I admit, these aren't so much rules, but values and practices I put into what I do when approaching playing, jamming, recording, leading worship – anything to do with music!
Fun Stuff
Transcript - still has Ums and Uhs in it, but here it is:
Hey, welcome to worshipleaderlife.com podcast, I am Stephen Toon and here to share some resources and things for worship leading with you, and I'll mention it again later, but just want to make sure everybody knows what we're all about. We're here to help and to support and give resources to worship leaders.
In local churches. So we'd love to help you as you lead and plan for worship. We've got a worship leader or worship leading checklist at our website that you can get for free. And we've got a mini ebook called a four pillars of an awesome worship leader and this podcast, and a blog where we post the podcast and notes about the podcast, all of that at worship leader, life.com and are you in a church with no worship pastor?
Do you have a. Faithful worship leaders, but no one to disciple and lead them. That's what I love to do. Drop me a line. We can chat about how to set up a super simple and effective discipleship connection for your team of worship leaders. This can alleviate time and energy for you. And allow your worship leaders to grow and flourish in unity.
So stay connected to them and cast vision, but allow worship leader life membership to take the time and care required to grow them. That's something that you can check out. We'd love to hear from you. So, and yeah, if you want to email me, , I'm at [email protected]. So. There you go.
That's the intro. That's who we are, and that's what we're doing. Why are we doing it? Well, I sh I've shared this before, in a couple of places with years ago, a friend of mine, we were having lunch and we were getting ready for a retreat that he was hosting. And he said, you know what, Stephen, there's, there's a gap.
There's a, there's something missing in the church. And, um, basically it was his, his belief that. Worship leaders. There's lots of worship leaders, but there's not a lot of people mentoring them and training them. So I just realized that I was just out walking, running around with the dog and I'm, I'm, I'm all out of breath.
I'm going to turn my compressor down a little bit, cause that way you don't have to hear every single breath. I take every breath you take. I've seen the police live. I digress, but I, seen the police live. I love staying. I love the police, but. I've never actually sung that song. I don't know if I could pull it off with lyrics and all, but anyways, there we go.
Turn that down a little bit back on track here. So, um, yeah, so he, he basically said there's, there's this gap. And it stuck with me for a long time and I thought, you know what, what can I do as someone who's been leading worship for a long time and a worship pastor, I've gone through the whole. You know, Bible college and theology and ordination and, and local church leadership and stuff.
And I just want to share. Resources and help and help coach and disciple or their worship leaders. Cause I do think that that's missing. Sometimes every worship leader has their pastor and has whoever they're working with, and hopefully they have a mentor in place. But, you know, I dunno, I, over the years I've had times in my life where I've just felt kind of alone, or at least I, I wanted, needed more.
And, and as senior pastors and you know. Leaders in the church. There's other stuff going on. And you know, the worship team, the worship leaders are not the only people that they are pastoring and mentoring and discipling. So yeah, this is what we want to do. We want to give support to your, to your leaders, to your church, and to you.
So you know, if you're a worship leader, we want to support you. If you're a pastor, we want to. We want to support you by discipling your worship leader. So, okay, let's talk about today's episode. So, you know, as a team, we're going to talk about music. Today. I got this a, I did this little little thing with my team, at my church recently, and I called, I wasn't sure we were, we were doing a, ah, tongue tongue twisted, tongue tied. We were doing a, like a worship kind of team jam. We're just sort of learning some new songs and just all playing together in a circle and hanging out. And I don't know, there's like 20 or 30 of us there, I guess. And we also want to incorporate some musical teaching or some, some kind of teaching to help grow our team.
And so I ended up giving a. Giving a little talk on the golden rules of music three. You know, three of my golden rules of music is just a starting point. Not that I only have three. I've got lots of kind of things that I value and, and, and practice in music. But we started with these three. And so that's what I want to share today.
As a team, you want to be on the same page. Musically. Think of kids starting sport and you know, when they're new and they're young and they don't know what they're doing, they need some direction. They need some kind of consistent vision and understanding. My two boys play soccer, well, all four of them play soccer, but two of them had a there.
They're a year apart. So they ended up on two different teams a couple of years ago. Our oldest had a coach who is devoted, who cared. You knew how to instill a kind of a, you know, teamwork and vision into his players. And he had a good understanding of how to teach them the rules of the game and just how it works.
