Lazarus1140
New member
Re: How to Spice Up A Christian Rock Set
I always enjoyed the benefit of playing with top shelf keyboard players and learned most of what I know about music theory from them. In my opinion, if the music is already heavily focused on keys and acoustic, the best thing you can do is give every song a lot of space to breath. My approach was always what can I add without drawing the focus away from the purpose of the worship service. Less is usually more, and I suggest avoiding a lot of movement. Obviously, I'm not talking about physical body movements ... but you have a drummer providing rhythm (hopefully) and an acoustic player likely strumming away, and a keyboard player with 10 fingers dancing all over the place. What can you add to tie it all together without adding to the commotion? How can you be a stabilizing factor?
What do I know? I am years removed from that gig and don't recognize the songs you've mentioned ... at least not by title. Because of the pastor's roots we played about 15% old hymn based stuff, but mostly it was Hillsongs, old Christ for the Nations songs, and towards the end some Gateway songs.
Gateway worship, in my opinion, is absolutely great. The guitar players (all the musicians actually) are unbelievably good, but they all just play stuff that is very supportive of the song, but unless you're listening specifically for guitar it's as though it's buried in the mix. Everyone plays the song and no one ever draws a spotlight - as it should be.
I always enjoyed the benefit of playing with top shelf keyboard players and learned most of what I know about music theory from them. In my opinion, if the music is already heavily focused on keys and acoustic, the best thing you can do is give every song a lot of space to breath. My approach was always what can I add without drawing the focus away from the purpose of the worship service. Less is usually more, and I suggest avoiding a lot of movement. Obviously, I'm not talking about physical body movements ... but you have a drummer providing rhythm (hopefully) and an acoustic player likely strumming away, and a keyboard player with 10 fingers dancing all over the place. What can you add to tie it all together without adding to the commotion? How can you be a stabilizing factor?
What do I know? I am years removed from that gig and don't recognize the songs you've mentioned ... at least not by title. Because of the pastor's roots we played about 15% old hymn based stuff, but mostly it was Hillsongs, old Christ for the Nations songs, and towards the end some Gateway songs.
Gateway worship, in my opinion, is absolutely great. The guitar players (all the musicians actually) are unbelievably good, but they all just play stuff that is very supportive of the song, but unless you're listening specifically for guitar it's as though it's buried in the mix. Everyone plays the song and no one ever draws a spotlight - as it should be.
