Praise Band Approach
We used to have a "if you want to play, show up" approach, but that definitely DID NOT work. Some real crash and burn experiences made us realize that if we were to do a good job, there had to be some clear commitment to learning their craft and regular, routine practises to develop and a willingness to learn and understand of their specific role in the band before we would take them on.
Unfortuately, not quite the same approach is taken with the backup vocalists, but that is another story - at least we can turn the off-key ones down in the FOH .
We now basically operate with a fairly fixed worship band. Those who express and interest in playing are invited to come to several practice/jams where we can evaluate their skills (and even more importantly their listening skills and attitude) to see whether they will fit in or not. I have a back up bass player (a young guy who started playing a couple of years ago) and we have several fill in guitar players that rotate in and out if someone is missing. We have recently recruited a second KB player (actually, originally a "pianist" - so we have the typical mindset/approach challenges going on, but she listens well and is making a great effort to switch from the piano solo mindset to the KB role). The band itself does change, (more evolves as players retire/move away/change their life circumstances) but slowly. As mentioned, we do jam with potential players and those can be great times to discover new talents, new songs, new approaches.
We also do a lot of listening to music in general and evaluating how others play/arrange the music and how we might incorporate some of what we've heard into our approach. We recently had an great evening watching an Eagles concert on BlueRay and spent probably 45 minutes afterwards reminding ourselves of things we have been attempting to do in our music that were reinforced by what we saw in the concert, as well as identifying new things to think about. It is interesting to now have the guitar and KB players actually able to point out where the licks were placed, why they were placed there and why that worked, so the band is developing a better understanding of "how" to do music.
One of the things we are actively pursuing is playing less. Playing at 20% of full volume does not necessarily mean everyone plays, just less. It can mean that only two instruments play. We actively try to avoid the "wall of sound" syndrome that comes from everyone playing everything from the intro to the end. We talk about the words and how the music supports or reinforces them and do a song map we keep on file which documents who plays what and when - basically the dynamics we are going to incorporate into our playing. For some songs that we play in different ways, we have more than one of these songmap/arrangements. This helps a lot when a song that hasn't been in the rotation for a while comes up - we don't spend 30 minutes trying to remember how we used to do it. When we come up with a new arrangement, that gets documented and is added to the available maps for that song.
Since Christmas I have also been using Worship Backing Band (from the UK) and downloaded tracks on my computer to play back worship songs (the program lets me completely isolate individual instruments and combine them as we see fit, to listen to just how little some instruments play and where they choose to lay in sweet licks that don't stomp all over the vocalists or other musicians. It is a learning process, but one that we are certainly finding produces tangible results.
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Steinberger NXT5 EUB, MTD 535 Fretless, Tobias Killer B6, 72 Fender Precision
Eden WT500, WTX1000N & WP100, QSC PL230
Eden D410XLT, D410XST, 215, Fender Bassman 10
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