The my other son, as he on the other hand, didn't have a coach that year and. It was a disaster. It was just, you know, these kids did not know anything. They didn't know. No one was there to share, you know, the, the rules. And no one was there to share any kind of technique or coaching in any kind of way. And so you have this group of people who, their goal was to play soccer and to score goals and to do well, but.
You know, that they didn't know how to do it, and they didn't even know if, you know, if that was the goal and what were they there just to, to have fun where they there to learn something? Where are they there to develop? We didn't know. And, and he had a really rough year because of it, whereas Rocky flourished and ended up getting more interested in soccer and he started playing goal and he's just like taken off with it, loving it and got a real foundation for the game that year. So it's really important if you have a team in, which means, you know, if there's more than just youth, you want to be on the same page. You want to make sure you guys, your team is in this together and, and sharing the same vision, and I'll mention this a couple times.
My, my favorite musical mentor, Lincoln Tatum, who I used to work with at 10th Avenue church, 10th church in Vancouver. He used to share with us, with our team we pursued, we were pushed pursuing excellence as a worship team. And that did not mean excellence was not a destination or a bar. It was, it was a direction that we were heading in.
And so it's not like. You know, we, we were saying that you had to be, like, everyone had to be at the same high level, so to speak. Oh, just realizing I can't find my mouse on my screen and I'm trying to, there we go. Sorry. Not that you needed to hear that, but yeah. So excellence was a direction that we were heading in, which meant we could have people who were.
Adequate and able to lead, but maybe just starting out musically and we could have professional musicians on the team, but we were all headed in the same direction and we were trying to develop as musicians to grow as players and to learn more about both worship and music together. And, and so there was a bar, like you had to be able to lead without distracting everybody.
You know, you had to, we wanted people that could. Play and sing and not be a hindrance to the flow of worship and leadership in the songs. But, we didn't all have to be completely at the same level. We were all heading towards the same place, which was growth and development and excellence. And so I say all that because, you know, that's, that.
The why of this. And that's, that's why I think we're going to be wanting to instill things in our team and our people so that they can be heading in that direction. They can be working together for the same goal. Um, so number one on my golden rules of music is master the song. Don't let the song master you.
You are the leader. Your people are watching you for cues. So even if you don't know the song super well, as long as you have the melody, your job is to sing with clarity and confidence. And it's the same idea that allows you to carry a whole group in spontaneous worship or in doing something like singing the songs. So you know, so I guess what I'm trying to say is like, you don't have to be like, totally. You don't have to know the song inside out to still be up there leading your people with confidence and clarity. A green Kendrick teaches on singing the songs and he'll open up through a Psalm and just sing, sing the words that he's reading from the song with improvised melodies, and he's singing over the people. And in some or most instances, there's no real melody planned or for known there. It's maybe, maybe he's got a simple chord structure, chord progression. But there's no break in the flow of leadership. The key is, um, you know, to develop, this is practice. So. Again, you do need to know the song that you're leading, or in this case, you do need to know some fundamentals of like, you know, how to play a chord, chord progression or, and then how to, you know, sing notes that are in that key and to be able to do this on the fly.
So, practice, doesn't always make perfect, but practice definitely will strengthen you in this area. Um, and why I go here is because let's say you learn a song. And you know, the melody, you know the chords, but it's not like you don't know it super well. You still need the chart. Maybe you need a lead sheet.
But if you're, if you're a musician who's practicing the fundamentals, and keeping kind of music flowing through you day to day. That's all you need really to, to get up into lead with clarity and confidence. So practice this every day in your worship, in life. Great jazz musicians know this, that you don't have to know a song beforehand to be able to jam on it.
And I'm not talking about just sight reading, I'm talking about. Like miles Davis recording, kind of blue. He went into the studio with this, with his band, and he showed them sketches of what he wanted to do. And they weren't full on full charts and arrangements or sketches. So maybe some chord progressions, some lead lines and melodies.
They were seasoned enough musicians to take a quick look and a pass through the song and then hit record and see what came of it. Right. That's. Mastering the song and not letting the song master you, you're bringing yourself to the table. So practical ways to make this happen is take a simple one to four chord pattern, like YouTubes.
All I want is you, or Brian Doerksen. It wasn't just Brian is he? I think there's a couple of Brians wrote that song together, but Brian is one of the writers on who is like our God. And you know. The G to the C, the G, the C, did you pick a short Psalm and sing words over that? Right. And it might feel funny at first, but the more you do this, the more you improvise with a chord structure and some notes and melody, and you know the words in front of you, you're going to get more comfortable kind of playing on the fly so that when you do go to learn a song.
And cause we all have to learn songs on the fly every week, right? Like someone brings a new song to the table. A pastor asks for a specific song. You don't know super well get what you need to be confident to bring the melody to the people. And you know, but master the song, don't let it master you.
Don't let it. You got to lead with confidence. So next thing you can do to develop as a kind of a. A confident player playing on the fly add a short, a, add a quarter to two, the pattern, choose a different song, maybe try it in a minor key, maybe work up to being able to improvise lyrically without the songs.
Just your own prayers. Eventually trying to use something more complex to sing over. I used to spend hours as a teenager playing over the chords to little wing. That's a song by Jimmy Hendrickson. It's about. Eight bars, eight and a half bars. There's a two, four bar in there of basic chords, but each bar had one or two new cores.
It wasn't like a repeated two bar thing. It was, or even like 12 bar blues. It was just like this kind of longer drawn out core progression. And, it was fun as a young player to try to play over those chord changes and just the, the longer, the longer format. And, unlike, you know, other songs like 12 bar blues or, or say a two to four bar structure or that G to see over and over again, you know, but I started simple and I worked and I worked up to that and eventually got into playing more jazz.
And you got like, crazy voiced chords and, and different inversions and all these other things. But start simple, just play you know, a G for a bar and a C for a bar. Learn a simple song like holding anointed one or um, anything and, and, and play around with it so that you get comfortable kind of sticking to a melody or sticking to, or a core structure, one or the other.
But. Improvising with the rest of the song. And by working on this, you're going to be able to go into a a worship service and play your songs with more confidence and clarity because you're getting a handle on the other aspects of the music and just being able to kind of think into a groove and sink into a.
You know, a chord structure and then play around and, and recover when you make mistakes and that kind of stuff. So anyways, that's just something I like to practice. Something I like to encourage people to do There's other things, obviously just learning the song. B ut mastering the song, don't let the song master you.
And this is kind of one technique I use to do it, is this whole improvising thing. Start simple, work yourself up. And you can develop into eight master song leader one year, people can and will trust with the songs and with the service. So golden rule number two that I like to teach, and I'm definitely borrowing this from Brian Doerksen, again, to mention one of the great songwriters and worship leaders, and he's actually, we're both from the same Valley.
He's from Abbotsford. I'm from Chilliwack . He's a, he's just a great, he's a great teacher in this stuff. And he talks about the sum of one, by the way, I was gonna mention, you can probably hear the TV. The news is on upstairs. My kids are here. I don't know if I mentioned that I'm recording this during I guess, I don't know, week two or three of the, a pandemic...I mean, it's been leading up since January, but we're at the end of March now, and we're all home. We're all hanging out and getting lots of time with my family. Time to do time to do some of this stuff, which I love. So if you hear some of that background noise, that's why, we've got a full house, six of us here, plus our dog anyways back to it.
So, so the sum of one. Basically,let's start from, from first Corinthians 12. Paul likens the church with its members to a body made up of many parts. So you're a one person, one body, but you have a brain, eyes, arms, fingers, toes, organs, et cetera. Everything works together to get out there and present one you to the world each day.
Yes, there are some parts of you that get that get featured at times, like maybe your voice or your hands or your brain. Maybe your tastes gets featured if you're a chef or a Baker. Maybe your legs are featured at times, if you're a long distance or competitive runner, but you are still one person being offered to the world each day.
I'm just going to read from first Corinthians 12, I actually, I urge you to just pause, you know, pause and, and read the whole thing. But, um, I'm, I'm just going to pick out a portion here from. 1st Corinthians 12, verse 12, just as a body though one has many parts, but all its many parts form one body.
So it is with Christ for we were all baptized by one spirit, so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free. And we were all given the one spirit to drink even so the body is not made up of one part, but many. Now, if the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body.
It would not for that reason. Stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body. It would not for that reason. Stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be if the whole body were an ear. Where would the sense of smell be?
But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be, if they were all one part, where would the body be as it is? There are many parts, but one body Paul goes on to talk about, um. You know, the, the whole body and, and we could parts, public parts, private parts.
And, uh, you know, he talks about the, I guess the offices of the, of the church, the, the roles of different people, different gifts, different body parts. And then he goes on to say that the most, most excellent ways, love and end. He talks about how love without love, it doesn't matter what part of the body are, you're not going to be able to do your job.
But the point I want to make here, and if you read the whole thing. You got a picture of what it is to be the church and what the kingdom values are, what, how the kingdom works, how we all work together. We all have a different role and it's the same in music. I mean, music is so powerful because we get to, in our little microcosm kind of way, we get to exemplify and represent what the church is, even just in our worship team.
And we get to do that by being a, a bunch of different parts. But recognizing that we're all in this with one goal, and that is to be able to, uh, facilitate worship in the church. So, like I mentioned, a. Doerksen teaches the summer one concept. And so you're one band, you're leading your con congregation.
You're not five or seven or 10 solo artists, uh, all up trying to show off and do your own thing. Essential to making this happen. I'd say primary to it is developing good listening skills. And this also means learning how to submit to one another. And again, Paul talks in Ephesians about submitting to one another in love.
Like he's talking about marriage, he's talking about relationship. And how do you do relationship use? You learn to give and take and you learn to submit to each other. So back to the main point. Each player needs to listen to the other, being aware of who has the ball. Another concept I learned when working with Lincoln.
Tatum at 10th church in Vancouver, often our singers have the ball cause they're carrying the melody that we want the congregation to sing. So the drums, bass, guitar, uh, they're all there to support that melody and support what the singers are doing so that we can support the whole congregation. Right.
In the same way. The support singers are there to follow and undergird the lead singer. The lead singer is who they should be listening to and, and they need to be listening to how the leader is phrasing what their tone is, their rhythm, their dynamics and everything to try to follow suit or to sing something that lets the lead cut through for.
The congregation. Uh, so what about instrumental parts? I love having, you know, open solo or jam sessions in improv improv sessions in worship because it's an opportunity to let the spirit flow and speak to people through the instruments, or better yet just spirit to spirit with no words to get in the way, you know, uh, say the lead guitar player has the ball.
So to speak, right? So if we're playing basketball, if someone's got the basketball, we're kind of following that, or soccer, the poker, whatever. Right? That's where all eyes are, and that's kind of where we're basing what we're doing on what the person with the ball is doing right. So the lead guitar player has the ball.
Well, whatever the rest of the band is playing, should be to lift that up, to let that cut through. We experienced this every time we go to a range of song in the studio at Lisa and I or whoever I'm recording with, what parts are we playing on when I tend to overplay myself? So on our recent record, which you were just in the studio recording last week, um, you know, singing, playing, whatever it is, the producer kept having to reign me in so that I wasn't a.
You know, overdoing anything and not letting other parts on the song, uh, get buried or, or, or, you know. Overpowered. So practical ways to work on this is play a core progression on repeat. Okay. Take turns taking the ball. The person with the ball can improv a solo, or they can play a riff that no one else is playing or just play busier and louder when it's their turn right.
And see what the rest of the band can do to undergird and support them. So letting them shine right. Do this in rehearsal to make your players comfortable. It's not about performing something wild and groundbreaking. It's just about everyone learning to listen to all the other parts and learning to choose rhythms and parts to get out of the way so that the person who's got the ball can shine and a basis.
So piano players, rhythm guitar players, uh, you know, try cutting your playing in half as far as the amount of notes you're playing. If you're playing 16th. Go down to eighth or even quarters. Listen to how that changes the vibe or opens up space for other instruments to be heard. Try playing a section of a song with your singer singing too, but take time to go through each instrument, right?
Making everyone turn their attention to one person at a time, forcing everyone else to kind of lay off a bit on their volume and busy-ness to hear what each one is playing. You'll be surprised how many people change their parts after this. Um, you know, they'll realize. Wow. We don't need three people playing that same check.
A chug a 16th thing. Maybe I can play whole notes here. Instead, if the bottom drops out, if the ball gets lost, the musical director or the leader can decide to get someone to change their part of it until things sound tight and musical and appropriate for whatever you're doing. So you're one band, you're one team, you're one song maker.
Even if there are five or six or 20 of you, sometimes this means you need a skilled director to arrange parts, or at least listen carefully to each person and change parts accordingly. Sometimes like, uh, you know, as longstanding bands, you'll easily fall into roles and parts and arrangements that serve the whole.
