As many of you have read in my recent article, Tips from a Mediocre Guitarist, I have recently switched from being primarily an acoustic player to nearly all lead electric guitar. I have always loved playing electric guitar but basically was only good at playing rhythm stuff with a little overdrive and maybe some ambient reverb delay stuff. So when I decided to take the leap I was a bit fearful if I would be able to quickly and painlessly switch over without really distracting someone in worship. That is why I am so excited to write about one of the best resources out there for worship guitarists.
I was contacted nearly two years ago by Shalon Palmer from WorshipOnline.com about possibly running some ads on our site. After chatting with Shalon we discussed some options and he showed me around his site. I was very impressed with his vision and the idea behind the site. At that time he did not have a ton of songs up so I put it in the back of my mind for later.
Fast forward 2 years later and I am fumbling my way around on YouTube trying to find guitar parts to learn. The first week I played lead I think I spent 8 hours learning the parts for 4 songs. Part of that was my in-experience but also trying to find reputable, accurate tutorials and instruction. The second week it finally clicked. Duh you have a monthly membership to WorshipOnline.com. You should log in and check it out. I did and immediately was blown away at how much the site and song database had grown. I found all 5 songs we were playing that week and the way the team at Worship Online sets up their tutorials it was very easy to pull apart the different guitar parts and pick out which parts I needed to learn.
That week I only spent 4 hours learning parts for those 5 songs and they were actually a little harder than the previous week. I give most of the credit to WorshipOnline.com. Since then I have played lead around 5 times and each time I go to WorshipOnline.com first. We played a total of 25 different songs during those Sunday’s I played and every song tutorial was available on WorshipOnline.com.
As many of you probably did, we played “Resurrecting” by Elevation Worship on Easter Sunday. I went to Elevation Worship’s YouTube channel and found Lance Gatch’s tutorial on the lead parts for the song and figured that would be the most accurate. Well it was accurate but the way they play it has to be played by two guitarists. The main signature lick for the Chorus is played by guitarist #2 and it has to be capo’d. The main lead riff for the bridge is played by guitarist #1 and is not capo’d. After the first rehearsal I realized I needed to play both because I was the only lead player.
With this in mind I went to WorshipOnline.com and both guitar parts were laid out but in a way that one guitarist could combine the two parts and make it work. Not to mention the WorshipOnline.com version sounded much more like the recording than the one Elevation put out. I am not knocking Elevation but this particular tutorial fell short in my book.
Needless to say WorshipOnline.com has been a huge time savor and has saved me a ton of stress in this switch to lead electric guitar. I cannot recommend it enough. It is the perfect tool to help get your guitarists, keyboards and bass on the same page and really pushes musicians to learn their parts. The tabs and chord charts are also built into the site making this a one stop spot for all of your song learning needs. Do yourself a favor, and signup for a free 14 day trial membership and see for yourself if it could be a good fit for you and your team!
If you do decide to signup they have pricing packages for every team size and budget level from one person to teams of up to 35 people. See image below: