Role of Keyboards in Worship

Piano / Keyboard is an interesting role in contemporary worship. I will try to give the short version of its role seeing how it could be debated and discussed forever. The role of the keyboard player depends on the style of music, the importance of piano in each specific band (who is leading the song instrumentally), the musical effects and sounds that the player uses, and other smaller factors.  Piano is one of the most commonly used instruments in worship and has been for many years.  One of the piano player’s roles is to play full chords that help guide the singer(s) to hit the right notes and help any other singers singing harmonies to stay within the appropriate key. Piano can create a background to the music being played help fill in the gaps with the bass guitar. This is found in many more contemporary worship groups through the use of pads and strings. The piano can be the lead and play complex musical lines, arpeggios, scales, and melodic lines that drive the song forward and are at the forefront of the song. An example of this can be found in southern gospel, tradition worship music, hymns, and gospel music. The piano leads the song and after the voice is the next important role in the band. The player’s effects play a role in the band as well, however the bands style dictates what effects he or she uses. If the keyboard is playing a lot of synth it will be more of a lead instrument. The player will use lots of lines and play thinly in appropriate places. If the player uses an organ then the role is the either lead instrument or be a background that is heard in appropriate places. If the player uses piano then he or she could play almost any style of music. The situation does and should influence how the piano player plays. An obvious example is if the congregation is worshiping and praying you do not want to play anything loud or too busy such as a solo that would distract others from worship. The piano helps create an atmosphere of worship and should never hinder or block that experience. As one can see there are many factors that determine the piano player’s role in a worship band. In conclusion I believe a piano player role is to create good music and create the right atmosphere for the situation.

Now as to what I primarily use in worship; I’d like to use piano more than any other effect. I love the sound of a good piano and also play piano. However a good pad or strings sound is probably what I use the most and is a very important tool for worship. These effects helps fill empty gaps and also truly make create background noise which usually assists others when worshipping. The pad and string sounds also help gap the spaces in-between songs which is something every band deals with. I believe it is important to create an atmosphere for worship and the strings I found is one of the best for doing so.   I like to use synth sounds and other weird and cool effects as well but haven’t used them too much in worship as of right now, (used synth sounds for a couple of songs but it requires me to bring my laptop or keyboard from home and I usually forget or don’t want to bring them.) these sounds are primarily used for upbeat praise songs. As I have said probably a hundred times I will say it again; it is about creating the right tone and atmosphere for worship whether it’s for jumping up and down and dancing in worship or if it’s for falling down before Jesus and surrender oneself in worship. The music should not be a tool we use to play with emotions but a tool in the hand of God for him to do whatever he desires. A band should create the right mood so that the congregation can worship Jesus with no distractions and freely and also so that God can move and speak to us his people. - George

Role of Drums in Worship

Drums are the foundation of any band. The drummer’s role in any band is to give the music a pulse to make the group sound full and more interesting. Whether playing in compound meters or playing simple 4/4 drum beats every song has rhythm. Drummers unlike other musicians can absolutely anything they want and make it fit in the context of the song. Drums help control the dynamics of the song and keep transitions flow together. Musicians rely on the drummer to keep the drive and the tempo of the song. Drummers are unique because they can have and use different variations of equipment which contributes to certain sections. For example, gospel drummers usually tend to have large drum kits because they tend to add more fills and hits to help drive the band. Where as in jazz drummers tend to play on a standard kit which consists of high tom, floor tom, snare, kick, hi hat, crash and ride cymbals. Some churches have electronic drum kits and some drum players use electronic drum pads to get unique digital drum sounds. There are hundreds if not thousands of different combinations of things drummer can do to enhance or “spice” up songs.

Dave Herlo was the first person who pushed me to strive on drums. Dave would help me with everything I struggled or had problems with. After getting lessons from Dave I started looking up videos on YouTube to increase my playing ability. From there I started to develop my own technique, beats, and even fills. I started to look up worship bands and saw how drummers would set a certain atmosphere for worship by using cymbals and increasing volume for build ups. Big influences for me were Mike Webber, Cobus Potgieter, Tony Royster, Calvin Rodgers, Chris Coleman, and Rolf Wam Fjell.

