Sarah,
You are quite good at guitar. I’d probably say that you used to be better at guitar than I was a piano - but ever since you taught me how to play chord inversions now I think I’m as good at the piano as you are a guitar

Johnathon,
Ack! D to C, yes that is the worst.

Peter,
Sweet. I’d love to hear about how your weekend goes with memorized music.

I hope I didn’t insult the piano players out there! And you are totally right. I think what I meant to say was something like this:

“changing the key of a song is possible on a keyboard instrument without drastically altering the overall sound, so piano playing worship leaders sometimes forget the impact that a different (especially a lower) key will have when the song is played on the guitar”

A classic example of this is the song “I Will Boast” by Paul Baloche. It sounds very cool in the key of D and has a great guitar lead riff in the intro. However, the key of D is a little high for the CFC congregation, so Sam often does it in C. It’s very difficult to get that same guitar part to sound good in C. If that part were on a piano, it could be lowered while retaining the same voicing.

You are an awesome guitar player, and I probably don’t understand chord voicings on the guitar as much as you. I just like to fool around on one, and I really can’t play much.

But piano players do understand chord voicing stuff, too, since we have to change up our inversions to get the sound we want, too. True, the key doesn’t always have anything to do with it, but we can’t just play straight root positions all the time or it sounds lame.

We also have to listen to how the progression of the chords up (or down) the piano fits with the melody of a song, so we piano players have to make choices about voicings the same way a guitar player does.

I cannot make an English speaker sing in English and and Spanish speaker sing in Spanish. We are bilingual and people like to sing each other languages even if the pronunciation is not good. But I yearn for the time we can flow in worship and I truly believe is because we don’t have a leader with enough knowledge to help us out. I don’t play an instrument but I am one of the singers, do you think I can take the leading even though I don’t know anything about music?

Miguel,
Yes, one of my struggles with memorization is when elements of the song (like the language it’s sung in!) change. I’ve had some of these songs memorized before but now we’re doing it differently. Changing things up once in a while is good and it’s worth the extra effort to keep things fresh.

Jonathon,
Totally agree - Capos are all about alternate voices and coming up with the best guitar key for a song regardless of how easy it is. Especially with two guitars and two keyboards it important to add something different to the mix and not simply muddy it up.

Re: capos. When I first started playing the guitar, I thought of a capo simply as something that helped me play in difficult keys, or to transpose a song. And I admit, I still use my capo for those reasons. However, my favorite way to use a capo these days is for alternate voicing. I think I’ve seen you discuss that on this blog at times.

This is something that a piano player doesn’t get, because transposing on a piano won’t change the sound of the chords. But just try playing “God of Wonders” on the guitar in the key of A with no capo and you will hear the difference. Are the chords easy enough to play? Sure. Does it sound like “God of Wonders”? No way. Capo on 2 and play in the key of G, and now you’ve got “God of Wonders”.

So, used properly, a capo doesn’t have to be a “crutch”, but it can actually widen the artistic palette of a worship guitar player.