Thursday, September 6, 2012

Going Acoustic in a Church Setting


Being an acoustic guitarist for church can be challenging. I had the privilege of playing for Pastor Anthony for the recent LCEC Planning Retreat, and it was the first time in a long while picking up the acoustic for official duty as a guitarist. Nothing too difficult: 8 songs, all mostly of the same contemporary genre.

However, I realized that some of these songs had huge band arrangements: guitars, drums, bass, keyboards, synthesizers and horns, for the worst case of the lot. I had to somehow play the acoustic in such a way to fill up the whole musical pie chart (in Paul Baloche's words, when you're the only musician, you're the pie).


Now, as an acoustic guitarist, you're never really replacing the other instruments in the band--you're "tricking" the audience into hearing something that reminds them of other instruments, but not actually emitting the sounds of the other instruments. Here's a breakdown of the mental process:

  1. The first step I take to making an acoustic arrangement of a big band song is to visualize what the drum kit is playing. The drum groove gives a big clue as to how to construct your strumming pattern. For example, an accented muted-down-stroke could mimic the intensity of a kick and an accented punch with a full chord could mimic the snare.
  2. I then try to visualize the bass line for the song. This will help create moving lines between chords, filling up the melodic space in the lower-end. For example, a chord chart may show a repetition of ||F - - - | G - - - | F - - - | G - - - ||, but once you think like a bass player and add a walk-up, i.e. ||F - - - | G - - - | F/A - - - | G/B - - - ||, you add a whole dimension of colour to the progression. A quick cheat method is to look out for the slash chords in a full-band chord sheet, or the piano chord sheet.
  3. I'll then try to hear and incorporate the melodic hooks of the song into the "safe" places: intros, end of choruses, first bridge. This breaks the song out of chord-only-monotony. "From the Inside Out" by Hillsong is a good example (see my video tutorial of the intro played fingerstyle below). It has a terrific hook and shouldn't be left out when playing this acoustically.
  4. If I have the time, I'll try to figure out if I can play any fill-ins at the turn-arounds of the song. In our modern musical context, this usually happens between verses, or from intro to verse, and sometimes even between a verse. Acoustically, this can be in the form of hammering-on/pulling-off chord tones, or a quick scale run (like Tommy Emmanuel).
I hope this gives you useful ideas on how to incorporate "tougher" songs into smaller settings like cell group meetings.


For viewing:
My "From The Inside Out" acoustic riff video tutorial

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