David Zimmer: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast, my name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: Thank you for joining us, thank you for tuning in.
BK: Yes, we are so happy you’re here and we’re happy to be here.
DZ: Yes.
BK: We are going to spend this episode talking about vocal arranging for Sunday mornings.
DZ: Great.
BK: Well, people assume that when we’re told that Christians should sing, that God’s people should sing, that’s all you need to know.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Actually there’s a lot more that’s involved. [laughter] And we’ve been getting questions about this, so David’s gonna read one. If you have a question, which we really appreciate it when people send in questions.
DZ: Yes, we do.
BK: You can send it to Sound Plus Doctrine. Plus is spelled out P-L-U-S, SoundPlusDoctrine@sovereigngrace.com.
DZ: Yep.
BK: So send us your questions. But here’s one we got recently.
DZ: Yeah. They said, “there’s a lot I could say about our unique situation that the team I’m currently leading is convinced that we need to sing vocal parts on Sunday morning. I think singing vocal parts is too complicated for where our team’s skill currently is.”
BK: And we leave the names out on these questions.
DZ: Yes.
BK: So you don’t have to think, oh, my leader sent this song just to question him.
DZ: Oh no. Oh no let me redo my question. [laughter]
BK: Yeah.
DZ: “I’ve asked them about having everyone just sing melody. They didn’t like that, but they didn’t have a good answer. [laughter] I’m outside of my element when it comes to understanding arranging vocals, can you all help me and point me to a resource that will give me some guidance? Thank you.”
BK: Well, rather than point you to a resource that will give you guidance.
DZ: We could take a shot at it.
[laughter]
BK: We’re gonna seek to be that resource.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: As I was thinking about talking about this topic, I did a little research on music history, ’cause I went to college in the ’70s and not all of it has stayed with me. [laughter] But it confirmed what I was thinking and that is that singing in the church has gone through these seasons of singing unison and then a push for creativity. And then usually the Pope back in the first thousand years saying, “Okay. We’re getting too creative.”
DZ: No, yeah.
BK: Let’s pull it back. [laughter] And you know, you had unison like a growing chant for a while and then it moved into more polyphonic, where you have other voices. And there’s always been this tension in the church for really hundreds and hundreds of years between what’s complicated? And what’s too complicated? And what should be sung? So the Reformation comes along, at least in western church music, and there’s this real emphasis on congregational participation and simplicity. So a real push towards melody, just singing the melody. And then you have a movement, probably in the 19th century, the 1800s where hymnals were starting to be developed where you have parts at your SATB. My good friend, Matt Merker, who’s gonna be speaking at the WorshipGod Conference, we have a little conversation about, should your church try to sing in parts?
DZ: Great.
BK: And Matt thinks they should. And I think, oh, I’m not sure they should. [laughter] I mean, it’s fine if they do, it’s great if they do, and some churches have that tradition. It’s beautiful, it’s stirring, it’s a different sound, but it’s not necessarily biblical. So, it’s not a command.
DZ: Yeah right.
BK: So I wanted to just make one point from Scripture before we get into the specific question, should they just sing melody? Should they sing parts? What’s the place of parts? And I’m thinking here, because you can organize, you can structure this in so many different ways.
DZ: Right.
BK: If you have a choir, obviously you’re probably gonna sing in parts. A lot of churches and I think ones that would listen to this podcast, would be composed of a few vocalists backed up by a band with drum space or maybe percussion, just something simple, but a few vocalists. So that’s really who we’re speaking to. How should those vocalists think of their parts?
DZ: Right.
BK: So first, I did a quick word search for harmony in the Bible and it appears in the English standard version three times, none of them have to do with music.
DZ: Right.
BK: They all have to do with relationships.
DZ: Yeah. Right.
BK: You know, live in harmony with one another.
DZ: Yes.
BK: I just could do that very quickly here. Yeah. That’s Romans 12:16, Romans 15:5, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another.” Colossians 3:14, “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” So there’s [laughter] no references to harmony per se in the Bible. But when you do a search for melody, oh, that’s all over the place. Psalm 27:6, “My head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me. I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shots of joy, I will sing and make melody to the Lord.” Psalm 33:2, “Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of 10 strings.” So you might have harmony on your harp or piano or guitar or whatever, but you’re singing the melody. Psalm 57, this is also Psalm 108. “My heart is steadfast, Oh God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody.”
DZ: I love that.
BK: And then we have in Psalm 98:5, “Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody.” So you get the point, the emphasis, at least in Scripture, then you have Ephesians 5, one more, “Singing and making melody to the Lord in your heart.” Yeah, the emphasis is that we’re singing a song. Now, why is that? Why a melody? Why not harmony? Well, I can think of a few reasons why at least our focus should be melody. So getting back to this specific question.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: He’s asking, yeah, he’s asking the question, should everybody sing melody because vocal parts are too complicated? Well, I want us to talk about whether [laughter] it’s not too complicated or not. So what I found is that in a lot of churches where you have multiple vocalists, there’s an assumption, often it’s the ladies, but it could be guys as well, that if you’re singing, you are gonna sing harmony, and I don’t think that’s the wisest thing, because what will happen is… I’ve been on the receiving end of those teams, as bands, and you just have a hard time identifying where the melody is. That’s one thing, and then two, there’s no dynamics to what’s going on. Everything sounds the same.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So you’re not really helping the lyrics by singing harmony all the time. So his question, he’s not asking that question specifically, but I think it’s helpful to pull back and look at, “Okay, how should we think about arranging vocals?”
DZ: Yeah. And like we said earlier, if you are in a context that there was a choir singing tenor, alto, soprano, bass, you would know that melody very well, because all of those would be coming at you at the exact same time, but in a smaller context with just a couple of singers your alto may be louder, is probably louder than your lead, or your tenor is louder than your man. So, I agree with you there.
BK: Why do you say they’re probably louder? [laughter] I am just curious about that.
DZ: Well, I think…
BK: Because alto’s and tenors have an insecurity complex?
DZ: I don’t know. [laughter]
BK: They flatly sing really loud so they can be heard.
DZ: I don’t know, I think… I don’t know. It could be so many different things. How they’re mixed, you know?
BK: Yeah. No, I think it’s true, it’s inferiority complex, not insecurity complex. [laughter] No, I think that’s right. They wanna nail it. And for alto’s can be, sometimes it’s a stronger part of their range, tenor same thing. And then if you don’t have someone good mixing in the front, it just can overwhelm the melody and then it’s just not a helpful combination.
DZ: Yeah. And then you feel lost as a congregation, of, “I haven’t heard this song.”
BK: Yes. Yes. Yes. So as many things, it get’s back to why are we doing what we’re doing? So if the musicians are in front of the congregation to put on a show, or put on a production, well then yeah, sing all the harmony you want as often as you want, because it’s all about the complexity and your skill and your talent level, but that’s not what we’re doing. Our goal, we said this a number of times on the podcast, our goal, biblically speaking, is to inspire and encourage and enable Spirit empowered faith-filled Christ exalting singing in the congregation. We want them to sing. Now, if they don’t know the melody, they’re gonna have a hard time singing.
DZ: Super hard.
BK: So if we’re singing harmonies all the time, that’s gonna make it hard for them to know the melody, because why? Think about who’s in your congregation, you have guest, you have new people who have never been to your church before, maybe they don’t know your songs, maybe they do, but they might not… I can assure you, you have people in your congregation every Sunday who don’t know at least one of the songs you’re singing.
DZ: For sure.
BK: So you have them. Then you have a lot of non-musical people in your congregation who are trying to figure out like, “How does this go and what’s the melody here?” And so that’s another thing. And then you have a lot of people who don’t listen to the playlist you do, or don’t have the albums that you do. I think some churches are built around this mindset that, “Well guys, we just all listen to the same stuff, so everybody knows it.” And in an age where more and more churches don’t use hymnals, they don’t have… And we should do a podcast about that some time.
DZ: We should.
BK: About hymnals versus not using hymnals. The benefits of both. A lot of churches don’t use them, so we learn by ear a lot. So that makes it even more necessary on a Sunday morning to make it clear for the congregation what the melody is to what you’re singing.
DZ: For sure. I think all those things combined create or can create a trepidation in your congregation.
BK: It’s fear, for those who don’t know, trepidation. [laughter] It’s a long word. Trepidation.
DZ: Yeah. And then it turns inward where you’re sort of looking around and, I don’t know so I’m not gonna participate. And that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do in these gatherings.
BK: Yes, yes. You know, people sometimes compare Sunday mornings to going to a concert of their favorite band, and they say, “Everybody’s singing at the top of their voices there.” Of course they are. Everybody knows the song, they are fans of the band.
[laughter]
DZ: Yeah. That’s a good point.
BK: So they are not gonna go to a concert where they don’t know the song.
DZ: Exactly.
BK: I mean, I have been to some where I don’t the songs and then I feel bad ’cause everybody around me singing the song and I don’t know ’em. But that’s how people in our churches feel sometimes. They don’t know the melody, they don’t know the songs. We wanna help them.
DZ: Yes.
BK: So how do we help them? I’m glad you asked. [laughter] Did you ask that question?
DZ: He asked that question.
BK: Oh, He did ask the question.
DZ: How do you help me, how do you help us?
BK: Guidance, okay. So if your team is singing bad harmonies, alright? I mean, I love a vocalist who is very confident in their harmonic abilities, harmonizing abilities, they’ve said, “I’ve sung this, I’ve sung harmonies all my life,” and you hear him and you go, [chuckle] “No one’s ever told you this, you’re not very good at this, [laughter] even though you feel good about it, I am happy that you feel good about it, but my job is not just to conform to your idea of what’s good, of how you sound.” My goal is to serve, my job is to serve the congregation. So, it’s gonna take some leadership, it will take winsome, theologically informed, humble leadership to say to your vocalist, “Hey, let’s think about this more carefully.” I have to do this often when I come in to a situation either for a conference or when I leaded a church, occasionally, Sovereign church or somewhere where I’m working with a band I’ve just never worked with, I may have to say this directly, “Hey, don’t do this, don’t do this.” But if it’s over the long haul, you can help your vocalist understand, “Look, our goal is to serve the congregation, we wanna help them sing, and so we wanna give them a good chance to grasp the melody.”
BK: So what I’ve told our vocalist is, If your song, it goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, don’t even think about singing harmony until the second chorus. So you give them the verse, the chorus and the verse all with melody. So it may be, I didn’t finish my thought, maybe if you’re a person who wants to do harmony, people wanna do harmony, they aren’t doing a good job, you may have to just say that, but you could start by saying, “Hey, let’s not jump into harmony so soon, let’s give our church the melody on every song. Let’s start with melody, keep it going until we’re confident they’ve heard it, and now we can add some harmonies.” It’s not imperative that we sing harmony as we’ve talked about, and then once you get to the chorus, it’s not even imperative that you sing harmony the whole time. So I think one of things that vocalist don’t realize is that unison can be stronger and more impacting when it comes out of harmony, than just doing all harmony all the way to the end, that’s a subjective thing. Well, I know at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, our vocalists have become more accustomed to thinking, “I wanna get to that last line. We’re gonna do unison.” So take a song like, “Oh Lord, My Rock, My Redeemer,” Which doesn’t have a chorus, but it has…
[vocalization]
DZ: B-section. Yeah.
BK: Yes, the B-section, “May all my days bring glory to Your name,” yeah. So that last line, just bring it down to unison, oh, it’s so sweet, and it helps bring those words kinda into prominence just by going to unison. So then if you do another chorus after that, second chorus, yeah, do harmony then too. But just think about the first verse, chorus, verse chorus being… I’m sorry, verse, chorus, verse being melody, that will really serve your congregation.
DZ: And we do the same thing with bridge, if you’re doing a bridge melody, we’ll sing a bridge melody, and if you repeat it three times or two times, you can build off of that. It’s really effective.
BK: Yeah. Vocals should be used to draw attention to the lyrics, and the way we do that is by varying them. So we might have a girl on the team sing the first verse of the song. Now, I won’t ask them and she’ll sing melody through the whole song, but I’m not saying, “Okay, you lead the song, we’re all behind you.” I’m just saying, “No, you sing the first verse, ’cause we wanna hear that different sound, it’s just gonna be different.” I might sing the first verse to a song, but I’m mostly saying to our vocalist, “Look, if I’m singing, you should be singing.” ‘Cause we’re a congregation, we’re not trying to show something to people, you know, there are just different ways we can use the vocals, arrange the vocals, so that at a certain moment a lyric becomes more impacting. And that’s what we’re trying to do. But that is for the purpose of everybody joining in, joining their voices in together, so there’s a variety that we can think about that I think we can not give attention to, not pay attention to because, well, everybody say, people, we’re just gonna sing. No, you can have people not sing for a while for a first verse, or maybe with the start of a bridge, but generally, I’m asking our people who are on mic to sing the melody together.
DZ: Yeah. It’s a very obvious but easily missed point that you just said, we sing for the lyrics to embed deep within us.
BK: Yes, yes. Well, that’s enabled the word of Christ to dwell on you richly.
DZ: Yes, we don’t sing to be heard. Even as a congregation, I think sometimes we can talk about that a lot too, man, we’re just singing so loud and we don’t wanna just sing to hear our voices, we’re singing for a purpose. And say, as your vocalist too, you’re not singing to sound beautiful, though you want to, you’re singing for the lyrics to be impacting and impactful to us while we’re singing.
BK: Well, that’s one of the differences I will see sometimes in someone who’s been trained chorally or classically, and someone who hasn’t. I was just at a conference recently where I could tell the vocalist had been trained in a choir. Do you know why? Because she pronounced every consonant perfectly, and it was a little odd to me, [laughter] but in her mind, it made it easier for people to understand what she was singing. So I said, “Listen, we don’t talk like that. We can sing just normally.” And traditional singers can focus on your certain sound and projection, and that can be helpful, but the question is, is that communicating what you think it’s communicating, or are you unintentionally drawing attention to yourself? And people, I think most of the times we would not even be thinking that, would not be thinking that, but it can happen where we make sure that the end of all our phrases continues to the very end of the note.
DZ: Yes.
BK: You know, and everybody else is kind of dropping off, but you’re still in there, still in there because you’ve been taught to sing to the end of the note. If it’s a half note, you want to hold it out, you know, it’s not doing what you think it’s doing.
DZ: Right.
BK: And it’s unintentionally drawing attention to you.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So these can be hard conversations.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And we’re laughing here, but I can imagine someone listening going, I can’t have that conversation with vocalist.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: But you need to.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And it’s not to put somebody down.
DZ: For sure.
BK: It’s not to make someone feel less than, it’s what serves our congregation.
DZ: Yes.
BK: And so let’s learn how to work together in this, and it does help to have other people give thoughts on, how does this work, did to ask people, how does my vocal contribute? Is it contributing? When you get down to the actual parts, there, you need some musical theory knowhow, you need some musical skill. So, I’m a trained musician, so I know theory, I was in an a capella group or at least we did a capella music for a long time. And I love vocal parts, but most bands don’t have someone like that. But they might have someone who maybe who did choir or has some sense for what vocal parts should be, let them take it. Let them kind of assign the vocal parts. A lot of times I’ll encourage vocal issue, an alto and a tenor to sing what’s natural to them, and then just see if we need to change anything. The problem comes when like the alto is stepping on the tenor part or the tenor is stepping on the alto part.
DZ: Right.
BK: And then you’re just kinda, yeah, it’s kind of going back and forth. It’s not the end of the world if that happens, but if you’re gonna do parts, if you’re gonna be committed to ’em, I would say, maybe have the vocalists come in early or have a separate rehearsal.
DZ: Totally.
BK: You know, where they can figure out, okay, here’s what we should do.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But bottom line, don’t make someone so conscious of getting the right part. That’s what they’re thinking about when they’re singing with the congregation.
DZ: Right.
