Three bits of news have hardened my suspicions that guitar music is going to be increasingly niche. One is Paul Gambaccini's last rites on rock. The second is that Guitar Hero has been discontinued. And the third is that Beyonce could be headlining Glastonbury. I think this shows that the guitar has definitely moved away from the centre stage in society's music consciousness.
This has interesting implications for worship music. A good proportion of contemporary worship leaders lead from the guitar. A huge number of worship songs today are written around the guitar. I'll go out on a limb and say that there are more guitar worship churches than organ worship churches. So, if the guitar is moving away from the centre of secular music but is the centre of church worship music, should we be concerned?
Concerned in a positive way I would hope. It does warrant thinking and discussion. We are products of our culture and God's kingdom advances through some of the features of the culture we inhabit. Our worship will always reflect some part of our culture. So we should experiment with new ways of doing music away from the guitar.
How about an iPad/iPod orchestra? Or a more ethereal laptop orchestra?
Sounds alien? Impossible? Impractical? or exciting? Perhaps all of them? Imagine how alien we would sound to Christians a century ago. We have so much more technology than they did. Whether technology is out of control or too much in our lives is open for debate but technology has played an integral role in the way music in the church has evolved. Here's an interesting quote from the book 'Electronic Music.'
"baroque music cannot be imagined without the advances of 16th and 17th century luthiers, rock could not exist without the electric guitar, and jazz or hiphop without redefinitions of the saxophone and the turntable." p89
So as technology changes new kinds of music can appear, not by a wholesale dumping of the past but as natural inheritors to a tradition. '(T)he pipe organ was the most complex man-made device,[5] a distinction it retained until it was displaced by the telephone exchange in the late 19th century' (Wikipedia). Using software is a natural progression from the pipe organ which under pinned church music for centuries. From the same book :
"Good new instruments should learn from their traditional ancestors and not impose their music on the performer."
This is where the challenge really lies. It's easy to make music sound from the computer. You just press play on whatever music player you have. The challenge lies in actually making music with the computer.
Laptops are a common sight in worship but they seem to be used mostly as a screen for words or for projection. Are there any worship leaders who use a computer as their leading instrument? In my limited experience I haven't heard or seen any. Within the band context I have seen computers used musically but mostly as a sound bank for the keyboard or as a loop machine.
Loops sound good but they barely scratch the surface of computer music. Live sampling would be the next step. This could be of the singing and we could even sample the congregation's singing to maybe pray over or recite a liturgy over. Generating sounds from the computer could take things further. It could give us a real sense of the otherness and the unpredictability of God. The next crazy step could be where there could be a network server in our worship space where people with their smartphones could all connect to the server and participate and contribute to the music with the various apps in our worship. Wild.
The possibilities are endless. Everything's possible but not everything will be useful, Paul reminds us. But surely we have to start trying it out? So over to you.
What could worship sound (and look) like if we used the full range of the computer's potential in worship?
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Imagine half a congreagation *not* engaging in prayer, but all thumbing their smartphones (surely the iPhone will not be allowed into heaven, only an open system such as android?) INSTEAD of engagine in prayer. All trying crazy riffs and motifs, trying to get noticed by the musical director who's putting the piece together, on the hoof. I don't see that getting closer to God. If you have musical ability, get involved in a soak (http://www.secretplaceministries.org/pages/genre/soaking-worship-music.html)
I fear that letting everyone having input would lead to a terrible road-crash. If you restricted the leaders to a chosen few, would some people feel left out? And with ten or more potential leaders, can you be sure that they have all approached their task in a prayerful manner? Would the congregation be freaked out by the result? Better to play it safe than ruin someone's one and only chance a week to engage in corporate, sung worship.
Recording the congregation and praying over that is a nice idea, though, if you've got the front-of-house mics set up, and the kit to go with it, of course.
Here's why the guitar will lead for the forseeable future: once you've mastered the guitar, and the four chords that appear in *most* worship songs, it's easy to lead spontaneously. If the song is in a different key - well that's either a different four chords and/or a capo. Change of key - well, I can handle a few, as long as I start with the right chords (using a capo as appropriate). Once you learn this on guitar, you're set for more than half of modern songs. And, to be honest, you can also arrange a lot of the older ones around four chords, or variations of them.
I know some keyboard players can do spontaneous playing (E.g. David Ruis), but, to be honest, I don't see it in keyboard players nearly as much as I do in guitar players. That may be the fact that most keyboard players have learned via sheet music and have a trait of following exactly what's written down, but most guitarists learn by ear (except, I note, these days all the ten year olds are learning riffs and not chords, which is slightly upsetting).
At the end of the day, if God wants it to happen, then go for it! But I think the guitar is here for the forseeable future.
And today U2 were announced as headliners at Glastonbury (again; maybe they'll make it this time).
The guitar remains an (almost) vital component of live music - witness the popularity of unplugged alternative versions of slick studio productions, and Radio 1's Live Lounge series, and guitar-driven indie rock remains alive in the mainstream (although often a bit peaky-looking). So, with mainstream Christian worship music continuing to lag behind the mainstream by some years, it'll be a while before we see the end of Snowplay(sic)-inspired worship songs - for better or worse.
But now is a great time for experimentation: technology has opened up lots of possibilities - you can use a guitar to make computerised sounds, or vice-versa. I'm glad of this, because I have quite a lot invested in the guitar! Looping and layering is easier than ever; at our church last weekend we used a laptop to play drums as all our drummers were away. The tools we have now are more versatile - but we're not really tapping their potential just yet, maybe because we're busy trying to reproduce the sound of a rock band playing the latest worship songs? And the commercialisation of worship music means that the most popular is often the safest-sounding. And if everyone else is singing it, we feel obliged to...
Christians need to learn to learn to recapture the lead in the arts, including music. Of course, congregational worship songs need to be accessible to the congregation and easy enough to sing - but we can be more adventurous in the music behind the melody, or the instrumentation. Steve Thompson is always keen to ask the question: "What music styles do you use in your church?", usually to get a very short list in response: "Er, hymns, er, 'worship', um, something a bit U2-sounding, easy-listening.
A friend at our church is currently embroiled in a university research project, using computers to respond and react to live musicians - picking up structure, feel, dynamics etc. as well as tempo - to add to the overall sound: taking on the role of an actual live musician (or a few!) in a live context. Now if that box of tricks can start thinking outside the mainstream-worship box - how inspiring might that be?
This is *so* true. Where are the new Sistine chapel ceilings? Where are the "spem in alium" or "Requiem" appearing from in these modern days? We got "The Cruxifiction"," of course. . .
Partly this lack is because modern culture is so fragmented, whereas back in those days, pretty much everyone would attend the same church. Today, your neighbor might assert that he/she does not believe in Christ, but in the UK 200 years ago that would be very unusual.
Partly, our problem is that we are cloning the secular. Worship music is following secular music, we are not producing mighty, great works anymore, but only parrotting popular secular song motifs, arrangements, and sounds. Sounds like U2? Sounds like the Beastie Boys? It's a copy/clone!
However, it's going to take a massive artist/leader to make a splash in the pool of modern music. Partly this is due to the small chance of a really stong talent appearing, but it is made more difficult as popular success in modern music is tied so closely to other media like TV, DVD, radio, etc. Christians will have to assault on several fronts to make an impact. Who is an expert in manipulating these media - and what are their motives?
Organ has good (even excessive) sustain, guitar is good (ie not too little, not to much)percussion, piano has an excellent balance of sustain & percussion, drum has excessive percussion minimal sustain.
The instrument must have a capability of rubato, to express emotion in the music. Computer generated music (and computed drum) has none.
One must also utilise an instrument which touches the heart. It has been said that rhythm engages the body, harmony engages the mind, but melody engages the heart.
Worship is essentially a participatory activity, and any music, any instrument, any leading must encourage participation, both corporate _and_ individual, and not necessarily in identical unison.
I am of the age when going to a church youth club could almost be considered cool because you could pick up and learn the guitar there. The guitar symbolised what was going on in both secular and worship music at the time.
Things have changed now: mainstream music has joined hip-hop and dance, which have been loop/sample based for 20 years or so. Listeners demand an all-round variety of sound which its impossible to deliver any other way, unless you are on a statium tour and can afford 30 musicians.
Back in church, it is quite hard to lead a mixed-age congregation from just the guitar - I've done it many times but it lacks something. Even a full PVGBD group can't tackle traditional hymns very well - thats where the organ is still impossible to beat. So, in our small set-up we have abandoned solo guitar and gone back to keyboard/organ; we break out a youth PVGBD band from time to time, but with a limited repetoire.
Meanwhile the choir use a MIDI player for backing so they can tackle classical, african, gospel, contemporary etc at the flick of a switch. The arrangements are basically software, its not live backing, but the instrumentation is really only there to support the live singing. So far there been nothing but appreciation for the singing and visiting musicians have even commended the accompaniment!