Musical Style #2 - The Twist

The Twist is very popular in late 50s and early 60s. It has one of the catchiest drum beats ever for rock & roll. It is for lively fun songs.

Here is a Malaysian Gospel song in twist style.

The Twist is most suitable for this song because many parts of the melody is in-sync with the drum beats e.g. bar 1 - 8 :


Yup, that's right. The most suitable musical style for a song is the one that is most rhythmically-similar to its melody.

This is what it sounds like ..

Musical Style #1 - 8-Beat

This is the most common style used in worship. It can be used for 95% of all songs though it may not be the most suitable style.

We can use this style on any 4/4 song. Basically this is contemporary pop style. It can be used for slow or fast songs but due to its simplistic rhythm, it is very suitable for very fast songs.

It is called the 8-beat because each bar is divided into 8 smaller beats by 8 hi-hat quaver notes.

When nothing works, just use the 8-beat !

Principle #4 - More melodies minimal chords

The synthesizer player and the pianists plays 10 notes each. The guitarist strums power chords over all the 6 strings. The acoustic guitarist also strums 6-notes. The bassist plays two notes in octave. The total notes these 5 musicians played is 10 + 10 + 6 + 6 + 2 = a staggering 34 notes !

It is impossible to have all these 34 notes playing in sync.

When we learned to play the piano or guitar, the pieces we play are meant for the piano/guitar to play in solo without the backing of other instruments. Thus, lots of these pieces are written complete with bass , rhythm and melody parts.

However, when we play in a band, we have to reduce the number of notes each musician plays. For example, a pianist does not need to play the bass part as the bassist has taken over that part. Nor does the pianist plays the rhythm as the rhythm guitarist is already strumming it. So all the pianist has to do is to play some fills or melodies.

Thus, musicians must try to play single or at most double note melodies rather than full chords.

It is easy to play chords but it is difficult to create melodies.

Principle #3 - Playing 2-bar or 4-bar rhythms

If we keep doing something repeatedly for 100 times, we would get pretty bored and sick of it !

Likewise, if we keep repeating the same 1-bar rhythm for 100 bars ( a regular-length song is about 96 bars ) , the audience would get bored to death hearing it.

So how to keep the music refreshing and interesting for 100 bars? Use 2-bar or 4-bar rhythms.

Instead of hearing the same rhythm 100 times, now the audience hears 2 alternating different rhythms for 50 times each.

And if we play a 4-bar rhythm , the audience would hear 4 different rhythms for 25 times each !

Imagine hearing this bar Twist beat for 96 times !


We create a 2-bar rhythm by slightly modifying the first bar. In the example below, we added a bass drum 8th note (quaver) at the 3 1/2 beat and play the bass drum instead of the snare at the 4th beat.
Similarly, we could create a 4-bar rhythm ..

It would be ridiculously hard to play and memorize ( especially for those who cannot read music ) more than a 4-bar rhythm. So in my humble opinion , the 2-bar is the best.

And here is the whole 4-bar Twist rhythm ..


Notice that the piano's bass is kept to the minimum. That is because the bass guitar is already playing a complicated rhythm.

An excellent idea is to have the stanzas and chorus in different musical styles.

Making music more interesting with musical styles

Most of us have heard of hip hop , rap , rock or even blues. These are styles of music which are or had been popular in various periods of pop history.

Lots of church musicians only play one style of music - mostly contemporary pop , from the beginning of P&W till the end. It works fine but after a while the music gets boringly similar and predictable. It seems like the worship band has nothing new to offer and their repertoire seems limited.

The solution is to listen to the various styles of music and adapt them into worship.

The way each instrument is played for a certain style of music is different. So the band has to learn how to play , for example , piano rock style or the guitar blues style or the drums jazz style.

Here are a list of about 32 popular musical styles , your band may want to listen to , explore and experiment with.

For those who have played on those keyboards with in-built rhythm, you will notice some of the familiar names here..

1. 8-beat
2. 16-beat


3. Hip Hop
4. Rap
5. Dance/Trance/Techno
6. Waltz
7. Slow rock 6/8
8. Bossanova
9. Cha-cha
10. Tango
11. Salsa


12. Rhumba
13. Baguine
14. Reggae
15. Hard Rock / Metal
16. Country music


17. Ballad
18. Disco
19. Swing
20. Big Band
21. Twist
22. Funk
23. Bebop
24. Blues
25. Rockabily
26. Shuffle
27. Calypso
28. Fusion
29. Boogie Woogie
30. Hawaiian
31. Caribbean Music


32. Ethnic Music

and many others ..

