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Guitar Practicing Tips

Start with Prayer

As a Christian, I have always recommended starting any practice session with prayer. Paul says to do everything to God’s glory. I remember reading Brother Lawrence’s book years ago. He was a monk from the 1600’s who’s letters have become the book ‘Practicing The Presence of God.’ He talked about peeling potatoes to God’s glory.

The first tip in practicing your guitar is to start with a prayer. The Scriptures also say that you have not because you ask not. You can actually make your practice a time of worship. Thank God for His many wonderful attributes and ask Him for help with keeping focused on Him and with learning the guitar.

You can worship with instrumental music, too. I remember hearing Christopher Parkening, a classical guitarist, say that his motivation for playing the guitar had changed from playing to make money to playing for God’s glory, after he became a Christian. [Read more…]

Plagal Cadence – Song Endings

By Jean

One of the most used way to extend the end of a worship song is with the use of the plagal cadence. In fact, it has been used for years as the ‘A-men’ ending of hymns in traditional church music.

To understand how it works, you should know what the I, IV, and V chords means. This is briefly explained in volume two of the Worship Guitar Class course and fully taught in our Music Theory course for Guitar. You can see a brief teaching on the plagal cadence in the following video. It starts at around the 1/3rd mark, in the video below.

Basically, the I, IV and V chords are chords built on the first, fourth, and fifth notes of any given scale, or key. In the key of ‘A’, the chords are ‘A’, ‘D’, and ‘E’, or ‘E7’. The V chord is often changed to V7. [Read more…]

It Is Well With My Soul Story

By Jean Leave a Comment

[S3VIDEO file=’jw/well-soul.flv’]

‘It Is Well With My Soul’ is one of the songs in the New Reading and Music Theory Guitar Course. The story is so touching, I decided to make a short video about it to share with you. God is FAITHFUL in all of our trials and helps us through them when we have an eternal perspective. I hope you enjoy this short video and are maybe even inspired to write your own songs or poems of His Unfathomable Love and Faithfulness.

How to extend worship songs

By Jean Leave a Comment

I’m enjoying creating our new Music Theory for Guitar course. One of the musical concepts in the course is called a Deceptive Cadence. Worship leaders use this technique quite often to extend a worship song.

It’s common for a song to end with a chord called the V, or V7, to a chord called the I. There isn’t space here to talk about the various chord structures and keys, but the I chord is the root chord of a key. For example in the key of ‘G’ the I is the ‘G’ chord. The V in the key of ‘G’ is the chord ‘D.’

A ‘D’ or ‘D7’ chord resolves nicely to the chord ‘G.’ A deceptive cadence is when you change to the VI chord at the end of a song instead of the I.

A good example is the song ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High.’ I know many of you have our ‘Worship Guitar Class’ course and this song is in the first volume. The chords are predominately ‘G C D C.’ It ends with the chords ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ G…..

The deceptive cadence for the key of ‘G’ is the VI chord which is the chord ‘Em.’ Instead of playing ‘D,’ Dsus,’ ‘G’ … you can play ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ Em.’ The ‘Em’ is on the last word ‘high.’ Play it for a measure then half a measure on ‘Am’ and ‘D’ ‘Dsus’ for the 2nd half of the measure and ending on G. The ending is below…

| Em | Am Dsus D | G C | D C | G
… high. Lord I lift your name on high.

We often repeat the deceptive cadence 2 or 3 times before finally ending on G.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn to read music or to understand music theory, would love to have you join our music theory class. 🙂

Start with Prayer

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