Playing with Seven38 band has changed how I play drums as a whole. I find myself listening to what the band does and feeding and contributing more. I started to play less and worship God more. I try my best to blend with the band and ultimately get the church to an atmosphere where they can feel comfortable and free to worship. Drums can be a loud soloing invasive thing but I try my best to support the band the best I can with the talents God has given me. -Mike

Role of Singing in Worship

Singing is the most important role in a group or band. Without voices, you have instruments, accommodated rhythm, and noise. If we never heard a song, or the words, it would just be a sound. 

I have been singing in worship groups since I was 14 years old. It has become a part of my life. First starting with the Elim band, if you can think way back in our church.  Being the youngest one there made me realize that I had the potential to mature, and grow in my life as a singer. But time passes and members move, families grow, life happens. Singers and musicians go but worshippers remains. I then knew that there is more. And I wanted to continue singing. So, the next step is to press on.  I have been with two other bands and the experience with time has improved. My vocals have strengthened, singing range widened, and most of all, I grew into more of a worship leader. After the practices, and getting on stage, the thrill of knowing that not only am I going to be in front of people but God is watching me also, and that is worth singing for. Since I have been with seven38 band from 2010, God has shown me more of my potential as a worship leader than ever before.  The days of fasting, the accountability for each other as band members, and the spiritual growth, showed me that worship is work and sacrifice. The best way to describe worshiping god in song; letting him know how we feel and what he’s done for us. When the heart feels it, the voice sings it.

I love to praise and worship our God with all my mind, body, and heart. And I have the privilege of being in a band, more or less, a worship group. I say that because its not a performance of the louder music, flashy lights, certain key that’s hit that makes us break into tearful emotions. No. Raising his name higher than any other, and some is what we, his children are called to do.

Jesus says in John 4:23-24, "But the hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

It may seem like there is much that goes along with what we consider worship. But really, the simplicity of it is to glorify, honor, praise, exalt, and please God. -James

Role of Bass Guitars in Worship

Bass guitar is a very important instrument that adds another dimension to the sound of a band. The role of the bass guitar is to provide rhythmic and harmonic foundation. The main rhythm section is the drums, and the bassist supports and amplifies the pulse set by the drummer. In the second respect, the bassist’s role is to give the music a fuller sound. The guitars and keyboard are relatively high-pitched instruments. The bass is needed to fill out the lower end of the sound spectrum. Without it, the music would be high-pitched and thin. The bass plays a powerful role in how we hear harmonies. When we hear several notes played at the same time, we hear them all relative to the lowest sounding pitch, the bass note. The majority of people think that the bass player only plays the root note of whatever the guitar is playing. That might be the case of most rock music, with a few exceptions. However, in styles such as jazz and funk, the bass guitar takes on a different role. The bassist has more freedom to break from the traditional single note root and substitute baselines that are independent of what the other instruments are playing and start to add a new texture to the overall sound.

Ghita Tise is the person who first introduced me to the bass. He taught me the fret board and a few riffs, but that was about it. He wanted me to play with his group the contemporary worship songs that our church sings. In those songs, the bass part was just playing the root of the chords and keeping time with the drums. After all, the main role of the worship band is to lead people into worship. That’s it. You’re not there to show off what you know and take three minute solos. It’s not right atmosphere especially for the ending worship set.

When I started playing with the Seven38 band, I wanted to add a different texture to the way that I play. I started to listen to more Jazz and Gospel music. Listening to other people’s creativity will generally spark unique and different musical tendencies in you. I also started memorizing scales to better harmonize what I play with everyone else. As I’ve mentioned before, being in a worship band, requires a certain sensibility of listening to the other instruments and contributing something unique to the overall sound. There is a very fine line between too much and too little. The bass shouldn’t under any circumstances become the overpowering element in the music. The hard part is finding balance, whether it’s in the style, tone or volume of what you play. -Dani

Role of Electric Guitars in Worship

Electric guitars play a major role in contemporary worship music. Most of our favorite worship band's musical style is electric guitar driven or centric. The electric guitar can be either a lead or rhythm instrument. In most praise and worships there are two electric guitars one for lead and the other for rhythm. In our case we have one electric guitar player that alternates between the two styles. The lead electric guitar normally plays melodic lines, intro/outro riffs, finger picks, and solos. The lead guitar normally tends to play chord inversions or voice/play chords on higher strings to differentiate themselves from the rhythm electric guitar. The rhythm electric normally plays full six string chords or power chords and sometimes plays harmonic lines with the lead guitar. The main purpose of the rhythm electric is offer support to the whole band by focusing on the chords, while the lead guitars adds extra texture on top of the rhythm guitar's chord foundation. A quick disclaimer, every electric guitar player is unique and they have their own style and play their own unique roles, so take our opinion with a grain of salt.

Electric guitar players and drummers probably have the most gear or equipment in a worship band. A typical set up for a electric guitar player in a worship band is a electric guitar, numerous effect pedals, accessories to connect and power everything, and a tube amplifier. Another common setup is having a electric guitar play through a multi-effects pedal that digitally simulates different effects and amps (line 6 HD series, Boss GT series, etc). Many believe that to that best tone is had using a tube amplifier and separate effects pedals. We believe that the electric guitar setup should match the situation. Friday's for youth service we use the tube amp and pedal board because we normally play at higher volumes and in the context this setup works. Sundays for regular service we normally use our volume friendly Line6 Pod HD 500. It takes a considerably longer time to set up a tube amp pedalboard rig in comparison to the plug and play nature of multi-effect pedals.

The two most commonly used effects by electric guitar players in contemporary worship are overdrives and delays (Guitar-effects-amp). The main type of delay used is digital with time subdivision that are dotted eighth and or quarter note. So in general electric guitars in worship band produce a distorted sound that is trailed by echo from the delay. If you heard any Hillsong United songs you have heard this sound. A rhythm electric guitar player doesn't use delay often, but mostly uses overdrives. Some times even turning on multiple overdrive effect pedals to increase the gain or distortion. These two effects together produce a basic worship electric guitar sound. There a lot more effects you can then add to build upon this foundation, such as chorus, reverb, flanger, compressor, distortion, etc.-Sergiu

Mixing Sound for Worship

While managing the soundboard (or sound mixer) might not seem like a big deal and often it is not noticed, but it actually serves as one of the more important parts of worship. Without the sound board there is no way to make everyone sound good.  When you hear different parts of a song and one instrument goes off on a solo, you need to make that person playing the solo louder so it can be heard over the other instruments.  Mixing all the instruments together and creating the perfect balance between all of the band members together is also important to make a song sound good.  Electric guitars, drums, and keyboards all sound good together for any song, but instruments are not the real reason we worship. Now I am one that loves awesome bass solos too. However, when the instruments start overpowering the singers, then I haven’t done my job to balance the sound of all the instruments and band members.

When you worship, what’s the whole point if the message isn't heard? When mixing the sound for our band I have to make sure to sound test the microphones first. This way I can make sure the voices are the highest I can get them before creating feedback.  Then I continue sound testing all the other instruments in one at a time from guitars to keyboard to the drums and any other instrument we want to use at worship that night.  But again, the lyrics need to be heard over all the rest so that when we are leading the congregation they can follow by singing along with us. All of us singing together in worship exalts God. The whole reason we lead worship is to worship God with our songs. That is why we want the singers to be heard so people know what we’re singing and hopefully we can inspire people to sing along. The most important thing is to sing songs of praise that can lead people to Christ. -Raul