So finally, the best way to start heading in the direction of oneness. Is to make time for playing together, jamming out freely, listening, prayer, worship together, sharing and caring for each other and agreeing on one vision and mission. Usually that's as simple as serving your congregation as they worship together.
So what that looks like, you know, um, I'm going to share a couple of funny videos of like an instrumentalist sort of taking over. There's, I think it's a wedding or something where there's a band playing and the drummers is being a total, you know. Um, just taken over with his antics, his playing and his, and his, uh, twirling of sticks and tricks and things.
So, anyways, that would be an example of somebody that's like taking the ball when they shouldn't, you know? But I think it's done on purpose. It's a bit of a comedy act, but, okay. And also back to that submitting thing, you know. Paul talks in Corinthians 13 the next chapter about, you know, if he speaks in the tongues of men or of angels, but he doesn't have love, he's only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.
If he's got the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and has a faith that can move mountains. But he doesn't have love. He's nothing. And, uh, even if he gives all he has to the poor and he gives his body over to hardship that he may boast, but he doesn't have love. He gains nothing.
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.
Love never fails. And he goes on to talk about a bit more about that, but. You know, that's, that's it right there. When you're playing on a team, you're in this together. You're trying to create the sum of one, and I guess I didn't really get into it, but really what Dirkson says is you're not 10 people trying to create the sum of 10 or even a hundred.
What's. What's the one sound, the one song, the one goal that you have together and what percentage are you supposed to play to make that happen, right? How can you support the one? Right? And probably the best way to do that, aside from all the other things I mentioned here, is, is learning to love, learning to submit to one another and love learning to listen.
It's a love thing. Right? Okay. So quickly, golden rule number three. I want to end here with bringing golden rule, my third golden golden rule of many. I maybe we shouldn't call these rules, practices, values. I don't know. Is , taking time to learn to study and learn groove. Two quick stories. When I was in my third year of college, I think I was playing in a, in a cover band in town and we were having this, rehearsal and then, a friend who is out in
gosh, I think he was living in Calgary at the time. He's a funk jazz player. Just a phenomenal player. And I know he used to play locally at a church in Regina as well, but, Kris Craig was in town and he, showed up to our practice and we started playing some funk. And I was like. Totally green, just fresh.
I didn't know what I was doing. We were playing classic rock tunes in this band, and I've been playing music for a while, but I've, no one had ever really taught me anything about funk. And without getting into the, the specifics on what made funk funk he taught, he, he instilled in me, um, kind of understanding of the one, the one is very important in funk.
In any music. If you know where the one is, then you'll then you won't get lost. Right. And what I mean by that is one, two, three, four, one, two, three. Where's the one? Right? So we're playing and we're getting the groove. We're all playing our you know our divisions well, and we're playing together, but he noticed there's something missing, there's something off.
And he comes over to me and he's like, Hey, you ever played funk? I'm like, well, not really. I don't know. This is all you need to know. And he starts yelling in my face, one one every time the one came around one one and he's like. And I, I don't know what it was. It just, I started to get it. He's all you had to do was show me where the one was and everything else in between.
The ones could be kind of loose, could be kind of a, I don't know, fluid sorta. I don't know how to put it into words really, but in that moment I started to kind of feel something. And I started to get it. Now let's skip ahead. A year or two, I was on my internship and here's where sort of the fundamentals of funk came into play, where it just kind of, I realized, you know what the difference between say straight rock and funk was?
We were playing a delirious teen, I forget which one it was, but I was swinging. Um. I believe I was swinging my 16th notes and nobody else was, and then next time we, we rehearsed the song. I was playing them straight. Where everyone else had started swinging them. Cause I had been, and so my buddy Lincoln and another friend Trevor, who was our drummer, had to stop, stop, stop.
Let's just get this straight. Are we swinging this like, is this, are we swinging our 16th are we not? And I was like, I don't know. What do you mean? I'm like, well, is this funk or not? I'm like, well no, it's, this is a rock song. I said, okay. Then we got play straight. We got w we can't. And I was like, well what do you mean?
And this is what they. We got talking about, okay. The main issue wasn't so much whether we were swinging our the song or not, or, or, or swinging our 16th or not. It's, the problem was that we weren't playing together. We weren't sometimes were, some people were playing straight, some were swinging sometimes, uh, when there was swing going on, it was like really subtle and we weren't doing it together.
