I’m not going to kick off with a big organists’ winge about having to play worship songs on Sunday. Some are fun and joyous (and leave you with a slightly annoying earworm for the rest of the week). But I agree that many have, to a classically-trained organist, their limitations, with clunky texts, limp melodic structure and harmonic infelicities. (I always enjoy counting the number of parallel fifths in Holy Spirit, living breath of God while I’m waiting to play.)
With a charismatic worship band performing their socks off, accompanied by rock-arena lighting, and a large enthused audience, these issues probably fade. However you have been asked to play an unfamiliar worship song on the organ, in a cold church on Sunday morning, for a small and rather timid congregation. This is where things can fall very flat. An apologetic and flustered organist cannot lead her congregation in enthusiastic song, so here’s my guide to improving the odds of making worship songs a success on the organ.
Vocal range
The formula for some worship songs is: we start in our vocal boots, with an introductory verse grumbling around middle C for eight bars. Then we lurch into an impassioned chorus a good octave higher. Then sink back to middle C for the next verse. It might work as a sing-along with a driving band and a trained singer who knows how to marshal their voice, but untrained singers as we know have a much smaller vocal range. Cornerstone (My hope is built on nothing less) has a range of an octave and a fifth – I transposed it down to help the congregation, and my choir sopranos then complained bitterly (with some cause) about being repeatedly asked to sing the G below middle C. (The original asked them for repeated Bs and As below middle C, which is not much better.)
I try to avoid including this type of worship song at my church, and I’ve found that non-musically-trained clergy will usually go along with me once I’ve explained the issue.
Syncopation
The earnest attempts in some hymn books to reproduce a gospel or rock style of singing with fiddly written-out syncopations don’t really work and can often look hilarious on the page (the second half of Complete Mission Praise has some fine examples). The art of a gospel singer or gospel choir is a highly personal, improvisatory style, within a learned aural tradition. If you’re classically trained like myself, trying to meticulously reproduce all these written-out ties-to-semiquaver off-beats will just sound stiff and forced, and isn’t really the point.
Some time ago I was on a hymn-playing class, and our teacher asked us (a dozen organists) to sing together, unaccompanied, the first verse of The Virgin Mary had a baby boy as we thought it should go. Everyone swung the syncopation differently – which was exactly her point. Decide a version of a syncopated song that you’re comfortable with playing and then ask your congregation to follow – be consistent and they will.
Irregularity
The beauty of traditional hymns is that (as played by you, an organist who has learned these things) they cue the starts and finishes of verses and the individual lines of the verses in a straightforward manner so the congregation can jump on board even if the tune is new to them.
Many worship songs have an indeterminate introduction, irregular line lengths, and linking phrases between sung sections. A choir leading the singing will help, but my philosophy is that anything that makes a congregation feel a bit foolish and lost is a bad thing. If they get nervous about ‘when to come in’ they are likely to lose confidence and shut down. As much as possible you need to cue up starts and finishes just the way you do with a conventional hymn. This often means leaving out rambling introductions and final flourishes which are much more ‘gospel band’ in style (and for this reason, for my sins, I usually leave out bar 13 in I the Lord of Sea and Sky).
Accompaniment
This is where you can do a lot to improve things.
Remember a worship song probably originated in the hands of a gospel or rock pianist, or a composer working with a worship band. What ends up in the hymnbooks or as a keyboard reduction sold online is only a version of this, and not always a very good one.
These songs are meant to be arranged by the players: they’re not set in stone like a conventional hymn. As ever, the tune and the bass line are the most important. What you put in the middle is up to you and your particular resources, as it is with any worship band.
Many worship songs are still in copyright, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find different arrangements. Search around in hymn books, and online: you can often find a nicer harmonisation, something a bit more organ-friendly, something a bit more ‘square’. (I’ve found Hymns Old & New quite good for simplified versions of modern songs.)
Whatever you find, though, it often is still basically a piano arrangement, which is where you have to put in a bit of work.
Your own performing edition
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the key to confident Sunday-morning playing under pressure is to simplify and LEAVE STUFF OUT.
Piano writing often has double octaves in the left hand, a flowing, maybe arpeggiated accompaniment filling out the middle, and leaps which can be covered by the sustain pedal on the piano. None of these work particularly well on the organ.
Particularly if you have small hands, bouncing around the organ keyboard in octaves is nonsense, and you will lose any legato you might have had in the first place. Leave out octave doubling in the left hand, pick one suitable note of the two to play, and let a 16′ stop do the work for you if you have one – or of course, put that bass line onto the pedals. I cross out any piano-style note doubling that’s turning the right hand music into a succession of massive 4 or 5 note chords – heck, there are several 8′ stops, plus a 4′ and probably a 2′ working away to cover that, and I don’t need the hassle.
If there’s a lot going in in the middle of the accompaniment, it’s not easy to play this on a single manual without confusing the congregation as to the actual tune. You can leave a lot of this embroidery out, or better, solo out the melody on the Great (say) with anything that is accompaniment on a slightly quieter Swell, so the tune doesn’t get lost. This latter needs a bit of practice – write it out to start with, if it helps.
You may need only one or two notes per bar in the pedal for a worship song, with perhaps a few more at a cadence. Forget your seamless toe-and-heel classical organist style: you’re a theatre organist, picking out a string bass with your left foot, or the bass guitarist, rocking out the beat for the band. Mark up your copy with pencil circles round the bass notes you are going to play, so you don’t forget your plan.
What I try and do is copy or print out the music, and attack it with a fine black pen and a bottle of correction fluid until I’ve covered off all the above. Then I copy or scan this performing edition and file for future use, saving a lot of grief on subsequent Sunday mornings.
A note on copyright
You can photocopy a piece of music that you (or your church) owns and has legally acquired in order to make a performing edition for your own use only. However you can’t then copy and hand out this version, or sell it, without permission from the original copyright holder and/or arranger.
I’m sure you have your own advice here – please share in the comments below!
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