"How to Prepare for a Good Rehearsal" Video Transcript

Video Transcript: How to Prepare for a Good Rehearsal

Steve Elzinga  

All right, worship leader worship leader preparation for the worship team rehearsal, there's things you got to do. Before you even get to the rehearsal Part A lot of people don't understand that. You know, you show up at the rehearsal with your team and the instrument and the song people and, and they're committed for that two hour period. And they don't even always realize that there were many hours that the song I see it but many hours that the song leader has to put in

Marie Elzinga  

to get realized when you don't do it.

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah, things aren't transpose people don't have music things. They're in an order. But really, the rehearsal goes only as well as the preparation for the rehearsal. So if you're a song leader, you know, how do you do that? So how do you how do you how to run a successful worship rehearsal? I think number one, you have to make Maintain the church songbook, which is made up of all the songs that the congregation knows.

Marie Elzinga  

All right. And the reason you want the church one not that it's better than any other one, it's just that everyone then is literally on the same page. I mean, we decided to play the song in such and such a key. You might have three verses at home in different keys. No, this is the one and these are the courts we decided to use for this song. So again, not necessarily better, it's just we're all together,

Steve Elzinga  

right? So you get where you know, you get your song book, you assemble it. You might have a hymnal in your church, and that's easy on your songbook, but then you might have some things that are not in the hymnal and then you need lead sheets of the non hymnal songs and the lead sheet is what

Marie Elzinga  

that is words and the chords with those words. And sometimes you'll also have the melody line written in there which is nice. If you have it

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah, but a lot of times, it's just words and chords. And so the timing and the melody and all those things, we're assuming

Marie Elzinga  

the big unknown, yeah,

Steve Elzinga  

the big unknown. And that's part of the challenge with contemporary music. And then certainly there's recordings of songs if they're available. So maybe online or CDs or the United States, you can get this license that allows you to do things with your singing team, so that people can be listening to the same

Marie Elzinga  

and with our church, they usually try and put up a recorded version of the service every week. So then if I have new members who are just joining, I can go back in those videos and say, Hey, listen to October, whatever of 2013 we did it that day, and this is how I want to do it again. And that helps.

Steve Elzinga  

So people you know, wherever you are at you can actually listen to our worships service we put it on line. It's a video every week it's at path number two Jesus way.org and then I think it's under downloads or something, but you can watch Yeah. So that's what we have people do. They can they can listen and it's not perfect.

Marie Elzinga  

No, not studio quality. It's straight out of the building, but at least it is. Yeah. Okay. This was supposed to this is what we're aiming for.

Steve Elzinga  

tasks of the worship leader transpose songs were needed. Make song singable,

Marie Elzinga  

right. That's a common problem with lots of the worship songs that are out there today. The worship leaders that are very popular tend to have a very artist artists tend to have a really high tenor voice which most the majority of them men can't say that high, the women then are going to I sing an octave lower. How do I add a harmony, it might be fine for your solo, we type people who can handle this. But our goal is to have the congregation singing and if it's not suitable for them, then we're not doing our job. 

Steve Elzinga  

So Chris Tomlin, for example, is a very popular artist wrote a lot of

Marie Elzinga  

good, great songs that are songs very single, not singlable,

Steve Elzinga  

well, yeah, in his key, he's got a really super high voice. And if you just leave it in the key that he sang it, and a lot of times you download the music, that's what key it's in. So then you have to transpose so

Marie Elzinga  

that means I'm going to move at let's say he's written in the key of E, and it's way high for my people. So this is the key of E on the keyboard, you can look down and go Okay, maybe the key of C would work out better.

Unknown Speaker  

It's a few slower

Marie Elzinga  

and I quit. Often will actually come to practice with it in the last one that we did. I think I brought in three different keys, because I didn't quite know. how's this gonna work for the tenor? how's this gonna work for this parama voice and then and maybe I'll get to this later sometimes when the guitars are playing with it, and they have a K boat, it just doesn't work in that key. Maybe the sun just isn't gonna work. And then to go further on the singable thing, some of the most recent songs, they're gorgeous, they're great. We were talking earlier in a different session about the chorus, the bridge, all that stuff builds up the song. Well, they are covering like a two octave range, which normal range humans can't do

Steve Elzinga  

right a lot of songs they're doing the they start one octave, and then when it gets real dramatically jumping up an octave. Sometimes that jump is it gets you pretty high.

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah. Which maybe your congregation will just stay back in the Regular octave but I think they're kind of looking confused and going What am I supposed to do now?

