keyboard skills for church musicians

5 Simple Ideas for Creative Hymn-Playing

5 Simple Ideas for Creative Hymn-Playing

If you’re a church pianist or organist, you likely have lots of opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques (like, multiple times in every service!).

But knowing what to do, finding well-crafted hymn harmonizations, and accessing published resources can be challenging. In some cases, these resources aren’t available at all.

The good news is, you don’t need to rely solely on published resources to add creative hymn arrangements and harmonizations into your service-playing. You can learn to do some of this yourself.

8 Skills That Set You Apart as a Church Musician

8 Skills That Set You Apart as a Church Musician

A career in church music and ministry requires a variety of skills:

  • Performance skills: playing for worship and accompanying choirs, instrumentalists, and congregational singing. It sometimes includes harmonizing melodies, improvising, transposing, and even composing some of your own service music from time to time.

  • Leadership skills: choosing music that ties in with the rest of the service, perhaps selecting hymns each week, and leading the congregation in song.

  • Educational skills: introducing a variety of musical styles into worship, teaching new hymns or songs to the congregation, and if you’re directing an ensemble, teaching music-reading, rhythm, technique, musical expression, and aural skills.

How to Read Lead Sheets and Chord Charts

How to Read Lead Sheets and Chord Charts

You want me to play that? Where is the left hand part? Where is the time signature? Why aren't there any barlines?

If you haven't guessed it by now, I'm talking about lead sheets and chord charts.

Last year, I put together a free online workshop on this topic (watch it here). Today, I want to share the transcript, for those of you that may prefer to read it. I’ll talk about chord types, chord symbols, lead sheets and chord charts, accompaniment styles, and variation techniques you can start using right away.

Follow along with my creative work and daily adventures: @ashleydanyew

In honor of #smallbusinesssaturday2024, here are my ✨2025 predictions✨ for musicians and creative entrepreneurs: 1️⃣ Pivoting will still be essential: Flexibility and adaptability will define success—embrace change and be willing to evolve.
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