Joshua Riggs explains how to arrange worship songs into cohesive sets. Start with an upbeat song and move to slower ones, use the Nashville Number System to understand key relationships, and build around a central theme like hope or freedom without forcing it.
What factors should you use when arranging music for worship? How do you decide what songs to use and what order they go in? Arranging music for worship doesn't have to be difficult, but you should thoughtfully consider how each song fits together to create a worship experience for your church. Hey everybody, I'm Joshua. I'm the founder of WorshipResources.Church. We help you discover and learn how to use quality resources that will make your church better. If you haven't yet, be sure to download 7 resources that will make your screens pop. I put a link in the description below. And if you like this video, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the new content we produce. One of the goals of worship is to help people recognize God's presence. Whenever songs are put together haphazardly, it can cause people to lose their focus on God and disrupt the worship service. Today we're going to look at 3 things to consider when arranging music for for worship. First of all, tempo. Typically, I begin with an upbeat song that encourages people to praise God. It gets our attention off of us and onto God where it belongs. As we progress through the set, we try to plan a moment of worship that encourages people to hear from God. This is often a slower, more contemplative song. Going from fast to slow and back to fast is not only hard for the band, it's hard on the people too. Keeping like tempo songs together will help the service flow more smoothly and help your people stay engaged when moving from song to song. The second thing you should consider when arranging songs is key relationship. Understanding how keys are related to each other is a crucial step for worship leaders in planning worship. If you can stay in the same key from song to song, your transitions will be easy.. But most of the time that is not possible. A typical worship song will use 4 chords. The I, IV, V, and vi minor. Be sure to check the links below for more info if you're unfamiliar with the Nashville Number System. When going from one key to another while changing songs, there are 2 main options based on key relationship. First of all, try to go to the IV or V chord of the key you are in. For example, If you are in the key of C major, the IV chord is F major and the V chord is G major. Doing this allows for a smooth transition instrumentally and vocally. It's easy on the ears because those chords have already been played in the previous song. They are relative keys. In simple terms, your ear is already used to hearing those chords, so it's easy to change to a IV or V chord, and that chord then becomes the I chord of the new song. Another option is to go up a half step or up a whole step. For example, C to Db or C to D. This transition is easy to make for keyboardist and it doesn't distract from the flow of worship. Going to a key that is not a relative key without an intentional transition can be very disruptive because it's difficult for the ear to make the adjustment. Going from G major to E major sounds weird. Can be difficult for musicians and it doesn't make sense musically. Now sometimes it's just not possible to use one of the methods I mentioned to change from song to song. When that happens, be sure to use a transition element before changing keys. Prayer, silence, scripture, or a testimony will help keep your service connected while changing songs that are in odd keys. Okay, the third thing to consider when arranging music for worship is theme. Now there are different schools of thought on planning worship around themes. Some like the idea and some don't. I personally like to use a theme if it's not forced or distracting to the overall worship service. Building a set around a theme is a great way to get people to focus on a specific attribute or promise from God. I like to start with a key element that I know I want to include. This might be a song, prayer, spoken word, etc. Then I build the rest of the set around that key element. For example, if your key element talks about the hope we have in Jesus, focus your other songs around the theme of hope. If your key element is a song about overcoming chains of bondage, Sing about the freedom that we have in Christ. Now, this doesn't mean that all of your songs have to include the word grace, for instance, but you should be mindful of what the songs are communicating as a whole. Here's the main point: be intentional. Be intentional when planning your worship. It's too important to just throw some songs together or randomly pick 3 hymns from the book. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you as you plan, and he will answer your prayer. And here's a bonus tip. While it's fine to have big moments in worship, be intentional with the key moment of worship. Take people on a journey and then step out of the way to allow the Holy Spirit to do his work. There's no right or wrong way. Just understand where you want your church to go and be intentional about taking them there. So what factors do you consider when arranging music for worship? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for watching everybody. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss out on our future videos. I hope you'll check out WorshipResources.Church today. And if I can serve you in any way, don't hesitate to send me an email at Joshua@worshipresources.church.
