Whether you're a worship keys newbie or a lifelong piano player, you have something to offer your team and it's simpler than you might think to have a big impact.
For example: by mastering just a few chords, you can play along to hundreds of worship songs.
We've put together a quick lesson for you. In under 15 minutes, you'll learn:
- Four simple chords to unlock countless worship songs
- Techniques for confident, two-handed play
- Easy rhythmic patterns you can follow in real-time
David,
thank you so much for this video. As primarily a bass guitar player who “plays enough keys to get by”. this is great information.
If I could speak to the similar posts here, these chords are undoubtedly basic building blocks, but you do SOOOO much with these. I would not condemn any music built off these, despite their proliferation. My point is the message is EVERYTHING, and the music supports it. In fact, write about Jesus; the ultimate redeemer and dive deep in his word for his life, death and resurrection for US, His righteousness given to us, the end to our struggle with sin and death and the devil? You can even keep your fancy 6 chord! When the message lifts up Christ and we sign together the hope we have in Him? Amen!
Disclaimer: I am learning ALL I can to glorify Him in music, that also includes a ton of practice and theory, but if I lose the message, I might as well be another rock star.
It’s definitely a balance. Simply structured songs encourage greater participation from all ages and all skill levels. Songs with a more complex structure are not as accessible. And that’s just talking about the chord structure.
We seem to be in this interesting era of 4-chord worship songs that have really rangey hard to sing melodic lines. So in one sense anybody with an acoustic guitar can capo up and play G shapes but nobody can actually sing the songs well, ha!
Of course that’s a generalization, but not everyone has the vocal range of the predominant worship leaders these days.
All that to say, I love that you’re educating folks. I think the target for this type of video is not the seasoned worship piano player, but the beginner, the guitar player who wants to brush up on keys, maybe the singer who also wants to sit at home and work on their parts at the piano.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the lesson, David! Unfortunately your point—that you can play nearly all contemporary worship songs with four chords (I, IV, V, vi) underscores the problem with CCM nowadays. The industry doesn’t encourage pushing the envelope musically, rendering most of these songs trite, predictable, and ultimately—not very inspiring (well, except for the message, of course). I don’t believe that was true in previous years—the mid-to-late 90s—during the Maranatha! era, for example.
Hate to rain on everyone’s parade. It’s a shame. I’d rather demand that the CCM industry welcome more musical variety…but I wouldn’t bet on any improvement.