Band History

Let’s start at the very beginning, but before we do that, we want to state that our main purpose for everything that we did and do is to bring glory to our savior Jesus Christ. In 2003 The Baciu brothers started the band Emanuel. The Emanuel band had six original members. The singers were Jenny Cornici and Jackie Micula. Sergiu Baciu played guitar and sang as well. Michael Baciu played bass. George Baciu played piano and Jason Baciu played drums. During this early point of our musical journey many of the band members had very little experience playing instruments or singing with other people. Michael and Jason started learning their instruments right when the band started. Most of the band members had individual instrument lessons from our Church’s music director Ghita Tise. One thing that was odd for a youth band during that period was that we didn’t have a mentor or teacher that specifically helped our band. We learned how to arrange songs and learn to play together by ourselves. In retrospect it would have been easier to have had someone help our band, but we probably wouldn’t be as determined and disciplined as we are now. Emanuel started out by playing in Sunday school worship for a while. Things changed when Flo Popa, the youth leader in charge of worship at the time, asked us to play one or two songs for youth service. A few months after that we were leading full worship sets during Friday night youth service. As we continued to advance as a band we started to mature spiritually as well. (Below is slideshow/video we made in 2006 as we were transitioning from Emanuel to Emanuel United)    

                                 

            Emanuel continued until 2006 when the band added new members and became Emanuel United. The new members were Jeremy Tomuta on electric guitar and Alex Tzankov on voice and guitar. During this time our band members were really into Hillsong United hence the “United” addition to our band’s name. That was actually only partially the reason why we added “United” to our name; the main reason was we started incorporating guest instrument players and singers during this period of our band. We wanted to give youth members a chance to lead worship. Some of our past partners in worship include Aron Ianchici, Elvis Venter, Ruth Tomuta, Alex Herlo, Flavius Herlo, James Herlo,  Dani Alex, Vlad Alexa, Sorin Leahu, Alex Leahu, James Andra, Nicole Lela,  etc. (If we forgot anyone let us know or if we spelled someone’s name wrong) We still have guests now as seven38, but not as frequently as the Emanuel United period. During this period we also started to learn a lot of new songs. To keep up with all these new songs we had practice two times a week, Mondays and Thursdays. We tried to incorporate a new song each service and this is a habit we try to continue as seven38. As we got older it became harder to stay consistent with practices and it seemed we were not as passionate, this among other things led to a series of unfortunate events which resulted in some band members leaving Emanuel United. Not all things were negative in the latter part of Emanuel United existence during this time several members of the band were baptized with the Holy Spirit. Around this time God put a new found passion and a new vision for worship in our hearts. We knew we had to radically change for the better. This ultimately led to the creation of Seven38.

 

 Emanuel United disbanded in 2010 in order to give way to the Seven38 band. For us to take the leap of faith to leave Emanuel United, band members, and everything we became accustomed to in order to go into a totally different type of band/style was difficult for us. When we started Seven38 we wanted to start off right. We picked and instituted a weekly day of fasting. When our church started to offer bible studies for youth we created our own bible study because we had couldn’t attend theirs because we had practice on the same day. We also had an extra meeting once a week were we just focused on new ideas for youth service and where we occasionally worked on writing songs. The biggest emphasis for us is placed on our personal relationships with God, then our relationships with each other and the youth. One of the purposes of the Seven38 band was to help lead the youth to worship God in any atmosphere, style of music, and in other different ways. We felt at the time (seven38’s creation) that worship had become monopolized. That all different bands that rotated leading worship, including us to an extent, basically played the same songs, had the same style, and sounded similar. There was nothing inherently wrong with that, but we truly believed God called us to be different and to do more. A source for inspiration for us was our experiences at Church of God Winterfests. We really felt free to worship God in new ways. We wanted to create an atmosphere of worship similar to our experiences at Winterfest. As a result we started using different methods to accomplish our vision. We started to utilize stage lighting, videos, interactive games and activities, instrumental breaks, song arrangements and different musical styles. We are still building upon our strong foundation, continually looking for new ideas for worship, and doing our best for the Lord. Hopefully this band history has benefited someone in some way. Some might ask why take the time to write about a band's history, we believe it’s good to reflect and learn from the past, but more importantly it’s good to remember what God has done for us. As we look to the future we will strive to be innovative and obedient to God’s will. We have a lot more in store and we pray that we all will continue to grow closer to God and continue to worship together. 

New Beginnings

After getting a renewed interest in utilizing the internet and social media to connect to our church youth and fans alike we decided to start a blog. We plan to use our blog to post testimonials, favorite bible scripture, band advice, stories, gear, etc. All of the seven38 band members will contribute and hopefully this resource will bless you and us, thank you for taking the time to check it out. -Sergiu