Tips for Adding Band and Orchestra Kids to the Worship Team
by Dr. Brian Reichenbach
Believe it or not, there are excellent ways to engage a variety of instruments in a contemporary style ensemble. But if you don’t have any experience with band or orchestra instruments, this can be be daunting, and making it accessible for young musicians can be even more challenging. What follows are some general guidelines and places to begin:
Provide the right written tools. As I mentioned in the first post, we must be mindful of a young (or old) instrumentalist’s proficiency in reading written music or lead sheets. The most common challenge (and one that often stops band kids from even trying this) is transposition or clefs. For example, a clarinetist typically reads music transposed up a step and a violist typically reads alto clef. You may have to do a little bit of homework with the help of Google, a local music teacher, or music notation software.
Ask them to do something within their ability. An acoustic wind or string instrument adds color unlike anything else in the typical worship band. For that reason, what they play does not need to be anything super technical. A simple lick adds a lot to the texture and prevents the student from becoming overwhelmed.
Reimagine electric guitar, pads, or other lines. Oftentimes, these are simple and repetitive lines of music that can be easily played by a wind or string instrument. Also, a string instrument’s line on a recording might work for a different wind instrument. For example, a violin layer could work well on flute, or a cello pad could be covered by a good euphonium player.
Find the jazz band kids. Once a jazz band student has learned the basics of improvisation with chord charts, a typical church leadsheet will be well within their ability.
Don’t play all the time. My biggest pet peeve (and the reason string and wind instruments often sound bad when used in contemporary worship) is that they play too much. Use the colors of these instruments sparingly. Add the instruments just like any other layer and perhaps on only one or a few songs in a given Sunday morning. It’s okay if they don’t play a lot of notes. After all, it’s about serving the church not playing lot of notes, right?
Add an instrumental verse. Many contemporary songs have very simple melodies. Be sure to select the key and range appropriately. And unless a student is accustomed to playing by ear, give them music written in their key to read at first.
A final word of caution: Avoid making much of the young people themselves in the worship service. Don’t stand up and say something like, “Aww, wasn’t that sweet?” Sure, before and after the service you can affirm their contribution to the worshipping community. But make it less about them and more about their giving of God’s gift back to Him and the congregation.
Involving more people and young people in whatever we are used to doing in our worship services can be hugely time consuming. But I believe it is worth it, not only for the students involved, but as a model for the entire congregation and an investment in the future of our churches.
By Dr. Brian Reichenbach, Assistant Professor of Trumpet, Lee University
YES, of course they do! Sadly, though, when I ask many Christian band and orchestra students if they have ever played in church the answer is most often “no.” I see this as a huge missed opportunity for connecting what our kids do outside of church with what happens on Sunday morning. Plus, student instrumentalists can add so much musical variety to our gathered worship. This series offers some practical ideas for getting them involved while addressing the unique challenges that often discourage both worship leaders and students.
Beginning to Engage Young Instrumentalists in Worship It is challenging and time consuming to find a place for amateur musicians to actually serve congregational worship. Students’ skills are modest, and worship leaders may not be comfortable navigating the complexities of various instruments. We want the best quality music in our services. Yet, if we genuinely want to nurture an intergenerational community that uses their gifts to serve one another, it is important to find ways to engage with these young musicians.
Here are some great places to start and a few guiding principles:
Start with ensembles. Young players are not likely to be ready to play a solo in church. Find others like them and create a group to make music at their level. It doesn’t need to be a full symphony orchestra. Perhaps it is just a brass ensemble or a string ensemble or a balanced variety of instruments. Strive to make sure there is more than one player on each part, especially for the newest players.
Pair them up with adults. My wife and I grew up sitting next to both adult musicians (professionals and amateurs) in church ensembles. Occasionally in the ensembles I have led, parents and their own kids have even played together. What an amazing intergenerational opportunity!
Be mindful of their literacy. By literacy, I mean not only how well they can read music, but how well they can play by ear or improvise (“aural literacy”). A young Suzuki-trained string player, for example, might come with amazing technique and ear playing skills, but has not yet developing their reading skills. On the other hand, a student from school band may have strong note-reading skills, but has never learned by listening to a recording and may never have seen a leadsheet. Being attentive to this will help guide you to the right tools for success (more on this later).
Don’t start too early. Players within the first two years or so of playing an instrument are probably not ready to play in a church ensemble. This doesn’t have to be a point of discouragement. In fact, when older students lead the way, the younger ones can look forward to the time when they are ready to begin playing in church.
Make it positive. The biggest reason not to start too early is that it is absolutely essential that kids have a positive first experience doing this. In the next post, we’ll look at a few ways to begin plugging instrumental students into the gathered worship service.
Dr. Brian Reichenbach was recently appointed Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Lee University School of Music in Cleveland, Tennessee. Previously, he served in various roles as a teacher and conductor at Trinity International University, Olivet Nazarene University, Wheaton College, and College of DuPage, directing wind ensembles and teaching classes in music theory, aural skills, and brass techniques.
I’ve really enjoyed hearing and seeing many church’s Christmas music this season. Never before have our Christmas celebrations been so visible as this year. One thing I noticed immediately, every church fell into one of four camps when presenting their music this year:
Some chose to do nothing at all, forgoing a special Christmas offering this year, but chose to do some special things during the normal weekend worship services.
Some chose to continue with a live presentation (with modifications such as distancing for congregation and presenters) and livestream the presentation for those at home.
Some chose to go a completely different direction than focusing on an indoor musical presentation (live nativities or other outdoor event).
Some chose to do an all-virtual presentation (some chose to simply use videos from previous years, while others recorded new material-or some variation of the two).
Regardless of the camp chosen, I have been very impressed with the creativity I’ve seen and the effort to make Christmas special for each community of faith. Every church has had to make some tough decisions on what to do in their own particular context based on the restrictions of their community, effect of virus on their own congregation, and comfort level. There was NO wrong way to handle Christmas music this year because every context was different.
I chose option four at my church for two basic reasons:
1. Our room (both the platform and congregation space) would not allow us the opportunity to do live presentations without at least 10 different presentations, let alone the issue of how to fit 125 in the choir and orchestra distanced in a space barely able to hold this number elbow to elbow!
2. Doing a virtual recording, using our whole sanctuary space allowed us to spread out like we needed to, and not limit the number of participants in our event this year. My number one goal this Christmas was to make sure that all who wanted to sing and play had that opportunity.
I struggled in the latter part of the summer about what to do for Christmas primarily because I’m a big time planner. Our event, Christmas at Ivy Creek, is the largest single event we do in our music ministry each year. Our investment in this event and the spread of the gospel message was just too important to forgo. By August, I was concerned about our ability to do anything for Christmas. I had thrown out the idea of doing something outside because of the volatility of the weather and I threw out the idea of doing the event up to ten times. As the fall began and we started resuming bi-monthly choir rehearsals, I realized our best option would be to do something virtual–specifically pre-recording something, but it was the first week of October when I finally felt a peace about what to do. At that point, we only had seven rehearsals before we planned to record. I knew it would be too much to ask our folks to learn a whole hour of new music and be able to internalize it. So, I started looking back at previous year’s recordings and I decided we’d do a hybrid virtual concert: some videos of songs from the past and then five new songs (four choral and one orchestra feature). I figured we could learn five songs in that time frame to get ready to record.
Getting ready to record proved to be a frustrating challenge at first! Finding a way to mic an entire room (can you say balance issues!?) and video an entire room with our equipment would not have produced the best result. The balance of orchestra to choir during this season was a challenge. While almost all of our 34 players played, only 60 of our almost 95 singers were comfortable singing. After many conversations and some trial and error during rehearsals, we realized we needed to hire an audio engineer to record the audio for our new songs. This was the best money we could’ve spent to get a real-life room sound.
We decided to record our narrations off-site this year and drop them into our “cornucopia” presentation. Because we gave my video producer only 5 days to edit and create our video for our premiere, we decided to do the narrations in mid-November. This gave him the time to make sure the previous choir and orchestra videos were extracted from the past and the narrations edited before he tackled the new material.
The day of recording went as follows:
Orchestra arrived first for temperature checks and tuning and then recorded their feature first from 9-9:30.
Choir arrived and stayed in cars or outside (even though it was cold) and then entered to have temperature checks and begin recording at 9:30.
The rest of the recording itself took about 2 hours to for the other four songs with the choir and the orchestra. We stopped between each song to clear the air.
These are the safety features we implemented. I’m sure they we are not as strict as others I’ve heard of, but now that we’re over 18 days from the recording, I can say there was no COVID transmitted during our recording!
Mask wearing when not singing or playing. Worn upon arrival and when leaving
HVAC systems on constant flow to move the air
Physical distancing between persons (I cannot say we kept 6 feet the whole time, but we grouped family members close to each other as much as possible and we did have several family members present).
Breaks between each song to clear the air.
Our experience recording went so well for us that I’m planning to bring back the audio engineer and do another round of recording for our choir and orchestra at least once more closer to Easter. We are NOT using the choir in person during our regular weekend worship services. We are using pre-recorded anthems to use for the foreseeable future. I am using orchestra and praise team every week. I miss having the choir, but allowing them the platform to sing and record has meant the world to them. They STILL get to be worship leaders, just in a different way. The goal of this blog, and this article as well, is to remind us that all persons from every generation and ability level should have a place to serve. Creativity is a must to make this happen, but it can happen. I applaud the work so many of my colleagues are doing to keep people active in worship ministry throughout this unprecedented season. I’d love to hear more ideas of how all generations are still being utilized in worship ministry.
If you’d like to see our final product, here’s a link to Christmas at Ivy Creek 2020. Below that are a few pictures from the recording day:
