One Response

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  Dan Gross wrote on March 20, 2010
  
  

  Some great suggestions there Brenton. There is no easy way. And then once you've verified they can play, there's the matter of chemistry. I sub in at my church and so I've played with all the musicians at one point (yeah, even the other drummer when I sat in on bass once). There are some I play with "better" than others. Mind you, we get through the services and people don't really notice but as a musician you do notice and it can affect your play not matter how long you've been playing. But for me it has taken a lot longer to get "used" to the other players because I'm only playing once/month or so and it's not always with the same players. To the introducing part, our former worship leader, desperate for more bodies to help (we qualify as a "small" church here), started what we lovingly called "b band." The intent was for people learning instruments to play together in a no-pressure environment, practicing once a week or so. Ended up after 12 weeks or so of practice leading worship for one weekend. While I had joined to improve my chops on guitar I ended up doing a lot of drumming, which was good for me. We had a new (to the congregation) guy who came in, accomplished player, who ended up being the de facto worship leader for this group. What I didn't get until later was that the worship leader had invited him to join to effectively audition him to be the backup worship leader... The current worship leader has talked about having "jam sessions" on some regular basis, and they can be a great forum for "new" people to come in and work with the other musicians without the pressure of feeling like they are auditioning (or to spend valuable worship practice time auditioning). Not always practical and of course can turn into more commitment for folks but it's just an idea to throw out there...