Praise and Worship Pianist/Keyboardist practical tips

As a Praise and Worship pianist or keyboardist, there are a few practical and important tips for us to remember during praise and worship.

1) Forget about the main melody
Except a very rare occasion, you are part of accompany player, try not to play the main melody, leave it to worship leader or backup singer, concentrate to play out with rhythm and chords as part of music foundation, the song would sound more solid. Play with this way, the melody is even sound clearer. Unless you are introducing a new song then you may play the melody of the song.

2) Practise the chords and chord inversion
For contemporary praise and worship music, you must know how to play chord music. First step, practise to see the chord sheet, if you see a C, your hand should automatically move to C chord, and you should easily change your chord position for other chords. Secondly, know about the chord invesion, example think about the fastest way to change from C chord to F chord, it would be C E G to C F A.

3) Tempo must be accurate while playing
One of your accomplishment in Praise and Worship is tempo control, don’t be too tention. don’t be too fast or too slow, maintain the right tempo of each song. Even you play the wrong chord don’t slow down, just continue the playing.

4) Spice up your song with fill in
once you are familiar with chords playing, you could start to play some fill in for the song. remember, the fill in is good on those empty spaces of the song not on melody. And a few is better than more.

5) Simple is meant for beautiful
Try to listen other pro player. you will found that they just play very little and make the song simple but beautiful, they will not try to show off how skillful they are, this is called a real skillful player. No worries, you will not become just background music.

God bless