! They usually cover most, if not all of the strings and you can really dig into them.

     Color - these are chords the have "color" (for the theory people: extensions) added.  Notes added or taken away that give it a beautiful, tense, longing, whatever sound that is different from your normal version. I tend to use them for more intimate song settings, fingerpicking and, generally, not strumming.

     Drones  - These are shapes are big, often open chord shapes that really ring. I often use them on acoustic when the song is really big and the acoustic becomes more of a texture. Also use them all the time in Irish music. More on that later.

There is lots of overlap between all these categories, but thinking this way helps you choose the right version of the chord for the right moment in the music. Lots of examples are included in the open chord packet.

Practice different ways of going through parts of the song: a big chorus with strumming, a stripped down chorus with light strumming or picking, etc.. Try using new chords that you've learned on a song. Force yourself to check out new voicings. New things are always hard. Keep at it. What chords garb your ear? Which ones are interesting to you? Which ones don't you like? What new chords do you really like from the key of C? G? E? D? A? Some voicings of a chord are very specific to the key. Keep those in mind. Each of the CAGED keys will have their own personality and interesting/useful things about it.

Again, there is a lot of depth here. We'll follow up in more detail but for now, force your self to move forward, learn new chords, new tricks. Its all part of developing a creative chord vocabulary.

Check it out and let me know if you have questions!

PA

*There is some overlap but I did talk about different guitar related issues in the West and East conferences. It interested, it would be worth checking out the recordings for both.