Six Excuses for Not Listening to Songs

By Jon Nicol

One of the most common preparation mistakes worship musicians make is not listening to the music.

Here’s a few reasons (excuses) worship musicians give for not listening:
1. The reader: “Why would I listen to the song when the music is right in front of me?
2. I didn’t have time.
3. I didn’t have the recording.
4. It wasn’t in the right key.
5. Why bother, we don’t do it like the recording.
6. We've played it a million times. Why would I need listen to it?

Let’s talk about these one by one.

1. The Reader: "Why bother when I have the written music?"
The classically trained piano player is usually the biggest culprit of this. In her world, written music reigns. Even after she’s made the transition reading chords/lead sheets, the tendency to just read the chart remains.

But we shouldn’t be too hard on our classically trained comrades. We rock-band bred musicians tend to do the same thing.

When I was in music school at McNally-Smith (then MusicTech), one of the “ensembles” played the Beatles’ We Can Work it Out. I was sitting next to one of the instructors (who were all pro musicians in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area), and as they finished the song, he got mad. They had left off the signature waltzy ending from the album.

“That’s the problem with these fake books you kids are using. Listen to the bleepity-bleep recording!” (I learned different words from the profs there than I did in Bible college.)

Our chord and lead sheets are essentially our fake books. They’re good to have, but there’s a lot they can’t convey. If we’re just playing the chords on the page, we’re selling ourselves short. We need to listen to a song to get the dynamics, the subtleties, the feel.

2. I didn’t have time.
This excuse is usually poo. Most people have a little downtime when they can spin their music – in the car, doing busy work, doing chores around the house, before they go to bed, etc.

3. I didn’t have the recording.
This one’s on the leader if they really weren’t supplied the CD or mp3. In this day and age, you can find a recording of a song. And you can legally distribute them with CCLI’s rehearsal license.

But if you’ve made the song available (with a burned CD or via an online service like Planning Center Online), then the responsibility is back on the team member. You’ll want to call him on his lousy excuse.

4. It wasn’t in the right key.
This excuse is valid, but just barely. Valid excuse or not, a solid musician can still listen through a song in the wrong key and at least get the dynamics, the form, and good idea of how his part goes.

If you want to nip this excuse, use Transpor.com.

5. Why bother? We don’t do it like the recording.
There are a lot of reasons not to do it like the recording. Limited instrumentation, arrangement is too long, changed style to fit your context, etc.

As a leader, recognize how your default arrangement differs from your recording. Spell it out to your team in your rehearsal sheet: “Here’s what’s happening on the recording: ________; here’s how we’re doing it: _________________.”

If it’s vastly different, instruct your team to only listen for the parts that are the same - probably the melody. And then consider recording your own scratch recording of it to match how you do it.

6. “We’ve played it a million times. Why would I need to listen to it?”
When I make an excuse for not listening, it’s usually this one. But there’s often stuff we fudge on as we first learn a song, and that carves a bad groove that we continue to run in. A renewed listen can give you some fresh ideas to incorporate into the next time you play.

The bottom line, if we fail to listen to songs, we'll have much harder time playing them from a place of confidence and passion. And without that, it'll be tough to worship God through those songs. 

So to get your team pulled out of this mistake, you might want to start here: read these eight practice tips. Half of them include some form of listening to the tune as a way to prepare.

What excuses have you heard from your team when they don't listen to songs?

How do you encourage your team to listen?

Post Graphic - Stock.xchng - Nicole Shackelford

April 23, 2012