Some thoughts on becoming a CCM

PunkStar · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:47 am Post subject: Some thoughts on becoming a CCM

Here is a tutorial just for you Rose. I'll admit I'm not a contempory Christian musician. But I'm happy to share a few observations and a little advice.

Your first bit of homework my new student is to buy and listen to as much music as possible. I personally recommend finding a guitar hero and getting addicted, it helps no end with your playing as long as you don't let yourself be overwhelmed by it. So go find some new music, listen to it and love it. I only listen to secular artists, and they all have awesome guitar players. Here are a few of my personal favourites and suggestions to improve your guitar playing.

Steve Vai
Joe Satriani
Tommy Emmanuel
Audioslave
John Mayer
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Steve Morse
Alex Lloyd
The Living End (you might have a little trouble with these last two, I'm not sure how much Aussie music makes it to America)

Learn to read guitar tab (tabulature). It is freely available on the internet because it is in the perfect format for it to be displayed on any computer, so learn to read it.

You mentioned you wanted to sing as well as play guitar. First stop on your road to praising the Lord is to go get some vocal lessons. Good singing is more than just opening your mouth and hoping it all works out. Doing good vocals is actually a very calculated process. With good vocal training, you'll learn proper technique. That will let you hit the right notes so you sound right with your guitar. It will also prevent you from doing damage to your vocal chords. But it will also help in your songwriting because you will learn where you vocal limits are and you will write for that. For example, I have a bass voice, so I shouldn't write vocal parts that reach the soprano range. So I would first advise that if you really want to sing, then the best thing you can do for yourself is to get some vocal lessons with a good teacher. Unfortunately, I can't offer any advice on good vocal technique. My knowledge of vocals extends to about a year of choir at school. So I can't help much there. Laughing

This brings us to the good part, the guitar playing. If you want to write your own music, I'd recommend that you learn music theory. That can then be applied to any instrument you might pick up. As a vocalist/guitarist, you'll probably end up as a rhythm guitarist. So I'd learn to play that style. Rhythm guitar mostly consists of playing chords in various ways (including fingerpicking). So the next thing I'd recommend learning is chords. Learn where they are on the fretboard, and learn how to build them manually. So then you can create all sorts of weird sounds if the song justifies it. At the very least learn the following chord types:

Major
Minor
Dominant 7th (or 7)

then start learning these:

Suspended 2nd and Suspended 4
Augmented
Dimished
Major 7th
Minor 7th

There are a ton of other chords too, but these are the most common. If I'm missing any guys, let me know.

Next thing to learn is to transcribe music by ear. It takes a lot of practice, but it's easily enough done. Here in Australian music classes at school, this is heavily tested, so it's important. Learn intervals to help with this, and learn to hear the type of chord you are hearing. If you want to test your skills, I'd recommend buying Audioslave's album "Out of Exile", that has some good parts to transcribe by ear. Sure it's secular music, but it's good stuff. That Tom Morello is a fantastic guitar player. Knowing your music theory will help. So transcription is the next job.

Study songwriting. Look at how your favourite songs are constructed. Look at structure, rhyming patterns, and also the way the music fits together. This is a great way to start writing songs.

Something that bothers me about the state of Christian music today (especially here in Australia) is that I feel we may be losing the correct emphasis of Christian music. It is true that there is no such thing as Christian "music". There is no one style which is right or wrong. Remember that the same 12 notes that Cradle of Filth use to create a death metal song are the exact same notes that Issac Watts used to write is 600 or so hymns he wrote (western music only uses 12 notes). What matters in Christian music are the lyrics. Those lyrics should always be performed to praise God and should be for his benefit alone. I'm personally not a huge fan of the commercialisation of Christian music that we have today because I fear it turns praising God into a job rather than an act of worship. My point is that if you really want to be a Christian Contempory Music, be aware of this point make sure the music you write
is always focused on God and bringing glory to Him. You can't let yourself get to a point where you won't sing a song because you just don't "feel" for it anymore. Because then the music has become about you, not God. So my warning is always to stay focused on God.

There you go, those tips should give you a good outline of some things to work on if you want to be a CCM. Good luck and keep praising the Lord.

Godslittlerosebud

Herb · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:48 pm Post subject:

Welcome home, Mick! You sure stored up a lot to say while you were gone! Wink

PunkStar · Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:00 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I'm getting very opinionated in my old age. Laughing

Just an add on to something I said in the first post. While there is no such thing as Christian music on the basis of the notes used. Perhaps my thinking is being too limited. Something else important to consider is the feel of the music. To this end, I find it hard to accept Christian heavy metal. Heavy metal is designed to be an angry and almost violent style which the music is meant to reflect. I don't see how that is correct in music designed to praise the Lord. So perhaps heavy metal is not appropriate as a style of Christian music.

Godslittlerosebud · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 5:21 am Post subject:

ACfixer · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:49 am Post subject:

I'm not a metal head either and I pretty much share Punk's view, except that I have known of some hardcore bands that were definately Christian (in lyric anyway). The one in particular I know of, well the guys kinda outgrew it and now a couple of them serve on the praise team. God has a way of blessing even "ugly" music. Smile

guitarnut37 · Puppy Joined: 23 Feb 2002 Posts: 223

Sorry, guys, I don't quite agree with the take on Christian heavy metal. I think that the sound can be very instrumental in aggressive music, such as warfare, etc. We do a lot of warfare praise in our church, some of which is very heavy metal with heavy drums and detuned guitars. In fact, the Easter program that I produced for the church had one extremely hard hitting song dealing with Jesus descending into hell to retrieve the keys of death and the grave.

One hard Christian band I really like is Day of Fire. Awesome group with an even more awesome testimony.

www.dayoffire.com

Godslittlerosebud · Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:09 pm Post subject: