Thank You Lord for Musicademy

Resources for worship leaders are rapidly increasing. It is little wonder as to why. The praise and worship team (call it what you will) is becoming a more common part of many new and expanding churches. As this has happened more people have gone looking for instructional resources on how to make their particular praise team more effective. So a heightened awareness has developed in the praise and worship community for the needs of the developing musician who wishes to pour out their talent for the purpose of serving God. One thing that I’ve wanted to see develop is a DVD resource that covered every basic area of the worship band. Guitar resources are usually plentiful but what about resources for the bass guitarist in the worship band. How about the drummer or the keyboard player? I used to say to myself, “They’re part of the band too…why don’t they have a bunch of fancy resources?” Generally speaking, most resources for guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and vocals use popular or classical music as their teaching vehicle. There’s nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t necessarily help the developing worship team. One group of people is changing that in a big way. Enter…MUSICADEMY!

Who and/or what is Musicademy?

Musicademy is an organization that works in conjunction with the Academy of Contemporary Music, Europe’s leading school for rock and pop musicians. They are also an accredited organization. So if you live in the UK, sorry America, you can enroll in their courses and receive college credit. Many of the teachers at Musicademy were trained the Academy of Contemporary Music. Some of their teachers work as studio musicians. Some of their teachers work as worship leaders. I could go on but suffice it to say that their staff resume is quite impressive. This highly trained group of people have banded their talents together and have begun making video resources for the developing worship musician. Will it cost you some money to take advantage of their resources? Yes. Is it worth every penny? It certainly seems like it. To find out more let’s jump over to their website (www.musicademy.com).

Welcome to Musicademy

This is the friendly greeting you see when you arrive at Musicademy’s website. If you scroll down the center of the page you’ll see several things of note. Let’s just go down through it and see what they’ve decided to put center stage.

EXPLORING THE HOME PAGE

Local Courses

If you happen to live in the UK this might interest you. Musicademy offers real life classes for those who are interested. This section will tell you who and how to get in touch with if you want to enroll in one of their classes.

Online Guitar Lessons

Click on any of these links and you’ll arrive at instantly downloadable video about playing the guitar. These videos represent REAL people teaching REAL songs.

The “Rock & Pop” lessons are chock full of cool songs to learn. You’ll notice that each “course” of lessons in this link is broken down into stages. Within each stage there are a number of lessons that are available for download. Each download costs 3.49 euros (something like $4.75 in US currency). The teaching is sequential so stage 1 is for the absolute beginner and the higher number stages begin to get more technically difficult. You don’t have to download each lesson individually. In fact, you can buy a whole stage and save a little money. So for example, if you bought all 7 of the “Stage 2” lessons (which includes music from the Monkees to the White Stripes…how’s that for diverse) it would cost you a little over 28 bucks because in stage 2 you can get a coupon code to get one lesson free. Think about what you’re getting. You’re not just learning how to play songs. You’re picking up professional techniques from professional musicians. I can’t tell you how invaluable that is. If you were paying for guitar lessons you’d be lucky to get 7 lessons for less than a hundred dollars. So while you might be thinking, “Man this seems a little pricey,” you really are getting the absolute amount of bang for your buck. Here’s the other cool part…once you download the video once, you can refer back to it as many times as you want. It’s literally like taking a guitar teacher home with you. You’re basically getting guitar lessons at about five bucks a shot. Anyone that has ever taught music privately will tell you that “dirt cheap” isn’t really an apt description for just how inexpensive that truly is. So if you’re just starting out on guitar, I highly recommend this series. Buy a stage every other paycheck or something like that and you’ll soon find that you have the whole set and you now have an amazing library of musical instruction at the tip of your…um…uh…fingertips.

No offense to rock music, but what if you’d rather learn to play guitar using praise and worship tunes. Hey, I love U2, Nirvana and The Troggs just as much as any cat out there, but not everyone does. If you’re looking to get a praise and worship team together in a hurry then “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Sunday Bloody Sunday” might not be the best vehicles for your praise band to use as a model for practice. Musicademy truly shines in the area of praise and worship because they go to great lengths to remedy this very problem.