BK: Because when we’re singing with the congregation, what we wanna be thinking about is the truths that we’re singing.
DZ: Yeah. Yeah.
BK: So, I mean, that’s a lot, but I think that’s the way I approach it.
DZ: What I think is really helpful for me on Sunday is when we’re going through things, is you’re at a piano so you’re playing out the parts.
BK: Yes. Yes.
DZ: So if your pianist can in a separate rehearsal work through those.
BK: That’s even better.
DZ: That makes it so helpful as a vocalist, as a reference point.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: Instead of just you trying to sing the part and then no one singing the melody, and it’s hard to find that.
BK: I love that.
DZ: So that’s one practical thing that’s been helpful that you do for us on Sundays. And then I just wanted to add one more thing, Bob. I just think like, if any church should have the most incredible vocal arranging, it’s the guy who was in GLAD’s church.
[laughter]
BK: People saying, GLAD, what’s GLAD? Look ‘em up on YouTube.
DZ: If you haven’t listened to GLAD, that is so much, I mean, an a capella arranging.
BK: Oh, that is pretty funny.
DZ: So I think that’s what I so appreciate, that I serve with you on Sundays, almost every week, and it’s never a push for, we have to do this.
BK: It used to be, I used to be like that. [laughter] I used to wanna have the vocal parts, just right, make sure everybody… And I’ll still give attention to that.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I’ve just realized that’s not what affects people. A lot of times it’s more for me. I just want the parts to be right. But then I’ll say to the vocalist, look, if you don’t get it, it’s fine.
DZ: Yes.
BK: It’s fine.
DZ: It doesn’t become a pressure cooker on a Sunday morning.
BK: No, it should never be that. Where, again, those who look to him are radiant. Those who look to him are radiant, not to those who look to their vocal part are radiant. They might become proud because they got it. They might become discouraged because they didn’t get it.
DZ: Right.
BK: Those who look to him are radiant. So we can, you know, as Lucy in the peanuts, comic strip, who would say, if you’re gonna be wrong, be wrong at the top of your voice. [laughter] So I will encourage our vocalists when they’re working out parts to work them out on mic, they’ll be off mic and that’ll be just taking it really quiet. And you can barely hear them. I can’t hear what you’re doing.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Sing on the mic. Let’s be wrong and loud.
DZ: Yes.
BK: And then we’ll figure out what it’s supposed to be. But yeah, it’s funny that you brought that reference up. It’s just what’s important. It’s what matters. I love singing with great vocalists. I love singing with vocalists who know what their parts are.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: And most of all, and we haven’t mentioned this, listening is crucial.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So if you want to be a good vocalist and you wanna contribute to your team, set your monitor to mix, or listen to others so that you’re more aware of what they’re doing than what you’re doing. It’ll make you sing better, sing more in tune, sing more in unison, sing more, you know, your ensemble will be better. A lot of times vocalists just crank themselves up. I can’t hear myself. I can’t hear myself.
DZ: Yes.
BK: And that’s all they hear. So they have no idea how they’re sounding with the other vocalists.
DZ: Right.
BK: Now, it’s really great when vocalists sing like together, same inflections or same cutoffs and those kinds of things. But you can’t do that unless you’re hearing the other vocalists in your mix, or however you hear the vocalist. So that’s really important too.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: So bottom line, when he asks about everybody singing melody, it is not wrong for a band to sing melody the entire time, that there’s nothing unbiblical about that, it can be enthusiastic, it can be God glorifying, Christ exalting, edifying, Can harmony contribute to those things? Yes. I would just use it in the ways we’ve described sparingly at the right moments, make sure people know what they’re doing. And it could really strengthen the church, help the church. But you don’t wanna make that the end all, you know, singing harmony.
DZ: Thank you, Bob. Thank you.
BK: Well, thank you.
DZ: And thank you for submitting this question.
BK: Yeah.
DZ: And everyone else for tuning in, thank you so much.
BK: We’re glad that you could join us, and whatever you do on Sunday morning, sing with all your heart, whether you have the melody or the harmony, sing with all your heart, because Jesus is worthy.
DZ: Mm-hmm.
