Worship Musician September 2019 | Page 64

VOCALS
ARRANGED TO ENHANCE CONGREGATIONAL SINGING
“GREAT ARE YOU LORD” FOR VOCALISTS | Grant Norsworthy
Are you still singing “Great Are You Lord” with the leading vocal team, these are the five main Now let’s hit the vocal teaching video of me
your congregation? I am, and I hope you are issues that need consideration. Make the right working with my Nashville band’s singers on
too. It’s a beautiful song, infinitely singable and choices here and the congregation are far more “Great Are You Lord”. We discuss more fully
a powerful declaration of God’s greatness that likely to sing. Make the wrong choices here and the five items listed above and give positive and
congre-gations everywhere are resonating with they will struggle. negative singing examples as we go. Enjoy!
deeply. Even though it was released back in
2013, there are good reasons why “Great Are 1. KEY CHOICE
You Lord” (as I write this) is still comfortably Does the melody of the song fall within a
within CCLI’s top 10 at number 3. comfortable register for as high a proportion of
the congregation as possible?
If you haven’t added this song to your repertoire
yet, I thoroughly recommend that you do. The 2. CONSOLIDATE THE MELODY
videos in this, the previous, and future articles Are all the leading, mic’ed vocalists interpreting
in this series will help! If “Great Are You Lord” the melody in the same way?
is al-ready in your repertoire, please read (and
watch) on. The suggestions here might help 3. UNIFY THE VOCAL STYLE
you give the song some extra “legs” as you lead Do we have one, cohesive style of singing?
These videos are part of a larger collection. The
your congregation to sing as an expression of
worship to God.
In WMs July issue - using “Great Are You Lord”
series has been produced in partnership with
4. HARMONY VOCALS
Integrity Music and We Are Worship with the
Are the harmony vocals solid? When should aim of helping regular, weekend-warrior Church
they be used? When shouldn’t they? bands craft a version of “Great Are You Lord”
as the example song - I shared some thoughts
that is as congregation-friendly as possible.
about the musical director’s choices. Following 5. SPONTANEOUS SINGING
that theme - and again using “Great Are You Does
Lord” as the example song - we’re now moving spontaneous, prayerful vocalizations? Will our
to the leading vocalists and how we can more congrega-tion respond well to that?
the
song
offer
Stay tuned for more instalments in this series
opportunities
for
warmly invite the congregation to sing with us
rather than listen to us perform for them.
in future issues.
“Great Are You Lord”
Words & Music by David Leonard, Jason Ingram, Leslie
Before we get into the nitty-gritty vocal teaching
Jordan (© 2012 Integrity’s Allelu-ia! Music)
video, check out this full band rendition of
As we prepare songs with which we plan to lead “Great Are You Lord”. Listen to how the
a regular church congregation, I encouraged us vocals are arranged and supported by the
all to resist the “cover band” urge. We should instrumentation.
not be trying to mimic our favorite artist’s
version. In-stead, I strongly believe that we
Grant Norsworthy
founder of MoreThanMusicMentor.com providing
training for worshipping musicians.
MoreThanMusicMentor.com
should very intentionally craft our version of
the song that works for us, in our situation
with a very definite, musical goal of inviting our
congregation to sing.
For me, when it comes to musically directing
64
September 2019
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