The Orchestra in the Praise-and-Worship Tradition

The orchestra has found a significant place in the worship of Pentecostal, charismatic, and praise-and-worship churches. This article describes the use of the orchestra in this worship tradition.

The special kind of orchestra known as a worship orchestra is very different from any other kind of musical group used in churches. Consequently, there are many different concepts of what it is and of its role in the church.

The Orchestra as Accompaniment

At the outset, it will help if the role of the worship orchestra is identified as an accompanying role. “Then David spoke to the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers accompanied by instruments of music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals” (1 Chron. 15:16).

Although there are times when the worship orchestra may have a SEL+AH (a musical interlude when the orchestra worships or performs unto the Lord), it is basically an accompanying group as distinguished from a performing group. In any case, the orchestra’s audience is the Lord himself. Figuratively, I see the orchestra and singers standing side by side, both groups facing the Lord, and helping one another to worship him.

It is also very important for worship leaders to see the orchestra, not just as a random collection of instruments, but as an instrument—one instrument in the hands of a director or conductor. It may be even more important for the orchestra members to see themselves in this light.

Spontaneity and Flexibility

With the new emphasis on worship instead of the standard song service has come a new emphasis on instrumental worship. But new challenges for instrumentalists have come out of this development. These challenges center around two basic features of the worship movement—spontaneity and flexibility. Spontaneity is a feature of the style of worship leading itself; flexibility expresses the necessary response of the musicians to this style.

A spontaneous worship service may appear to be free-flowing and unplanned; songs of praise and worship flowing from one to another without interruption. I say “appear” because there is usually prior planning and a listing of songs to be sung in a certain order. Rarely, however, is this order followed exactly, and it may be dispensed with entirely after the first song. Then everybody is on his or her own. This is in contrast to the denominational church’s “song service,” where all songs used are decided well in advance. There are few surprises in this kind of service.

The Flexible Accompanist. As a pianist who has accompanied spontaneous worship for over twenty years, I have had to work out a lot of solutions to problems raised by this apparent spontaneity and lack of planning. A worship pianist should be ready to play any song he or she knows (and some he doesn’t) in any key on the piano and be able to modulate back and forth at a moment’s notice. He should be ready to repeat back to any spot to which the worship leader feels led.

Over the years, I have tried to coordinate such things with a number of organists. We have had to develop a number of signals with each other and the worship leaders in order to work together effectively in this kind of highly unstructured setting—that is, unstructured by us prior to the event. We always hope that the end result of what we are doing represents the structuring of the Holy Spirit. Let me emphasize that I believe the Holy Spirit can and does reveal His intention to leaders of worship services ahead of time as well as “on the spot.” We should seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit and plan accordingly, but we must be flexible enough to be able to make a change right in the middle of our well-laid plans if the Spirit so directs.

The Orchestra and Flexibility. Accompanying this kind of worship with a piano, an organ, and perhaps a rhythm section is one thing. When other instruments are added, often problems can arise. This is especially so if the other instrumentalists are unable to play by ear or improvise and must depend upon written parts. The piano, because of its clarity of attack and pitch, can be important here as a center around which the other instruments rally.

Ten years ago, I was the pianist at a national convention on the Holy Spirit held in Kansas City. The night sessions were held at Arrowhead Stadium. I was on the stage in the center of the field with my organist and a thirty-five-piece orchestra directed by someone else. The orchestra was using written arrangements for the worship songs we had planned to sing. An immense amount of preparation had gone into these “spontaneous” worship services. The orchestra leader, my organist, and I were connected to the worship leader by means of an intercom system. One night, as the spirit of the worship service was at an extremely high peak, I heard the worship leader inform the orchestra leader about a song he wanted to sing just then that was uniquely appropriate. The orchestra leader either didn’t have the music for that particular piece or it was going to take a while to get all the players involved in it. Suddenly, the worship leader’s voice crackled in my headset, “Frank, can you get us started on this one now?” Bang! I struck the opening chord on the big grand instantaneously. The attack and the pitch of the notes ricocheted off the walls and seats of the stadium, and off we went.

The orchestra found the music after a while, came in, and no one was the wiser. After the service, the worship leader came back and told us how reassuring it was to know that in a tight spot like that, someone would come through.

This story illustrates the problem of orchestral inflexibility in this kind of setting. It also shows how various accompanying instruments can work together in such a setting so that the flow of the Spirit may be unhindered.

Playing by Ear and Improvisation

Some groups deal with the problem of inflexibility by having only musicians who can improvise or play by ear. But this approach has its own drawbacks. First, it rules out many fine musicians who simply cannot play without written music. Second, many groups using this approach wind up sounding like a giant Dixieland band.

I have tried to play in groups like this in which everyone not only had his own notion of a supporting part but also had his own notion of the correct chord pattern. I don’t mind dissonance occasionally, but chaos is another matter. Third, most orchestras that improvise cannot play with sectional unity or with many of the other features of true orchestral sound. There are no solid chordal backgrounds from the horn section or the trombone section. There are no unison and octave contrapuntal lines from the strings, nor are there any nice rhythmic accents from the trumpet section as a unified whole.

The chief objection to playing by ear or improvising (which is different) in this kind of setting is that they both are essential techniques used by soloists. This works against the principle stated earlier that the worship orchestra is basically an accompaniment orchestra. This means that a different approach must be taken to the whole matter of improvisation. I call it responsible improvisation. That means that the individual instrumentalist must learn to improvise in some sort of coordination with other players in the orchestra, especially with those in his own section. It is not something that can be learned overnight, but it can be learned.