But, uh. It was all about everyone agreeing on like what this field was. So what is swing? Well, take a quarter note, which is one quarter of a whole bar, and let's clap that out. Okay, one, two, three, four. In each quarter note, you can also put two eighth right? One and two and three N four N. what happens if you put three equal.
Divisions. Three equal notes into a quarter note. You go, one, two, three, four, or one and a two and a three, end of four. And that's one triplet, two triplet, or a triple at triplet. Right. Okay, so now tie the first two triplets. And it becomes dot, dot, dot. That, that, that, uh, one, two, three, four, one and two, and swing and swing.
Right? You can also see it as playing eighth notes where the first one becomes longer than the second, like, whereas straight would be one and two and three, and this swung is, uh, uh, three and four and, okay. So that's, that's. Swing basically right now. Um. What's a shuffle. So I'll throw this in there too.
What's a shuffle? A shuffle is when you take all the triplets and you kind of, you don't have to accent them, but, but you make them known, right. And it's kinda like 12 eight times. So you do your triplet one and a two and a half. Three N T T dumped in,
uh, variations on shuffles and things. Look up the pretty shuffle. Maybe I'll put a link to that in the show notes here. That's a fun one. So. Basically a swing shuffle, very similar brothers, sisters, cousins, I dunno. Very similar concepts, but different fields. Right. I think a swing is primarily used in jazz, whereas shuffles are the blues are typically heard in the blues.
Right. And. Well, what happens if you straighten up your eighth so you go back to one and two and three and instead of, well, duh, duh, duh, duh, right? One and two and three and let's swing our 16th what happens then? So a normal 16th is one and a two E and that, that, that, that, that right? What if you go T did it, did it, did it did it, did it.
I'm glad you asked. That's fun. So when you swing your eighths, that swing, when you, when you swing your 16th, uh, it's funk. Does that make sense? Can you feel it? Uh, so all, all you bands are wondering why when you try to play a groove and say six, eight, or a slower four, four and someone in the band seems to be kind of jazzing it up, quote unquote jazzy, you know, likely, or, you know, they're doing something, they're swinging their eighths, or maybe even their 16th, but not everyone else is doing it.
So it's not jelling it doesn't feel right. Um. You know, that's, that's what's happening is, is there's some swinging going on, but you're, it's like one guy's playing in funk and the rest of the band is playing straight or whatever. Right? Rock is typically straight, but, uh, if you wanna play a shuffle or a funk tune or a bluesy, you know, or a swing, that's totally great, but you all got to agree that you're doing that, right?
Um. So one way to start working on learning the difference or learning how to swing together or learning how not to swing together is to get everyone clapping together first. Try that quarter's one, two, three, four, or even start from one to the whole nodes four then half, one, two, three, four, and then get to quarters one.
Two, you've got your whole worship team doing this, right? Get everyone doing this noggin to do eighth one and two and then get them to clap triplets, one and a two and a three, and the four end at one. All of a sudden everyone's like, Oh yeah, that I know that that feels kind of SHUFLY bluesy, right? Then get them to tie those first two.
Triplets, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that swing do it the same way. You might need to slow the tempo down. Do the same thing with sixteenths. There's your eights. Oh, I'm going too fast. One, two, three, four, one, and there's your eights three and here's the sixteens one E and a two E and a three. So get everyone clapping those sixteenths.
I'm playing it on my belly and a two E now you can say, let's do that. A swung same as we do with the ACE, right? So. It did, it did, it did it Devani and the two little league. And you can kind of divide out those triplets if you want to get it going in their heads, slow it down a bit. It's, it's the exact same thing as the triplets on the quarter notes.
But now you're doing to eighth notes. So sometimes you got to kinda, uh, slow the tempo down to show the difference. But the point is, if you're swinging your eights, you're swinging. If you're swinging your 16th, your phone. Okay. Make sure you know whether you're playing straight or whether you're wanting to swing a shuffle or funk.
It doesn't have to be rigid. You still want to remain loose and groovy. Like that's one of the mistakes that can happen is you can get too rigid with this stuff. I love hearing worship teams try to play reggae, but they don't really know what it is or they don't listen to it, I guess. So they're just trying to like.