The “Worship Song Learner Downloads” are incredible. There are currently 22 downloads available in this section (as of 8-27-07). The very first video available for download is “All Creatures of Our God and King” as done by the David Crowder Band. The description of the video made me want to buy it instantly. This video teaches you how to play the acoustic guitar part of “All Creatures” note for note (i.e. just the way Crowder plays it). Even if you’ve been playing by ear for a long time you might sometimes wonder exactly how you’re favorite artists play certain songs (there is usually more than one way to play something). I know some people who get DVD’s of their favorite bands/musicians just so they can physically see how the actual artists play a certain song. I can’t tell you how helpful it is to know precisely how another musician plays something. It doesn’t mean that it’s the only way that it can be played but sometimes you might discover something that makes the song a million times easier to play than the way you might play it. Also, if you’re a member of the website you can download resource sheets with each of these videos. These sheets include things like song charts, chord shapes and strumming patterns. All of this is information that will help you learn and retain that much faster. Scroll through all 22 products available, get crazy and buy 7 or 8 of them (you get one video free after you buy so many). The videos that they have up right now represent some of the best worship music that’s out there today. You’ll even find things here that you won’t find in their instructional DVD’s.

Musicademy Worship Courses on DVD

The few links that they have under this are but a mere spattering of what they have available. What you ought to do instead is go over on the left hand side of the page and put your mouse icon over on “Worship DVD’s” (it’s right between the Home and Vocal CD’s links). When you put your mouse icon over the Worship DVD’s you’ll notice that a whole new menu jumps out to the right. Click on “Beginners Guitar”. Follow this process for all the other sections as well.

Beginners Guitar/Intermediate Guitar

All together, there are 6 DVD’s in the Musicademy worship guitar course. Three of the DVD’s are for beginners and the final three move up to the intermediate level. These DVD’s teach sequentially so make sure you get them in the proper order. Each DVD is a whopping two hours long. The question on everybody’s mind is, “Yeah, but how much do they cost?” Each DVD will cost a little over 30 bucks. Right now some of you are saying, “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME! 30 BUCKS FOR A TWO HOUR DVD!! I GOT THE FOUR DISC SET OF “RETURN OF THE KING” FOR LESS THAN THAT!!” While 30 bucks might seem like a lot of money it really isn’t when you consider all that is packed into each DVD. I challenge you to go to a big city and find a guitar teacher that will give you lessons for two hours and not charge you any more than 30 bucks. Even in smaller areas this isn’t all that easy. In truth, going out and paying for guitar lessons would end up costing much more in the long run. So you’re actually saving money with these DVD’s.

Speaking of saving money, if you bought all three of the beginner DVD’s individually you would end up shelling out close to or just over 100 bucks. Fortunately, Musicademy offers the beginner and intermediate courses in a box set. On worshiptogether.com they’re currently offering those box sets at $74.99 each. Again, this total might have made you wince. But let’s do some more math. Let’s say that the average guitar teacher in America charges only $20.00 for an hour-long lesson (that’s an understated figure by the way). The DVD’s in each course offer a total 12 hours worth of instruction. 12 hours of instruction with the Average guitar teacher in our example would run no less than $240.00 dollars (that figure would be much higher in metropolitan areas). If you simply bought the two box sets of DVD’s (beginner and intermediate) from Musicademy you would save yourself nearly $75.00 in lessons. Talk about savings. Also, I bet if you did some shopping around on the net you could probably find those DVD box sets a little cheaper. So the cost here really should be a no brainer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…so the price is pretty good…but are the DVD’s actually any good? What are they teaching? Take it from someone who has taught guitar and someone who has also been the beginning student, these DVD’s are the real deal. They are showing you everything you need to know in order to get off on the right foot with your guitar playing.

The Song Learner Series for Guitar/Keyboard/Bass

As if lessons on guitar, keys and bass weren’t enough, Musicademy offers a whole other series of “Song Learner” DVD’s. Each DVD in this series is also two hours long. They teach you how to play virtually all the modern day staples of the average praise band. Imagine a scenario like this:

A guitarist, a keyboardist and a bassist are all at their respective homes in front of the TV. Each of them are watching their song learner DVD’s. Each of them is learning how to play “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin. They all practice diligently for a solid week and then they show up at praise band rehearsal. Everybody already knows how to play “Indescribable” so they go ahead and tear into the song. It’s not exactly magic the first time but it’s also not horrid because they’ve had someone teaching them how to play that song for the last week. Their whole practice session is made easier and better because they’ve had a professional telling them how to make their playing better. Imagine how much their learning will be excelerrated if they continue to work with those DVD’s.

If I had a young group of musicians who wanted to form a praise band I would undoubtedly buy these DVD’s and send them home with my kids as practice tools. The bass DVD in this series is not yet complete but it is scheduled out for later this year. I hope that they’re also planning one for drums. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Vocals

I’ve never really considered myself a true vocalist. True vocalists know all kinds of stuff about breathing, diction, falsetto, vibrato, their diaphragm, head voice, chest voice, warm-ups, vocalises and a whole bunch of other stuff. Your average worship leader of today probably knows very little about the list I just described. So you might be asking the question, “If our singer sings well enough, do we really need a DVD to help us out?” Like in every other area of musicianship, more help never hurt.

