[Joe F]

Originally Posted by Tony

Fair enough, gentlemen. I suppose you have a vocal "instrument" providing the melody. My experience lately has been that the WL likes to depart from the melody without someone else providing it, and that leave us in the pews at a loss to figure out what to sing.

Indeed. I mentioned this in my earlier post. I have been in churches where the leader appears to have the impression that folks are there to watch some kind of performance while they do some vocal improvisation and wandering off the melody that no one else knows. Due to my frustration with this, no matter what else may be going on instrumentally or with the background vocals, I sing the melody, only the melody, and nothing but the melody....so help me God!

[gtrdave]

Originally Posted by Tony

Fair enough, gentlemen. I suppose you have a vocal "instrument" providing the melody. My experience lately has been that the WL likes to depart from the melody without someone else providing it, and that leave us in the pews at a loss to figure out what to sing.

Yes, I've experienced that.
I purposefully will arrange our songs so that the song melody is known.
For example, if we're doing a song for the first few times, we'll always refrain from singing harmony in order for the congregation to know what to follow.
Or we'll sing the melody during the verses and harmony only during the choruses and maybe melody only on the first chorus.
I always find ways to 'teach' the congregation the song without having to literally teach them apart from the song as I've seen some leaders do.

[1/2-Fast Player]

On occasion, I've created chord charts using regular music staff paper. I'll mark off the measures, put in the repeats, rests, 2nd endings, codas, crescendos, etc., write in the lyrics under the staff, and then just put the chord names at the appropriate spots in the measures. This also lets me write in a few notes where helpful to indicate a lead or riff.

If you take the time to do that (and yes, it's a hassle), you can get the best of both worlds.

[gtrdave]

Originally Posted by 1/2-Fast Player

On occasion, I've created chord charts using regular music staff paper. I'll mark off the measures, put in the repeats, rests, 2nd endings, codas, crescendos, etc., write in the lyrics under the staff, and then just put the chord names at the appropriate spots in the measures. This also lets me write in a few notes where helpful to indicate a lead or riff.

If you take the time to do that (and yes, it's a hassle), you can get the best of both worlds.

I don't use staff paper...just a basic Word doc...but I have been creating chord charts w/ measure lines, repeats and other lead-sheet-like guides that give more info than the average guitar chart.
At one of the worship conferences they were referred to as "chord charts v2.0".
I can usually fit a song on 1 page, 2 at most.
That's the model of what we'll be migrating to.

[thesteve]

Originally Posted by gtrdave

I can usually fit a song on 1 page, 2 at most.
That's the model of what we'll be migrating to.

IMO, if you can't fit it on 2 pages, you're probably doing it wrong. I hated when my WL would hand me an 8 page SATB chart.

[ibanez_dude]

Originally Posted by thesteve

IMO, if you can't fit it on 2 pages, you're probably doing it wrong. I hated when my WL would hand me an 8 page SATB chart.

AGREED! That is my hugest pet peeve. I have 600+ song worship binder, and every one single one fits on ONE page with at least size 15 font. Some songs do have a lot of words, but a combination playing with margins, filling lyrics to the width of the page, occasionally leaving out second verse chords, and other formatting tricks will leave you with a single page chord sheet. I cannot stand two page sheets. And while seeing the melody is helpful in some cases, I don't think it's worth it. If you need the lead sheet to see where the chord changes are in relation to the lyrics, I'm gonna say you don't know the song well enough. End of story. And most/all of ccm worship is simple enough that you shouldn't need to see measures and repeats to know the arrangements. Verse prechorus chorus verse prechorus chorus chorus bridge chorus chorus. Seriously...

[jeepnstein]

I like lead sheets. Then again I'm the only one on the team who can read music. They help me with lots of little things the chord charts don't show. Most of the time our leader won't print them and I'm OK with that, too.

[Adam+]

As the worship leader I only deviate from the melody line very rarely and only on a line or two of a song.

We use chord charts and our keyboardists can do the melody line if needed.

We are going to be raising the bar as well this year and I expect to lose a few people but I'm okay with that.