the real Chris Marsh

[kris mahrsh]

-n

a Worship Leader based in London.

There are a number of ways to approach planning a setlist for an upcoming Sunday.

I find that once I’ve gone over initial plans for the service with my vicar, I like to go away and reflect on whatever scriptures we might be using, while prayerfully listening for what God might be saying along the way. That’s often a great springboard – there are usually loads of phrases and themes that will immediately bring a few songs to mind.

Sometimes I might actually find that I’m feeling really stuck for ideas, and I will use some other tools to help me out. I use some software called SongSmart which you can use to prepare chord charts and then transpose them into any key. What’s great about SongSmart is that you can search the song database by keyword – so you can look up themes and words that are coming out in the scriptures to find where those same themes might appear in your songs!

I tend to vary how strictly I plan a setlist based on the theme, as sometimes I find it’s better to be a bit broader in scope to allow for more freedom for God to be at work in His people as they worship. One example would be our current theme for the morning services, which is looking at ‘prayer’. Rather than bullishly trying to use songs that are only about prayer, it’s turning out to be a better approach to use songs that look at the way God speaks and reaches out, and how He has made a way for us to be able to know Him.

Once I’ve got the main bulk of what songs I plan to use, I will then try to shape them into some kind of order, according to how the service is going to run. For example, if it’s an evening communion service we tend to start with a block of 4 songs, then one after the sermon just before communion, with one or two for a closing time of worship. It’s my preference to have blocks of songs either in the same key, or at least using the same capo position. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but I try to stick to it as it allows for songs to transition more smoothly. For example, I might play two songs in E with a capo at fret 2 (playing in D) and move into the key of A (playing in G with capo still at fret 2).

After I’m happy with the song order and the keys I’ll be playing them in, it’s time for a run through. That’s nothing more complicated that pulling out the guitar and running one song into the next, to make sure the transitions are likely to work and that I haven’t made a terrible mistake changing a song’s key – sometimes I might do that for the sake of consistency, only to find there’s no way I or the congregation are going to hit that high G that I didn’t quite see coming!

What methods do you use to plan your Sundays?

Two new sermons now up, archived on the Audio page.

The Full Armour Of God; 20|11|11
 

Walking In The Light; 30|10|11
 

Very soon I’m heading off for a few days to spend some time on a personal songwriting retreat. I’m pretty excited; I’ve got all sorts of ideas and parts of songs that need fleshing out.

As I don’t have anything very flashing like a MacBook or iPad running Pro Tools or even Garageband (although I do run a Mac version of Cubase on my iMac at home), I’ll be recording demos on the fly in Reaper on my Dell Mini. For my current needs, it’s the perfect setup – super portable and ultra inexpensive. Reaper has an incredibly low price for personal users, and the Dell set me back just shy of £200 last year (they’ve since been discontinued though).

Also on the subject of home recording, I recently stumbled on the outstanding Recording Revolution site, more specifically Graham Cochrane‘s 5 Minutes To A Better Mix.

I’ve been looking for some guides and tutorials on mixing since forever, because I’m entirely hopeless at it. Graham’s clear and straightforward videos have absolutely blown the mysteries of mixing wide open to me, and I can’t wait to get working on recording whatever I come up with during my time away.

I do wonder, however, if mastering may be truly beyond me. That’s audio sorcery of the highest level!