I remember being in college and sitting in my first session of class voice and thinking, “This is really lame!” I thought to myself, “I’ve been singing for years…it isn’t exactly rocket science.” After one day in class voice I realized just how wrong I was about everything I thought I knew about singing. The human voice is an extremely complicated instrument. It takes really hard work and an extreme sense of dedication to develop the singing voice properly. The things that I learned in class voice all those years ago are things that I’ve carried with me all the way up to the present. I keep them in mind every time I get ready to sing. So on the technical side of things I would say that the vocal DVD’s from Musicademy have a wealth of good information to offer. But here’s the best part…they’re not just teaching you proper technique. They are also considering the varying dynamic aspects of worship leading.

Here are some examples of crucial things that Musicademy’s vocal course will teach you:

Choosing Keys: Choosing an appropriate key for a song is so essential for corporate worship. There are a great many worship songs out there that are great worship songs because they have several things: solid theology, simplicity, and singability. Okay “singability” isn’t really a word but what it means is simple. A song is considered “singable” or accessible because it’s melody falls within the comfortable range of a large number of people. In other words, songs whose melody is very high may be uncomfortable for the average man to sing. Songs whose melody is very low may be too difficult for the average woman to sing. Songs whose melody is too “notey” may too complicated for the untrained voice. Yet a song whose melody falls somewhere between “not too high and not too low” and “has very few notes” is the kind of song that can be learned very rapidly in a large group setting. Choosing the right key means that your congregation will be able to sing the song with more ease and thereby feel more comfortable to worship without the threat of the dreaded puberty voice. I’ve heard Chris Tomlin say, “You might want to move the key of this song down to a different key to make it more accessible to your congregation.” He says this because he knows that he sings very high. This means he sees the potential complications that people might have if they’re trying to sing really high like him. For a long time I was a real stickler for doing songs in their original key. Finally I realized that changing the key of a worship song doesn’t rob the song of its integrity, it merely opens up more potential for people to worship in song.

Teaching Songs: Teaching a new song to a congregation is not as easy as one might think. Showing it to the band might not be any easier. Musicademy provides tips on how to teach songs in a fashion that will allow you to communicate intelligently. You always want this particular process to be enjoyable. It won’t be if you have no idea how to communicate it to the people around you.

Band Communication: Everybody has a different set of body language. I remember our drummer once saying something like, “Chad and Chris do some of the same things but they don’t mean the same things when they do them. I always have to remember whose leading because if Chris stomps the ground it means he wants a different tempo but if Chad stomps the ground it just means he’s getting into it.” So much of what happens between a band consists of non-verbal communication. Verbal and non-verbal communication are essential for any good band. Musicademy will help you be more effective at this.

A quick story about the power of non-verbal communication

One of the most amazing musical moments I ever experienced in my life took place over the course of a 17 minute musical jam with an old band I used to play with. You should know that this didn’t take place at church. This took place at a slightly scary bar. Anyway, there were four of us playing (drums, bass, guitar, and sax). The jam started off really big and bombastic. Then, over a period of about 17 minutes, the music continued to change moods and get increasingly understated. The guitarist eventually left the stage, followed by the drummer. This left just the bass player and myself.  What the basss player and I played…well I can’t tell you what we played…I just remember that everyone in front of us was mesmerized. We just played these simple little things together and eventually we just faded it out to nothing. It doesn’t sound like much of anything when you read about it on a page but it was the first time in my life that I had ever done something musically where I felt like my playing went places that it had never gone before. That whole 17 minutes no one said a word to one another but everyone knew exactly what to do. We all just knew what the moment needed. That’s how worship leaders need to be. They need to know what the moment needs and often times you’ll have to communicate that to your band through non-verbal cues.

Spontaneous and Prophetic Singing: You might be saying to yourself, “How can someone give you guidelines on singing spontaneously…isn’t that kind of an oxymoron.” Matt Redman is perhaps one of the best practitioners spontaneous and prophetic singing. While there are no specific hard and fast rules about doing this in worship there are some general concessions that everyone should be aware of because failing to follow them could spell disaster for the worship atmosphere. I’m so glad to see that Musicademy is addressing this particular topic. Too many people do it poorly. Musicademy will show how to do it as it ought to be done.

Those are but a mere spattering of the vocal DVD’s have to offer. A wealth of information awaits you in all of the volumes of the Musicademy vocal course.

