Monday, April 28, 2008

A lesson on "flow"

Happy Tuesday everyone! For some reason, this week I thought it appropriate to give a bit of a hands on lesson. Several years ago, I had the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Paul Baloche on the subject of songwriting & leading worship. For those of you that don't know, he is a very accomplished songwriter & leader in the realm of corporate worship. As a fellow songwriter, he has been hugely influential in my writing style as well as my worship leading. 

One of the lessons that really impressed upon my heart was that of maintaining "flow" within the worship service. There are many aspects to creating such an environment...being prepared both spiritually & musically, Being aware of the keys that you are playing in and around, being aware of where your congregation is both spiritually as well as their musical skill level, and the list goes on & on. For a broader lesson from Paul, click here to go to an article on his website. My simple definition of "flow" is to lead in such a way that nothing hinders the Holy Spirit from doing His thing. That thing would be LIFE CHANGE! As worship leaders, we don't ever want it to become about us. Everything MUST point towards Him!

I want to touch on one aspect of "flow" that I learned from Paul, but he doesn't mentioned it in the article that I linked to above. That is that, sometimes, within your worship set, you may have two songs back to back that do not go together in keys, or maybe even style. However, they do fit together really well lyrically. This past Sunday we did an old deliriou5? favorite, "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble". For those of you that have done this song before, you know that in the original key of D, it's about as far of a stretch (vocally) as is possible for the average congregation. So, A key change on the chorus to E would be out of the question. However, the key to the next song, "Cleansing", was, you guessed it...E. What to do, What to do? Even though, the chorus in E would have been way too high, the verse was fine. So, we basically ended the song per normal in D, the band faded out & I transitioned us to E as we sang only the 3rd verse as a tag before leading into the next song. You know what, it actually worked quite well. The "flow" was kept in tact & the transition was made quite smoothly. The video below is of that transitioned key change into the song "Cleansing." I hope this was helpful to all you blogophiles out there. Until Next Time... 

CLEANSING

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4 Comments:

Blogger KathyH said...

I'll take your word for it.

All I know is I LIKE IT!

4:20 PM  
Blogger laurajo said...

You sure do have some perty girls on that platform.

4:33 PM  
Blogger laurajo said...

Sorry, Blake, I didn't mean to leave you out. You're perty too.

4:34 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey Mark,

My name is John and I work at The Village in Dallas and actually had dinner with your in-laws last night and they told me about your blog. I wanted to chat with you a bit about something Sam mention so email me at jwarren@thevillagechurch.net

Talk to you soon,

John

3:34 PM  

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