I also use responsible improvisation to describe the ability to play based on knowledge of music theory and harmony. Such playing is never irresponsible (that is, having no regard for what others are doing around you). It is not some sort of stream-of-consciousness playing either. Let me hasten to add, however, that there are times when the whole musical group (singers, instrumentalists, etc.) will be caught up and directed by the Spirit. I have been a participant in such events. Unfortunately, this doesn’t occur as often as we would like. Aside from that, the most responsible and spiritual approach is to prepare oneself technically as well as one can, then to be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. This allows the Spirit more to work with when he does come with power and anointing.

There is an alternative to orchestral improvisation that may be a more viable option for most church orchestras. It is the use of a special kind of written arrangement.

Written Arrangements

The most common objection to the use of written arrangements by the kind of orchestra we have been describing is that it does not allow the orchestra to be very flexible in a spontaneous worship setting. I have been dealing with this challenge in developing church orchestras and have recently developed a type of arrangement for worship orchestras which I call a resource arrangement, as opposed to a set arrangement. A set arrangement is the ordinary arrangement in which one must pretty well use the instrumentation called for and must play the arrangement as written. By contrast, a resource arrangement is extremely flexible. If you have three instruments besides the rhythm section, it sounds well. If you have fifteen, it sounds better. If you have fifty, it sounds even better (i.e., more combinations of sound colorations, contrasts, breadths of tone, etc.). In this arrangement, each instrument has two or three versions of the song written on his part. For most instruments, this will consist of a melody version and a chordal version; trumpets may have an accented rhythmic pattern of trumpeting or “shots.” Thus, the director of the orchestra has at his command an almost infinite number of combinations from which to select an orchestration during worship.

Another feature of these arrangements is that they feature words on every part, even those that are playing a sustained background pattern. This does two things, it allows the player to find his or her place in the music instantly when the worship director decides to sing something not on the “list,” requiring the player to find the song in his alphabetically arranged loose-leaf folder; and it keeps the instrumentalist constantly aware of the spiritual message being expressed by the notes he is playing. This makes the instrumentalists more a part of the worship team, since orchestral members tend to get wrapped up in the notes and musical phrases.

Other features of these arrangements include more emphasis on the horizontal movement (counterpoint or melodic interest in the inner parts) than on the vertical (chordal backgrounds, etc.); melodic modulation rather than just harmonic (congregations can hear and act upon the former more easily, which is important since they need to participate and not just listen); and the usage of “strong lines” and “broad strokes.”

This last feature uses a lot of doubling of the parts and does not concern itself with delicate little phrases and intricate technical passages that characterize performance arrangements for an audience that is just listening to the orchestra. Similarly, a pianist playing for worship with an orchestra should not spend a lot of time with intricate finger patterns. In the first place, they won’t be heard, and in the second place, they won’t add anything particularly helpful to the accompanying role in worship.

Space does not allow us to deal with the many other features of this kind of arrangement, but it should be emphasized that such arranging requires a different emphasis and approach.

The Worship Orchestra Director

I use the term director because conductor is more of a description of the leader of a performance group. Who is the director? He may be the worship director if he knows something about instrumental music and the group is fairly small. He may be the worship pianist if he has the same qualifications. Ideally, the orchestral director should be someone other than the worship leader or pianist, mainly because these people have all they can handle in the carrying out of their basic responsibilities. The director should be someone who understands the technical requirements of the various instruments of an orchestra, but more important, he should be a person who is a worshiper himself. The technical aspects of music should never have to conflict with the spiritual considerations, but if they do, the director should come in on the side of the spiritual.

There are other differences between the director of a worship orchestra and a conductor of a performance orchestra. For one thing, the worship orchestra director may not even beat time on a continuous basis except to start off a song in proper tempo or to change or correct tempos after starting. Some of his more important tasks are …

  1. To indicate the desired sound levels to the various instrumentalists and sections (many groups I hear are completely overwhelmed by the electric bass and percussion).
  2. To indicate by certain signals the part each section is to play at any given time from the special worship arrangement (for instance, he might signal: “Reeds, you play the first time through; strings, you come in the second time; and brass, you come in the third time with trumpets playing the lead”).
  3. To indicate the various repeats desired by the leader.
  4. To give advance notice of modulations and specific keys during improvisation.

These are just a few of the specialized tasks of the director of a worship orchestra. As a suggestion, I believe the director, if he is capable, is the best person to be on the synthesizer. This places him in the position to add whatever parts are missing, to strengthen certain sections, and to use that versatile instrument in many other applications. In any case, the best people to use synthesizers in this setting should be arrangers at heart. They should have an understanding of orchestral sound and the various instruments in the orchestra.

Although the pianist works very closely with the worship leader and usually takes the lead in beginning a new song (especially if modulation is involved or the orchestra is going to have to look up the written part), he or she should be under the general supervision of the orchestral director. The pianist’s style of playing should complement that of the orchestra, not compete with it. In fact, every instrument should be in this position, including the electric bass player and the drummer! Unless the director has some control over every instrument that contributes to the volume and the style and feel of the arrangement, sonic chaos will eventually result.

The Anointing

Finally, I want to make it clear that none of the material in this article is of much use without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. In dealing with the practical aspects of making music, it is easy to give the impression that “getting the sound right” is all that is required to be successful in worship. Nothing could be further from the truth. While technical excellence of itself will not bring us into the presence of God, the results of neglecting the pursuit of excellence can be a distraction and an outright hindrance. The musicians who ministered in the Tabernacle of David were said to be “skilled” or “practiced.” Likewise, we need to offer our very best to the Lord by striving to perfect the gifts He has placed in us. Then we should look for the anointing of the Spirit to activate it all. God was pleased with this approach in that day; I believe He will be pleased with it in our day.