Some particular styles may require the use of certain instruments. For example, the pedal steel guitar is particularly prominent in Country music and Hawaiian music while there is a great emphasis on the floor drums in Disco.






The piano plays a very vital part in Shuffle and the Steel drums are a must in Caribbean Music.


And thank God for the synthesizer, we are now able to play the sounds of these exotic instrument with ease at worship services !

Check out these styles at youtube.com and you can learn how these styles are played. And for a more complete list of musical styles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_styles

Principle #2 - Reinforce and Complement

More than often we hear a band playing out-of-sync. The musicians are not playing together. The music is muddy and the band is not tight. What is wrong?

The rhythm section is out-of-sync. The bass-drum-guitar-organ is called the rhythm section.
Consider a song is like a empty piece of land.

The task of a drummer is to place the pillars called beats at the right intervals.That is to partition the song into smaller spaces. He creates spaces.

The task of a bass player is to reinforce the drummer's pillars with his bass notes and create smaller new pillars. That's why the bassist synchronizes his bass chops with the drummer's beats especially the bass drum's beat.

In example 1 , the bass reinforces the drums' 1st and the 3rd beat, while creating a new pillar at 2 1/2 beat.

The rhythm guitarist's job is to fill all those small spaces between the drum beats and bass chops. He syncs his guitar playing with the drummer's hi-hat.

In example 1, the guitarist plays 8th notes to fill in the spaces.

Likewise the percussionist fills in all those tiny gaps between the drum beats.

And perhaps we could use the organ or keyboard to cement the whole rhythm together with sustained or pulsating chords.

Each instrument reinforces and yet complements the others. So they are not play the same thing.

Each instrument should not play the same thing as another. Reinforce and Compliment not copy.

Finally what we get is a well cemented rhythm.

Note : Modern drums "Neutral Clef" notation is different from the traditional drums "Bass Clef" notation as found in General Midi.

Here is the Neutral Clef Notation

TT = Tom Tom

SD = Snare Drum

FT = Floor Tom

BD = Bass Drum or Kick Drum

CC = Crash Cymbal

RC = Ride Cymbal

HH = High Hat

 

 

and the General Midi Drums Mapping Notation ( which i will use in this blog )

Acoustically-treating your worship hall

Lots of good worship music are being ruined by reverberations in church halls every week.

Reverberations are malicious morphing echos bouncing back and forth on flat solid walls and windows.

These echos are slightly-modified each time they bounce off the slightly uneven surfaces of walls or windows and also each time they slightly cancel each other out when they collide with each other.

Thus, in the end , we do not hear real echoes but muddled versions of the original. These muddled versions are called reverberations.

Most church halls these days are merely big rooms with flat solid walls.

Reverberations re-amplify low frequency sounds like the drum and bass sounds and cause the music to be very muddy and unclear. This is because the drums and bass are powerful enough to travel across the room and reflect off the walls.

How to reduce reverberations :

• The cheapest way is to put thick curtains covering windows and at least 60% of your walls. It can also be used as decorative purposes.
  
• Thick carpets can be used on the floor to reduce reverbs.
• Put a screen in front of the drums to reduce its volume.
  
• Angle your amps upwards in such a way the sounds from them do not hit the wall perpendicularly.
  
• Construct the hall in such a way that the walls are not at right angles 90 degrees with each other.
• Put sound absorbing panels on the wall with the help of an acoustic expert

I once played my alto sax in a church camp service in an acoustically-paneled ballroom at a hotel. The sound was fantastically warm and clear though the room was huge. Thats what we should all be trying to obtain for our church halls - warm and clear sounds.

However note that a room completely devoid of reverberations may sound very 'dead'. So a little reverb (either natural or digital effects) is OK.

Principle #1 - Play According to the Room Size

We cannot play our instruments in a small room the way we play at a huge stadium.

We do not wack the drums or power-chords the guitar in a small church hall as if we are in a huge stadium.

Lots of beautiful music have been drown by one selfish musician who plays way too loud.

Usually, its the drummer or the guitarist who plays too loud.

Remember - a worship band is not a one man self-glorifying ego-trip performance but a humble team of musicians who serve.

Eventually, band members would not want to play with a musician who consistently drowns their music.

Bear in mind that powerful sound waves from low frequency instruments like the drums & bass can be re-amplified a few times over by reverberations in an unacoustically-treated church hall.

Thus, the drums and bass can sound very very loud and muddy.

Loud beautiful music = noise.

Musical dynamics - the term for playing soft and loud - is the hardest to master for any musician.

Church bands should learn and practice to play from the softest to the loudest and vice-versa.

Bands should have their playing sessions recorded and analyze to determine which instruments are unnecessarily loud and corrections needed to be made. Most of the time , those who played loud do not know that they are excessively loud.

There is one saying - If you can't hear what your other musicians are playing, it means you are playing way too loud !

if you visit a hotel lounge where the live band is playing , you will notice how balanced the music is. The drummer is playing gently but with lots of finesse. That is how a professional band plays. Not with excessive noise but with finesse.

How to play the drums expressively and yet not to drown others ?

Multirod drumsticks would do the trick.

Multirods are drumsticks that consist of smaller rods tied together. These flexible smaller rods would absorb much of the energy , thus reducing the drumbeat volume.

For drummers who thinks drumming is like doing construction work.. read this.

http://www.ehow.com/how_15103_play-drums-you.html

The Stage Positions of the various instruments

Strategically, we should place our instruments in a way that benefits the worship leader, musicians and the congregation.

It is not advisable to have all the band members position themselves close together. This would cause them to be unable to hear their own individual instrument clearly.

The rhythm section

• The center of it all is the drums.
• The rhythm guitarist stands on the left of the drums. He strums his guitar in-sync with the drum's hi-hat.
  
• The bass guitarist stands on the right of the drums. He plays the bass in-sync with the bass(kick) drum.
  
• The percussionists stands in front of the drums. He compliments the drums.
  

Others

• The pianists stands on the left of the worship leader, facing him to observe his gestures.
  
• The synthesizer player stands on the right also facing the worship leader and the pianist.
• The brass , wind and strings sections are placed behind the bass-drums-guitar because of their enormous volume.
• The backup singers should stand behind the worship leader so that they could also see the his hand signals . They could stand either on his left or right.

For a normal 5-piece band.

But for an orchestra.

The general principle is the louder the instrument/section is , the further it is placed away from the audience.

Notice in the picture below, the loudest section are the percussions i.e the timpani, cymbals, gongs and drums. The second loudest are the brass instruments. The softest instruments - the strings and woodwinds are the closest to the audience.

The roles of the various band instruments

Every instrument in a band has its own role to play in music.






Drums The drums is the center of the band. It determines the tempo , the volume and the musical styles of a song.











Bass guitar
The bass guitar reinforces the floor drums and accents the drum beats. The bass also determine the chords of the song.












Percussion
The percussion compliments the drums. It covers the holes between the drum beats.











Rhythm guitar
The rhythm guitar or the organ cements all the spaces between the drum/bass beats.










Synthesizer
This instrument simulates the sounds of various unavailable instruments i.e. trumpet , flute , sax , strings , cosmic sounds , atmospheric sounds. It is use to do the fills to make a song more appealing.







Piano
Perhaps the instrument for leading the worship. It may be used as a chordal instrument in the rhythm section or as a solo instrument or even as the only instrument.






Solo instruments - lead guitar , synthesizer , wind instruments , brass instruments , violin etc.
These are for during times where people are not singing. Therefore the solo instruments have to take over playing the melody or improvisations.

Strings section , Wind section & Brass section
String - violins , viola , cello , contrabass
Wind - flute , clarinet , sax , oboe etc
Brass - trumpet , trombone , french horns , tuba etc.
Not many churches have these. However we can simulate these using the synthesizer.

Introduction to Worship Music Arrangement

Praise and Worship (P&W) bands in churches are springing up all over the world. There is an unprecedented emphasis on Praise and Worship in church thus the role of a worship band becomes more and more pronounced.

Most church P&W bands spring up from individual church members who play their instruments , gathering to play together in worship services.

Lots of them are self-trained or non-professional musicians. More and more do not even attend any music school for formal music lessons.

When they play together, though they have excellent music skills , the resultant music is either not in-sync , simplistic , uncreative or mundane. There is a need for worship music arrangement or at least some form of it for every worship service.

And this is a fact - rightly or wrongly, people attend church because they are attracted to good music (or worship)!

I have been a church musician ever since i accepted Jesus many years ago. I have been in church worship band since 1982 ! And i played the piano , synths , electric guitar , bass , drums , percussion , alto sax , C flute and i have done music sequencing for city evangelistic events.

I don't claim to know about everything in music arrangement but I hope to blog down all my experiences and teachings on worship music arrangement so that others could learn from them.

I really welcome constructive views and new ideas in this blog. But remember, everyone would be reading this blog in future. Please make sure what you post can be of help to those who wishes to learn. Hope you would be blessed from this.