Emulate something that they don't even really get right. Um, it's the same with jazz, blues, funk. Like you can kind of get the math right, so to speak, but you might not get the real feel, right? So listen, listen, listen to each other and listen. Listen, listen to the pros. Listen to what other people are doing.
If you want to play this style of music, if you want to play this, feel like, listen to it I want to end with a fun little exercise to challenge you and your team with. So, timing, divisions of neater and even tempo are a challenge for all of us. So, which is why I always like talking about this kind of golden rule of groove, uh, and you know, swing, shuffle straight, all that stuff.
Anything you can do to get your body grooving and feeling time and rhythm. Is good to help you develop as a musician. One trick I learned from my amazing drummer friend, Mike Thompson, he's played with a Serena rider, Jason plum and tons of other amazing Canadian artists, and he's played all around the world and he's a drummer, drum teacher performer that I met.
And, he used to jam with a little bit in Regina and. He used to do this trick with the students. He still does it, I'm sure, and it's learning how to play three, four on one hand and four four on the other hand. So the actual words used by drum teachers all over the globe are different than what I adapted.
I adapted it to basically. Uh, playing this out and saying the words, uh, eat your good, good spinach, eat your good, good spinach. And you're going to start by playing three on your right hand. So one, two, three, right? And eat your good, good spinach, eat your good, good spinach, and you can easily and naturally play for four with your left hand.
And. Like this. So on your right hand, you're saying eat on the first hit. Eat. You're saying the first good and the spin of spinach on the other two. Eat good. Spin, eat good spin. And your left hand is going to hit on eat. Same as the right, but it's also going to hit on your. The second good. And the Ach of spinach.
Right? So your second, so it sounds like this. Eat Your good, good. Spinach. I'll, I'll hit my left hand on the wood of my desk and the right on my leg. Hopefully you can hear it. Eat your Good, good. Spinach. Eat your good, good spinach. Eat your good, good Spinach. So. I'm sure there's a YouTube video out there where they're explaining this better than I just did, but little tricks, little fun things like that you can get your band doing together and help them develop as musicians, teach them this stuff.
Teach them the difference between swing shuffle. Funk, you know, teach them the difference between the, you know, tying those first two, third triplets and swinging something rather than playing it straight. And of course, my favorite kind of music is rock and roll. And that's usually played straight one and two pitch.
Well, I just swung it one to one and he ended to, he and I hope you enjoyed that. That's, my golden value of music. Number three. Okay, well that to us, close this show out. Basically, you know, just keep it, keep it relaxed, keep it real. With all these suggestions are golden values. There's, there's always the potential to get too rigid.
Relax. Have fun. Remember the direction of excellence that we talked about that Lincoln used to say, you know, excellence is not a destination or a bar. It's a direction that you're heading. If you're all heading in that direction, under the vision and mission of your team, leader, or pastor or church, keeping in mind these kingdom principles and values and practices, you can't go wrong.
Mistakes are your friend. Mistakes are your friend as you grow. Don't feel like you have to get all this stuff perfect. So keep it loose, keep it real, but keep heading in that direction of excellence. So try the exercises I mentioned. If you want more help, send me an email. We can chat about what resources are out there.
I'm going to pull some of those helpful, fun videos on these topics in the show notes, and you can find those on Anchor, on our show notes or where we host the podcast. And a on our blog is the best place to get at worship leader, life.com so we'd love to help you, as I said before, lead and plan for worship.
We have a worship leading checklist and also a mini ebook called four pillars of an awesome worship leader, and of course this podcast and blog. And are you in a church with no worship pastor? Do you have faithful worship leaders but no one to disciple and lead them? That's what I love to do. Drop me a line.
We can chat about how to set that up. And it's a super and simple effect of discipleship, connection with private, one on one coaching for your team of worship leaders. This can alleviate time and energy for you if you're the leader, if you're the pastor, and it can allow your leaders to grow and flourish in unity, to gather in unity stay connected to your team and cast vision.
And just, you know, obviously it's not going to take away from you being their leader, but. We can take the time and care required to, to grow them and to make sure that they feel supported and not alone. So anyways, hope you're all doing good. Until next time.
This has been the worship leader, life.com podcast. You can find us at worship leader, life.com I'm your host Stephen Toon. I'm an ordained minister with the Christian missionary Alliance and Canada. I was a pastor for almost 20 years and now I support local churches by discipling worship leaders and I look forward to serving you again.
Thanks. Bye. Bye.