A focus on developing the skill of blending, complementing, standing out, confidence and listening to each other.

Blending is essential when it comes to singing and playing music. If the individual sounds can be pieced together in a way that complements the whole team and creates a unified sound then we are winning.

Everything we add to a song will either enhance it or detract from it so listening closely to others so we can play our part more effectively is essential.

By listening to one another, adapting our part and seeking to blend, individual voices and instruments shouldn’t stand out unless they are intended to.

Three levels of experience when playing in church

Joey often refers to three levels of experience when it comes to playing (or singing) in church.

1. How do I sound? How effective am I as an individual? Am I singing/playing the right parts, in time etc?
2. How do we sound? How are we sounding as a team? Where is my part fitting within the team and is it complementing the overall sound? What are we weak in and is there anything I can do to compensate? Where are we strong and is there anything I can do to help complement this?
3. How effective are we in achieving our goal of leading the congregation? This last stage takes the first two stages into consideration knowing that regardless of how great you sound, or the team sounds if we are not reading the room, getting a feel for where people are at and where Jesus is then its all for nothing.

 

Outcome

This workshop is designed to help vocalists and musicians develop the skill of listening and complementing one another. These skills are foundational to being able to flow together when there is space for prophetic song.

 

What you’ll need

• For vocals: an acoustic guitar or piano to pitch off but it is not necessary. ‘Virtuoso’ is a great app with piano sounds that allows you to play chords.
• Simple Chord progression or chorus to use to practise the skills

 

Skills to be developed:

• Confidence: taking the lead as a musician/vocalist
• Listening: listening to the lead vocal or musician, identifying their piece
• Intention: adapting your part to complement the overall sound

 

Activity for vocals

Preparation: Choose a song or progression to use to practise the skill. 

Step 1: Split team into smaller groups of 4-5 (ideally for vocals a mix of male, female, alto, tenor, soprano).

Step 3: Explain the activity: groups will have ten minutes to practise singing through the chorus/ bridge with a different leader each time though. The first time through the group will just listen to the new leader and identify their individual sound eg volume, tone, rhythm, volume, pronunciation etc. Then, the second time through the progression they will sing and complement the leader. No discussion happens, communication is all through body language and listening. The ‘leadership baton’ is passed to the next person after a minute or two when the leader is ready.

Step 4: Practise time. (Practise the above)

Step 5: Groups come back together and ‘perform’ for the larger group. This is a good opportunity to discuss the process, what people discovered etc.

• What was easy/ hard?
• What did you personally have to change to blend with different leaders?

As part of the performance first, sing the progression ‘all in’ with every vocalist putting their spin on it. eg. all vocally leading. (it will sound like a mess).

Then have the vocals sing the progression without anyone as the leader. The aim is to be able to hear everyone’s voice, yet have no one’s voice standing out.

Then go through different vocalists as the leader.

Optional: Repeat exercise with the whole group. This requires a strong vocalist to be able to carry over multiple other vocalists.

 

Activity for musicians 

Activity for musicians follows the same idea as vocals except the teams/bands will rotate using the equipment while the other musicians listen to them play.

Step 1: Break team into teams, ideally a range of instruments.

Step 2: Nominate a team leader and begin playing a simple progression listening specifically for the ‘lead instrument’. The leader must try to lead the band dynamically using only their instrument while the rest of the team fits in and accompanies them. The baton is then passed to the next instrument to ‘lead’ and this instrument becomes the highlight that the others fit into.

Step 3: Can discuss what was hard, easy, interesting before swapping over with the next team to complete the activity.

 

Let us know if you give it a go. We’d love to hear from you!