Feel like your strumming has plateaued? Discover a variety of tools you can use to add texture to your guitar playing as you accompany vocals in worship or songwriting, including: up accents, palm muting, shuffling, fingerstyle and more.

If you’ve got more than one rhythm guitar player on your team; if you want to more intentionally leverage your capo to gain full access to any key; if you want to enhance your fretboard knowledge for chords, scales, and more, this workshop will empower you on all fronts.

Have you every had to lead solo from guitar on a Sunday, either because you didn’t have enough volunteers, or your team bailed at the last minute? Come discover some insider tips for making your guitar more versatile and sound fuller as a solo accompanying instrument (without buying more gear!).

There is nothing like the punchy sound of a bass guitar and kick drum laying down a powerful groove for the rest of the band to play over. In this breakout session, Cory Knowland is going to discuss and demonstrate how the bass works into the worship band environment. He’ll show some techniques, demonstrate different tones, rhythms, licks and patterns, and talk about developing critical listening skills. If you're a bassist with an interest in improving your contribution to the team, come hang out for this session. And bring your bass!

Being on stage leading worship is a big responsibility. Knowing our parts and having the skill and technique to play them is important, but leading with our hearts is even more crucial. What are some things we can do to master our instrument in a way that enables us to open up and worship more freely without having to focus as much on playing the music?

Drums are the foundation for the band and lead the atmosphere in worship. Behind the kit you’re actually setting the tone for the congregation and leading dynamically through your instrument. So often, new worship drummers play with too much complexity and lack dynamics. How can we simplify our parts to focus more on timing, consistency and dynamic playing to set the foundation for everyone?

In many of today’s more contemporary worship music expressions, the acoustic and electric guitar work together closely and sonically, but in very intentional ways. Because of the similar sonic complexities, they can get in the way of each other and create more noise than music. Listening to how these parts interact, developing some critical listening disciplines, and creating a plan to play together is essential to a successful musical experience. Cory and Chris will talk about and demonstrate how to meld these two powerful musical instruments into an amazing foundation within each other.

In many of today’s more contemporary worship music expressions the foundation and the groove are established with the drummer and bassist. If they play well together and in time, you have the basics to a really good sounding piece of music. If the drums and bass are off, either with each other or with tempo in general, the results can be very distracting. Listening to how these parts interact, developing some critical listening disciplines, and creating a plan to play together is essential to a successful musical experience. Cory and Joshua will talk about and demonstrate how to meld these two powerful musical instruments into an amazing foundation within each other.

Aaron Doerr and Ausdin Lemmons show how to use technique, tone, and musical cooperation to maximize the strengths of these complementary instruments without stepping on each other's toes. This is a hands-on class with opportunities to learn while playing!

Going over lead guitar technique, approach and skills to implement and develop when playing Electric 1.

Going over rhythm guitar technique, approach and skills to implement and develop when playing Electric 2.

Overwhelmed? Let’s get back to some fundamentals in playing keys for worship. No bells and whistles, just good foundational thoughts on keys, chords, playing with the whole band, determining how much and how little to play, and more.

Need some creative ways to treat your worship songs? What do you do when the music stops? When things change in the service? When the pastor steps up to pray and tells you to 'keep playing'? When the worship leader decides to sing a different song not on the list? When they want to do a song in a hard key? Dr. Tim gives you some ideas to help you flow in these more difficult moments in worship.

Whether it's in a song or a time of prayer, using different chord voicings that aren't typical triads can have a powerful impact on the emotional connection our church has. Learn how to have a bigger impact with fewer notes. We may also have time for some fun chord substitutions as well!