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RE: [Worship] Organ and Cont. Worship Music


On 28-Dec-97 Terry Froese wrote:
>  I'd be interested in some suggestions of cont. songs that work well with 
>  worship team/band plus organ.  I guess you'd say that our service was 
>  pretty contemporary, mostly Vineyard, and Integrity stuff, which is led 
>  by a worship team, but our platform  has a very nice organ which gets 
>  played once a month for a prelude and offering by a very gifted and "open 
>  to change" older lady (I mean older as in late 70's).  I appreciate so 
>  much her willingness to continue playing but also her understanding of 
>  our church's need for the style of music that we do....I would love to 
>  honor her desire to still minister through the organ, and I'm pretty sure 
>  she would be able to play alot of the "modern" rhythms, etc.  If I could 
>  do some songs that would sound good with organ added, I think that would 
>  just thrill her to pieces, plus would also provide a connection for some 
>  of the older folks in our cong. who I'm sure sit in the pews quite often, 
>  slightly mystified at all the changes our church has gone through in the 
>  past 2 years.  
>  
>  Thanks
>  Wanda Froese

There is no reason why you can't look on your organ in the same way as
you would a second keyboard (assuming you have a piano/kbd already).
This is a quite different style from traditional organ playing.  Now you
have the sound made up of several musicians in the band, previously when
the organ was the only instrument, it _was_ the band.

I would suggest sustained chords to give a fill in parts of some
songs. The key here is not to expect to play all the time, but to bring
light and shade. The organ doesn't really have the persussive attack for
contemporary rhythmic music.

For example, the Vineyard song "Draw me close to you" is recorded with
just piano to start, adding band in the chorus. The organ could begin to
play almost imperceptably on the the second verse and build a little
into the chorus. That gorgeous pedal bass note and then the descending
bass line would sound great from the organ - tell your bass player to
put in a second bass part though, on the higher strings.

Another line of options is counter melody lines, in the same way you
might use a flute/oboe/violin. The organ probably has all those!

I'll say it again, the key is to play minimally, because the organ is
now just one of many instruments.  Used well, many of the congregation
won't notice it being played at all!! (but they'll comment how well the
band sounded this morning).


---
Mark Powell                             Kings Christian Fellowship,
medp@primag.co.uk                       Potton, Beds, England
http://www.pobox.co.uk/~kcf/medp        Email: kcf@pobox.co.uk
                                        WWW:   http://www.pobox.co.uk/~kcf

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