Steve Elzinga  

So there's so there's getting the song singable, you may have to transpose for everyone to get everyone together. But then instruments sometimes need a lead sheet that's a different key than a piano. For example, I play a trumpet,

Marie Elzinga  

which is a B flat

Steve Elzinga  

it is a B flat instruments. So when I, let's see, when I play a C, you have to play a B flat on your piano, and then we're saying doing the exact same note. So if I take the music that the keyboard is playing and the guitars are playing, and I want to add my trumpet to it, I have to look at the note and I have to think one note up and add two sharps to whatever it is and it's hard for me to do that on the fly, so I'm not gonna sing or I'm not gonna play my trumpet. So then the director the music director has to has to somehow add two sharps and then raise the whole thing one note

Marie Elzinga  

and their approach I'm set, we'll do that for you. Although typically, okay, so I'm playing just chords quite often when I'm playing the keyboard, but typically your instrumentalists needs a part written out because they're not just going to go, they're not going to hear in whatever key and knows how to play some alternate melody. So quite often I'm writing out those parts

Steve Elzinga  

violin or a trumpet or an oboe or something, because in a way those people are used to the notes. And guitar people are used to just playing chords. Okay, choose songs for this week's service. You know, you have to put sort of the order together, get the pastor's input on the pastor at our church. So she'll ask, you know, what's your sermon? And do you have any special number that you think would go with this? songs that fit the worship order, and there's different ways of thinking about a service there's the outer core of the holy holies you know that the temple thing was the there was an outer court and people did certain things. And everything about the temple was moving from your ordinary life closer and closer to the presence of God. 

Steve Elzinga  

So the song sort of start out, you know, fun and lively but as the as you move along, you're getting closer and closer to the Holy of Holies. And the signs become maybe more reverent and more contemplate so that's one way to sort of organize it. Another way is from you know, you might start off soft and then kind of build and get louder, or you might start out really loud and then and get really soft praise to prayer you know, we're praising God talking to God All right, you know praising about God, hey, let's praise God shout for joy, all the earth. It's like we're talking to each other. Let's do this together. Let's go. And then eventually it becomes where we're actually talking to God. Oh, Lord. You're beautiful, you're awesome, You're fun too serious might be the way that you organize it. I think a couple weeks ago you had meet play and I know some of those old songs and some of the kids songs and we just started out like we're having fun. But then we kind of move from fun

Steve Elzinga  

there also trying to wake people up. So yeah, I'm still trying to get them hey is

Steve Elzinga  

and and get the kids involved and so on. He might have songs for each intellectual or

Marie Elzinga  

liturgical 

Steve Elzinga  

liturgical element. So you might have a time of praise, then you pray songs, then you may have a time of confession. So you have a song of confession, you have the assurance of pardon and you have a song for that may have an offering. You might have a song where we're giving ourselves to God and you have the sermon topic and then you have a song that follows that. So we're actually just following the flow of the liturgy. In our church, we like to do a lot of singing All in one shot so that people kind of get going, but some churches sort of split it all up. And then this last one, I have your key flow what you know, to go from one key to the next,

Marie Elzinga  

right, so let's say that my first song is in the key of D. And my second song, let's say, all four or five songs in my set are all in the key of D, that gets kind of boring. So I quite often will pick let's say, the first song in the key of D. But then the next son or third song, maybe we'll go to remember Steve was talking earlier about the key of D has three. Well, he said four but three major chords. So the first chord, the one built off of the fourth note of the scale, the one built off, so da would be D, G, A so the next song might be starting in G

Steve Elzinga  

It'd be one of those three. Yeah.

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah. Because they they blink well together. If you go let's say from a D in the song it is in, now all of a sudden I'm doing one in A flat.

Steve Elzinga  

It's hard to get there.

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah, it doesn't nicely. It's like jarring. Where am I? Oh, that's

Steve Elzinga  

be good for someone to say read something in the Bible, right? Get this, right. But this, okay, so if you went from D to G, how would you do that? That we're in the key of D.

Marie Elzinga  

And then now, and then the next is the key of G. Sounds pleasant, and sounds pleasant and goes nicely from them. So

Steve Elzinga  

you could go if you're in the key of D, and how would you kind of segue a nice little?

Marie Elzinga  

Well, the key of D has a D in the chord, obviously. So I have that as my top note. Now the key of G also has a D in the chord in the G chord it is the fifth. So I might keep that common from one song to the next

Steve Elzinga  

So how would you do?