Keyboard DVD’s

The ability to play keyboards in a worship band adds so much depth to the overall sound of the group. The keyboard series is broken up into two volumes: the intermediate and the beginner. From looking over what the DVD’s teach I can tell you that this won’t be like your ordinarily boring piano lessons. These lessons seem to get right down to showing you how to play in a worship band. Naturally you’ll learn most of your standard basics along the way but by the end of the 1^st DVD in the beginners series they’ve already got you playing the amazing worship song “Lord Reign in Me”.

Keyboarding basics aside, some of the things that I’m really excited about in these DVD’s are some of the extended techniques that they’re teaching you. I list some of those examples below.

Learning How to Play with Feeling and Expression: In truth, this isn’t the kind of thing that can actually be taught. However, people can give you plenty of advice to help you learn how to tap into that potential within yourself. Too many “trained” pianists, mostly young pianists, play like robots. They don’t really know how to naturally use things like dynamics and tempo fluctuation to add a sense of purpose to their playing. I’m so glad Musicademy is addressing this. I hope that it is currently helping a lot of uptight keyboardists to loosen up.

Playing in public for the first time: So many people, even if they’re in a group, experience this nearly inexplicable terror every time they play in front of a group of people. I’m sure this section of the DVD offers some very solid advice about overcoming these fears and realizing that what you’re doing is for the glory of God…that being the case…let go of stage fright and just worship.

Melodic Fills and Improvisation: Many people who have been “classically” trained on the piano have a very difficult time thinking outside the box. Classically trained pianists tend to get into a full band situation and just pound out chords. They do this because they have no music in front of them to help them do otherwise. Sadly, improvisation is just not taught to many developing musicians. In light of that reality piano players usually add little flavor to the overall mix of the band. Granted, there are times when you really just need a pianist to plunk out chords but in the modern praise and worship setting the keyboard can do so much more. So many of the really cool sounds you hear coming out of a praise band come from a very creative keyboardist. There have been a number of occasions where I have been playing the keyboard in our praise band at Oasis and never bothered to plunk out one single solitary chord. Instead, I’ve challenged myself to find interesting sounds to add ambience to the overall sound of the group. The possibilities that one has in front of them on the keyboard are limitless. You can add such a unique dynamic to your praise group by better understanding how to put “melodic fills” and improvisatory sounds into each song. It makes the praise band multi dimensional.

Resources for Bass Guitarists

Some people think of bass guitar kind of like the dummy instrument. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bass guitar is so crucial that it can’t possibly be overstated. One of the nice things about bass guitar is its accessibility. Often times you’re called on to use only one finger on one string at a time. This makes the learning process faster and the learning curve much less steep. However, the moment you get the easy stuff down you soon find yourself wanting to do so much more. The problem is that a lot of young bass players have no idea what to do past the basics that they’ve learned. I’ve listened to albums before like the Red Hot Chili Peppers classic “Blood Sugar Sex Magic” and found myself saying, “The bass part is so mesmerizing that I can hardly listen to the other parts of the song.” It’s amazing how well a good bass part can drive a song. How about “Dancing Generation” by Matt Redman. You just can’t play that song unless you have that killer bass part. Thankfully Musicademy has come up with a resource to help all those thirsty bass players out.

There are six DVD’s in this series (3 for beginners and 3 for advanced players). The tutor in this series is none other than the great Matt Weeks….yeah I didn’t know who he was either. This guy has one serious resume. He has worked with the likes of Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Brenton Brown, Paul Baloche, and Brian Doerksen (just to name a few). Many of the songs taught on the bass DVD’s are songs that Matt created the original bass parts for. This guy is the genuine article and bass players in every praise band everywhere can benefit from what this guy has to teach. As of this article the bass DVD’s are not yet available but when they become available you should buy them all immediately.

Resources for Drummers

I’m not kidding…when these DVD’s (6 total) come out, I’m thinking about buying them for myself. I’ve never learned how to play the drumset but I’ve always wanted to learn. Again, these DVD’s aren’t out yet but they will be soon. There’s not really much I need to say here. I looked over what the DVD’s teach and it all seems solid. The truly nice thing is that it is all worship focused so you’ll get the chance to play along with already familiar worship tunes.

Wrapping it UP

Well, here I am on page 8 of my Word document. I could go on for hours about the wonderful resources contained within this website. I can’t stress enough what a help these DVD’s would be to your praise band. Yes it will cost you some money but it will be worth every penny. So continue surfing around on Musicademy. Tell others about it. Use it to help you glorify God through music.