3 Reasons Your Worship Team Should Start with a Metronome THIS Week

We all sort of know in the back of our minds, that we should be using a metronome when we practice. Every music teacher we've ever encountered has encouraged us down this road. The problem is that a metronome is annoying. It exposes flaws that we don't want to be exposed. It forces us out of the moment when we're trying to simply 'feel' the music. Here's the thing: We're all human. We're all susceptible to emotions, circumstances, and errors. You may think that you have a rock-solid "natural" tempo, but the reality is... you don't. Nobody does. Here's why you should seriously consider implementing a metronome (aka click-track) for your worship team this week.

It Builds Consistency

Introducing a metronome brings consistency to a worship team. I mean this in a couple of different ways. First of all, it brings consistency to your practice, not only for you but for the entire worship team. When you introduce a click-track, you remove factors that introduce unwanted instability to your music. If you're training a new bandmate, you can easily tell them to go practice with the metronome at a set tempo, and when that person comes back to practice... voila! It's the exact same that they've been practicing all week. 

One example of this is that I find myself to be a very emotional player. If I feel a little sluggish (for whatever reason), I often pull the music a bit slower. If I'm feeling a particular song (in that particular moment), I'm off and away in the tempo. I've found that as soon as we introduced a metronome, it provided an external guideline that I could trust. If we start a song, and I feel it's slow, I know that the reason is because of something in myself, not an external problem that the band needs to figure out. As an added bonus, our team is not left trying to figure out my exact emotional state of being in order to start the song at an appropriate speed.

The second way that a metronome brings consistency is that it removes unwanted variables on a Sunday morning. There've been many times I have found our speed to be out of control because of a nervous band member. If you and your team are on a metronome, you have a lifeline in your live scenarios.

A Metronome WILL Improve Musicianship

There's a reason every music teacher pushes a metronome on their victims. Timing is one of the most fundamental elements of music. And people are horribly unreliable in their timing. Because we're human. That's what we do. But playing with a metronome can fix a lot of our incompetence. It provides a guide for the team to play to. It gives structure.

We've found unexpected benefits as we're coming up on a year of playing with a click track. One example of this has been with our drummer. He's extremely talented (and has always been). But when we weren't on a metronome, he was throttled in what he was able to accomplish. Often, he would go for a fill, and the band would speed up during the feel, not leaving him enough room to successfully accomplish it. So he simplified everything. One of the first things I noticed when we started with the metronome was that he sounded so much better than he had. Not because his talent had remarkably jumped. But because he had time to spice things up. 

It Provides Some Interesting Opportunities

Whether it's supplemental tracks, better-executed effects, or even different song pieces and arrangements, the metronome opens up a lot of interesting opportunities once it's successfully implemented. Need a shaker throughout the song, but your drummer doesn't have a third arm? Why not introduce a shaker track in your music? Want to loop a specific piece in a song live? Why not? You can do all sorts of interesting tricks once you know that your main band is rock steady on the tempo.

One quick example, from my experience. I immediately noticed that my delay usage improved dramatically. I could use thick, heavy delay on a song and it wouldn't create a garbled mess in the band context. I'd never been able to successfully pull that effect off before we were on the click track. 

I know the idea of using a metronome is intimidating. The very idea of the metronome made me uneasy for a long time. But I'm glad we finally pulled the trigger and jumped all in. It changed the way I think and feel about our Sunday mornings. If you are thinking about it implementing it, I have two parting pieces of advice:

1. Once you start, commit. It'll take a couple of months before you'll feel comfortable enough to use it in a live setting. Start with your band practices. But once you start, don't stop. That first couple of weeks will be really challenging and cause you to question why you even bother to play music. But stick with it. It'll payout. 
2. Get everyone on the click track. No exceptions. We're all musicians. This is basic musicianship. Everybody needs to feel when you fall off the beat. Everybody needs to jump back on together. Don't just torture the drummer.