Marie Elzinga  

So I just entered the key of D, and now I go,

Steve Elzinga  

it just flows. So then you wouldn't even need someone to say anything, you can just from one song, just slide right into into the next. So that, you know, that's one, you know, all these are just different options in terms of choosing the music and trying to get some kind of order a lot of times purely I have no idea of what order to put them in and they just randomly put songs together. But you know, these give you some help in terms of organizing, then plan the transitions, you know, we sing one song, and then how do we get to the next song and one way is to speak the end the song and say, Oh, it's just great to be here to worship together or someone might have a prayer somebody might have

Marie Elzinga  

and you should assign someone to do that if you're not doing it yourself. And that's something That should be prepared. And practice. It's not just

Steve Elzinga  

Okay, so I'll put out music interlude. What, what might that be? while they're talking? No, like, I'm in one song. And now I just want to get to the other song. But I want to make a nice little musical connection, do it. I don't want to just, boom, boom, one chord, I just want to, how would you do that?

Marie Elzinga  

Well, what I just did, okay, so what I'm doing with just a big bang, but then,

Steve Elzinga  

but sometimes you'll play a little something to get there. You know, like, it's just a little right. Are you just switching to that?

Marie Elzinga  

I usually I'm just switching into the new, like an intro,

Steve Elzinga  

like a first line of the song last time or something or some

Marie Elzinga  

repetitive thing in there and that can

Steve Elzinga  

or just bounce through the cords and that's it.

Marie Elzinga  

Yep, can do that too. But that, again, is something that you practice with your singers especially well, everyone you Because they need to know when to come in. So, okay, so that's something to practice.

Steve Elzinga  

Okay, then find and introduce new songs. Okay, so you have you have your song but filled with songs that your church knows and your people sort of know. Then Then you have to find new songs. People like something new. And so criteria for new songs. One is it's 

Marie Elzinga  

singable same thing we've talked about already. You may have to transpose

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah. Or is it theologically or biblically sound? Right. Okay. There's a lot of songs that I mean, you're a music person. So you fall in love with a tune, right?

Marie Elzinga  

The tune or the chord progression? Yes. Something like that. Or the instruments

Steve Elzinga  

and because you love music, yeah. And I'm more like, you know, I'll hear the song is a great song. I love the song, but the words are just like, what, what is this about? Or it's just, I don't even get what it's about, right? So if

Marie Elzinga  

I fall in love with the song and think, you know, this might be duable. I always bring it to someone else and say so Word person and say, okay, Is this okay? Is this what our church believes? Is this providing a balanced aspect of the gospel? Are all of our songs? Am I getting ahead of myself? Are all of our songs just pray songs? No petition?

Unknown Speaker  

Yeah. All right. You know, none of them teach anything. Right?

Steve Elzinga  

They're not very deep. They're all kind of shallow. Yeah.

Marie Elzinga  

None mentioned the Holy Spirit ever. Right? You know, is there a balanced Trinity. Right now? There's so many things, theologically that you want to cover,

Steve Elzinga  

right? fit the vision of the church, you know, are is your church. Just people that have always gone to church, are you trying to reach out to your community and then how's the music that you're choosing and the songs that you choose? How does it fit who, you know, are the older people gonna handle it? How are the newer people going to handle it? And a lot of times, it's really just in the introduction of a song with new people, or even with the people you have Hey, We're starting a new song, and you're not gonna know it, maybe, maybe you will sing along, if you don't, I just listened a couple times. And then as you get it to sing along, then as the worship leader, you have to write out a lead sheet for the worship team members and transpose it. So you have this new song, maybe you heard it on the radio, maybe it's in the CD or something, but somehow, you have to get it in the unified form. These are the words, you know, otherwise, we're guessing and people have their own words. And these are the chords that we're going to be using. And the worship leader has to sort of figure that out. Or we'll start, you know, someone plays an A minor and someone else doesn't.

Marie Elzinga  

And there's lots of resources out there, but they're not always correct. You know, somebody puts online, hey, I've got all the chords for this new worship song. And then you play through it and you go, No, you missed a couple here, whatever. So it's good to you have to check that before you just go handing it out. You have to make it your own. In other words,

Steve Elzinga  

seven communicate with the worshipped team members so you've done all this work but they're just sitting at home and they don't know what's happening. So you need to you need to send them the list of the songs you need to give them the order we're going to go from this to this to this the responsibilities of each team member

Marie Elzinga  

Yeah, I expect my people to practice you know work on this at home learn the song well enough so that I mean it takes a little while obviously it's not like I want to perfect the first week you need to have it or else that's not it, I just expect them to be working on it have other music polled for new songs, but also just for the normal list

Steve Elzinga  

Lead sheet of any new song so the words of course and the chords and if possible, recorded, right? I mean that. I mean, it's hard to see the vision for a whole new song and, and you know, you could just meet at practice and everyone goes, what should we do and you create this new thing. You know, that Group sort of thing, you know, and you can do that once in a while, I know you do that. But if you do that every week, you'll never get anywhere. I mean, you just never have enough time. I mean, worship bands are incredible, really. Because, you know, the, the the professionals that go around and give concerts and so on, they learn 12 - 15 songs, and they sing of 1000 times, and they know them so well. Whereas worship teams, you know, we're singing all these songs, and we hardly have any time and you practice them a few and then you throw it together. So any help along the way,

Marie Elzinga  

right? It's just simplifies it to try, I guess for myself, if it's not something we've written, we try and keep it as close to the original as possible, because it makes that learning time so much shorter, and we don't have to have those big discussions about what we're gonna do, where do where does the seller fit in or whatever, exactly.

Steve Elzinga  

The right communication with the AV team members. So again, if you if you project, people use PowerPoint, and so on projectors these days They need the list of the songs so they can project them and make sure there were the words are correct. The order is the right order the lyrics of any new song that are being introduced, they don't have them. And so you have to send them and you know, position them, you know, send them the way you want it, right. So that's easy to sing. Otherwise, they'll just put them up in whatever random order they want to right. And it makes it harder to sing. Number nine, teach basic music theory to the music team members. So you know, if you have time, you know, your whole team needs to learn and grow in your music may some don't know how to read notes. They still don't know what keys are chords transposing, get them to learn how to transpose and then you don't have to do all the work. You can say, here's the song, we're doing this key, you know, the trumpet, you know, I can transpose. So you know, instead of the music director doing all the It's like, hey, do you have time? Could you transpose your own is the key?

Marie Elzinga  

Right? Here's the origin I haven't have even the guitarist will want to pay for it to get a different sound. So they got to figure I quite often hand him I know he can do it, I hand him the blank sheet with the words because why must he recreate that? And he has what I've written out for, let's say the keyboard that now he he can easily and we'll talk about the

Steve Elzinga  

Keiko under the guitar section how that's easy to make guitar can transpose fairly easy with the lead sheets, how to you know how to again, you know, you can assign some other people look, here's the song we like, write out the words put the chords in, and then we'll do it together and harmony. teaching people how to you know, challenging someone that's only singing melody and not Okay, I think you could do alto Why don't you stand next to her and start singing with her and over time they start to get so in other words, don't just leave people where they're at. Develop The talent that you have. Okay, the task of the worship team member. So the worship leader has all this stuff to do. But the team members have stuff to do before we rehearse as well. 

Steve Elzinga  

Number one,

Marie Elzinga  

practice, practice and practice more,

Steve Elzinga  

right? I mean, really, the list of songs for the week of course you get to practice those get get them season lm, but any new songs that are being worked on or even not scheduled for the coming week, but hey, you know, it takes a while to learn those songs. So practice them as we're doing, make sure you get them, but then work on some of the new songs that we're trying to learn to have ready any special assignment given by the worship leader, maybe you had to transpose it, or maybe you're in charge of the transition that we're going to change from this song to this. And we want the guitar player is doing a little picking thing, or

Marie Elzinga  

your doing the intro. So be ready.

Steve Elzinga  

Yeah. So you can pick different people for doing those intros. And then everyone needs to keep their songbook but neat. You know, you take five Something's out for this week, put a bag or you're gonna have this mess and you can't find anything and it's a disaster. And then to, you know, the next time you do the song, you have to give someone a lead sheet again, and there's no markings on it. There's nothing we talked about before you don't remember any of it. It's like,

Marie Elzinga  

that would be another thing to put on there, as you know, come with the pencil so that you're ready to write stuff down. Memories aren't always

Steve Elzinga  

No, it's good to just, you know, keep three months later, you can't remember right? You know what we did last night. So people tend to rely on the worship leader to remember again, and then you ended up I mean, I've watched you, you end up teaching the person again, the same stuff, the same phrase, the same stuff that they should have written down in the first place. And sometimes it's me that your talking, anyway, okay, so that's, you know, there's other things that you could do of course, too, but if you get these sort of basics, get everything prepared. Keep your songbook neat. Get your people practicing, then when you come to the rehearsal you'll make the most use of your time.