71. Behind the scenes with Worship Guitarists

Unlocking Worship Guitar Mastery: Insights From Leading Artists

Join host Joe Miller in a must-watch episode of Titans of Transition as he dives into the world of worship guitar with some of his favorite worship guitar artists. This insightful discussion covers career transitions, discovering and using personal gifts, and achieving fulfillment in one's career and life.  In this special episode focused on worship music Joe assembled a panel of some of his favorite seasoned guitarists who share their journeys, techniques, gear recommendations, and tips for playing in worship settings. Learn how to balance gear and creativity while maintaining a heart of worship. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced musician, this episode offers practical advice on mastering your craft and enhancing your worship sound.

The interview panel:
Justin Chan: @AllAboutWorshipGuitar
Matthew Dale: @mathew_dale
Jason Houtsma: @worshipartistry
Charl Coetzee: @WorshipGuitarSkills
Sam Wittek: @SamWittek
Tyler Miller: @tylermillerguitar

Transcript

Joe Miller: 0:00

Hey, welcome everyone to Titans of Transition. This is a little special episode for me. usually I interview folks, who have gone through, career transitions and they're down the road further than many of us and have lessons learned to share about how to discover your. your gifts and make sure you put them into the world to share them with everyone else. I believe that fulfillment really comes from, discovering your gifts and using them to guide you into career choices and life choices. I think a lot of people get frustrated when they go against the grain or they listen to other voices that they have heard growing up. Maybe it's parents who thought they should be a lawyer or a doctor and maybe they have some aptitude and skill for those things. and they go down their career path for many years and, reach a point where they're very unfulfilled. And so I, I've met up with these people as I've led IT organizations, believe it or not, and, coach people to step out of that career. I've also done coaching. And so this is a very common thread. With all that being said, Worship ministry, being a worship guitarist has been a passion of mine on the side. And so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have this live stream is because all these folks that are on the stream right now, I follow online, and they help me prepare for, serving on a worship team in my church, and, I wanted to share that out with everyone. I want to have a little bit of conversation with each of you about how you landed on what you're doing, what it is you're doing, and then we'll get into the nuts and bolts of advice you give to those who follow you, to those who buy your courses, or what you have to offer as well. So with that being said, I would like to have, let's see, who am I going to pick on? I think I am going to pick on Jason.

Jason Houstma: 2:08

All right. That means I'm your favorite, right?

Joe Miller: 2:11

you are, you were the early bird that caught the worm.

Jason Houstma: 2:16

It's because I was trying to set up my, make sure everything worked. That was the main reason.

Joe Miller: 2:19

Tell, tell us where you're coming in from, of course. And then go through what you're currently doing, how you arrived there quickly and what you offer. Sure.

Jason Houstma: 2:28

My name is Jason Houtsma. I founded worshipartistry. com about, back in 2011, with the intention of just equipping at the beginning, equipping guitarists to be able to just play with passion and confidence and to lead that way in church. And, I had actually just quit music full time. when I, when the kind of conversation started, I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'd been in bands, I was, I had, led worship a long time and, but this, ended up having a conversation that just sparked this dream to, at the time there was very little online. Like you had YouTube and it was like me and Brian Wall. If Brian Wall from Worship Tutorials, we each had 200 views on YouTube. And, and so I leaned more into the arrangement and coaching. I taught, I've taught private lessons for years and so it was a real natural move for me to just lean more into the actual online teaching and arranging and just trying to help guitarists if there's a single guitarist for a church, which is my experience, to be able to take that, to be able to prepare every Sunday and understand a song. And so we do tutorials that lean in, lean into that and really focus on everything from like total beginners all the way to I sometimes use my own website to learn songs. So we go more for the experts as well. So it's all that, just trying to equip the church. Oh, man, we lost Joe.

Joe Miller: 3:44

Oh, sorry about that guys.

Jason Houstma: 3:46

There he is. He's back.

Joe Miller: 3:47

I was so bored. I was so bored. And I'm supposed to be an IT person. All right, folks. Sorry about that. First time you hit this platform. Go ahead. I will not push any more buttons for a while. You re I'm good. Go. Go to the next. Did you finish without me? I did. Okay. So the next person will be Matthew.

Matthew Dale: 4:07

Oh, boy. if, if Jason was the, early bird that got the worm, I guess I'm the second mouse that gets the cheese. It's a little joke. my name is Matthew Dale. I am here to help you play better sound great, and understand more, what I do in on my YouTube channel and in my online business. my website is matthew dale.com. Matthew. And, what I really try to do is connect a guitar player together where, music theory, knowledge, guitar, and fretboard knowledge and gear all come into one to basically create or help you become a very dangerous guitar player, that is well equipped for all musical situations, including worship, worship guitar. I've been a worship guitar player for, More years than I can count at this point, trying to think back, to all of it. But, it seems like I've always, played guitar in church and worship guitar and worship modern worship guitar styles or modern worship styles. Like I said, I should say, is really one of nuance and it is really tricky for, let's say classical players or jazz players or rock players or blues players to just come in and, set up shop and jump in with a worship guitar, worship band and play guitar because it's such a different language and in my own teaching philosophy, I really to break down all of that individual stuff and really get at the nitty gritty to see what makes a music style sound like a music style, what makes this guitar part sound like that styles guitar part and, and so on and so forth. I'm a nerd.

Charl Coetzee: 5:41

Hey guys. Yeah. It's great to be with everyone tonight. My voice sounds a bit funny, so I don't normally sound like this. You probably know that from the video from Memphis Bay, South Africa, and a random site called worshipguitarskills. com. And our main focus is to help guitarists develop that specific skillset that they need. in order to play worship with confidence and lead their congregations well. And not just to be great guitarists, but great musicians and ultimately great worshipers because I think that's what we created to do. And it makes sense when we intake those awesome moments of worship. So yeah, we. It was really awesome for us to use our skills and abilities, the things that we love about guitar and gear and all those kind of things to, for God's kingdom and for his glory. So that's really an awesome honor and a privilege. It's gone past 10, 10 past 11, so it's 11 PM.

Justin Chan: 6:42

Okay. Hi. Hi guys. I'm Justin. I am Justin Chan. I am from Singapore. It's five o'clock in the morning. And, thank you, Joe, for having me here. And, I want to joke that I'm the earliest of the lot because I came in 24 hours earlier thinking it was the previous day's date. Oh,

Matthew Dale: 7:00

yes.

Justin Chan: 7:02

yeah, so that's the glory of, dealing with multiple time zones. thank you, Joe, for coordinating all this. Yeah, so you guys are seeing my new house. So this is the, living room. I don't have a workstation set up yet. I don't have any internet. if my current workstation is in a basement with no Wi Fi coverage, so I gotta be out here where my phone is, hot spotting. hopefully, The video quality and audio quality is okay.

Matthew Dale: 7:26

Yeah.

Justin Chan: 7:29

Yeah, I am, as I mentioned before, I'm from Singapore. It's a, it's pretty far away. It's a little bit dot in, just at the bottom of the Malaysian. Malaysia and Indonesia. So you imagine Malaysia is up here and Indonesia is down there. We are like this one. tiny dot. That's, that's in between the two of them. And I am, I used to be a chemical engineer. I have a degree in chemical engineering. I used to work, I used to work in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant. So that was, that was fun. it was like full day shifts. So you start at 8am 8pm or conversely, if you do night shift, it's 8pm to 8am. And those are the days where. It was good money, I'm not gonna lie, it was good money, but I, it felt, there was a sense of this, unease in me. Because years prior to that, I had served at Singapore U for Christ, after finishing school. in Singapore, there's this, there's this phase, where if you finish school, and before you start uni, or before you start work, there's a little bit of, downtime, before you, before life carries on. most people take a part time job. Most people take a six month vacation and go see the world or something. I decided to, I felt a call to go into Singapore Youth for Christ, which has a program. It's like a six month long internship. And in that internship, I was at, I was in the performing arts ministry in Singapore Youth for Christ. And during that time, I felt this call to, to, merge my musical interests with full time ministry. And that was when I first felt the seeds of the call. That call has evolved very much, from a simple, from sharing gospel through music to where it is now with my channel, All About Worship Guitar. it's my YouTube channel where I My tagline is to sound and play your best with Jesus. And I think, Matthew Dale must have taken a look at my script or, or at least I've, because a lot of what I want to say about, about, the philosophy and ethos is what similar to Matthew. That's amazing. Breaking, it's actually breaking apart tones and songs, figuring out how they play and, very guitar and early stuff, but guitar and early stuff is tweaked to Christian ministry. And I love, I love to see it when musicians are able to walk on the stage and to, to play with their fullest potential, especially for guitar players. So soft spot, right? Cause I'm a guitar player. If you guys haven't figured it out. Yeah,

Sam Wittek: 9:55

basically, I've been on YouTube for, I guess about five years now. I was working, so I'm in central Florida right now. About five, six years ago, I was working at a church. I was a music director up there. And, it was one of those things post college, I felt like I landed my dream job. It was just like, this is amazing. I really had a heart for ministry and music ministry. So I did that for about a year and then, everything was going pretty well, but then, got married. And then pretty soon my wife started running into some health, kind of chronic health stuff. And long story short, we ended up needing to move and came to this place of I felt like I was doing what God called me to do, but then wasn't able to do it. And then she was really encouraging me. what if you just did the YouTube, at that point I was serving a lot and they're like what Jason, I think what you were saying earlier, there wasn't really a ton of resources out there. I found myself struggling sometimes and just wanting to learn how to do this better. So at that point it was like, okay, we're in this new city. let's just try YouTube and start putting some song tutorials out. And stuff like that and try to continue this ministry thing. And maybe it doesn't look the way that I thought it was going to look a couple of years ago, but yeah, now it's, I guess about five years later and it's evolved and, yeah, really just trying to reach other guitar players who were similar to me when I first started playing in church. And it was like, what is all of this? how do you learn these songs? what is tone? How do you do this thing with excellence, from the gear side of things to the actual. learning how to do all this stuff. yeah, just trying to provide resources for those people out there.

Tyler Miller: 11:29

I live in Nashville, Tennessee. and an Airbnb right now. I'm house gets worked on. so I don't have hardly any of my stuff with me at the moment, but, yeah, so I've lived in Nashville for about six years now. I play lead, lead guitar on a worship team here in Nashville. we actually just merged with, the Life Church out of Memphis. so they've got a few locations all across the globe, actually. So really cool to see, what God's doing there and to see how that develops. other than that, I, play country music professionally, play kind of whatever other gigs I find opportunities for as well. I manage a country artist. I manage a hip hop artist. and then I also have a full time job completely outside of the music industry as well.

Jason Houstma: 12:08

You guys all had angels talk to you, right? That's what happened to me. That's normal, right? And I could, yeah, I could jump in real quick. I think opportunity is something that happens at different times in different places. I don't know anybody who is actually. a full time musician that, that took a straight shot. it's not like being an accountant where you're like, Oh, I graduated college and I got this degree and now I just go down this road. it's doing a lot of different things for me. I was in, different bands. I was an India rock band. I was in a worship band. That band almost got signed whole label rearranged like the day after we did our audition. It was great. It was super cool. I had quit music, I had, as a full time job and then literally three months later started up worship artistry. And so, I think it's something that it's you're passionate about it. And so you're constantly preparing for it. Cause that's just what you do. Cause that's what you love. And then the opportunities, opportunities come along. So I would love to hear other people's stories because they're never normal.

Matthew Dale: 13:12

I feel like I've fought with it for a little while. Like I always knew that I wanted to do music. I've been, I took guitar lessons all the way from when I was like six years old and that big. and, was always just highly interested in music. and then when college came around, I went to a first, I started going to a university here in St. Louis, for audio production. I'm like, okay, I want to be a musician. I want to be a guitar player, but maybe. And at the time, 18 years old, this is back 2008, 2009 at the time, okay, maybe I'll own a studio. That's where the money is. And, some, I go into studio production and, I wanted to have a studio, but then record my own music and whatever. And I spent about a year there, two semesters and all the audio, all the audio professors were like, You wanna own a studio one day? that's not gonna be a thing. they were very encouraging, it was great. and then I just figured, If that's the best I'm getting out of these people, if they're like, you're not going to do that, it's not realistic. I'm like, if nothing is realistic, then I guess I just might as well pursue what I want to do anyway, which is play guitar. So then I transferred up to a really small school, called McNally Smith College of Music. And I went to school there. I finished my bachelor's in guitar performance. And I took a couple of, production classes and some songwriting classes and Some other, music business class and stuff. I try to only do my degree is in guitar performance, but I try to, make myself a little more well rounded in that regard. I really wish McNally Smith was something that I could actually tell people about, that it's still, it's unfortunately not there anymore. It was a. was a for profit school and then it was, unfortunately mismanaged. But, a guitar player by the name of Corey Wong also went to McNally Smith College of Music. He was a couple of years, older, or a couple of years ahead of me, but I got to know the guy that is currently his drummer fairly well. pardon the name dropping, if I just say McNally Smith, no one knows what I'm talking about. So I finished my degree. and, then again, wrestled with the idea, what am I actually doing for my future? Music is just, it's not happening, right? So then I came back to St. Louis and I joined a post baccalaureate pre med program, and I thought I want to be a doctor because that's the straightened path. I know what I need. I go to med school, I get a residency, I'm an attending, or I go into private practice. that's just laid out. That's the plan. Did fairly well for the first couple of semesters. hated it. it just was not for me, even though I'm a little bit of a science nerd, but just not for me because, my guitar would stare at me in the corner of my room like, hey, What are you doing? Pick, pick me up. what are you doing over there? And I did actually, I probably practiced more during that time period of my life than ever, even after going through four years of music program. but that's when I like, that's when I really feel like I became who I am as a player or laid the groundwork for who I am as a player. and I had a wonderful mentor at the time, that, was his kind of claim to fame is helping. He taught a class that was preparing people for going into, into med school. And he, in, during this class, he talked to everyone. He said, by the way, I'm just, I'm a really friendly person. just, I teach 200 students a semester. I can't write everyone a letter recommendation for med school. So please just don't ask me. I ended up like being a TA for him and I was working when developed a relationship with him. And he said to me, before I was just going to out the program, he said, Hey, by the time, your med school stuff comes up, let me know. I'll write you a letter of recommendation and just it killed me. So I had a really long conversation with him. I'm like, I don't think I want to do this. I think I actually want to go into music. And he was actually really supportive and really happy for me. He's it's great that you actually know what to do and you have your passion and you have a calling to do this. Go do it. I wish you the best of luck. So I really appreciate who he was for me at that time. his name was Dr. Gregory Politis. wonderful guy.

Joe Miller: 17:04

So I'm going to ask you that question. So how did you get into this thing? Yeah,

Charl Coetzee: 17:13

I had a bit of an interesting journey. I, I never played music growing up, but then I started going to a charismatic church when I was 14. and then they had electric guitar and bass and all the things in the band and that's how I started playing guitar because one of my friends was a really gifted musician and he started playing drums and he said I must also buy a drum kit and I didn't really know anything about music but I did know that drummers, you'd only have one drummer in a band so I ended up buying a bass guitar so we can start jamming like rhythm section stuff together. And then another friend of ours, started playing bass and he could sing. And then I had to learn guitar so we can start a band. So this was all in, in high school and that's what the journey took. And then I started, becoming a professional musician after school in South Africa. Yeah, we were touring. with different artists. I was basically a hired gun. I played for whoever needed a guitar player, did some sessions and studio work and touring. And at some point, I got a little bit bored with doing the same thing over and over. And one day I said to my wife, why don't we move to London? I want to go and study music there and see if we can, start touring internationally and get better gigs and all those kinds of things. And it was during that time that I realized, sure, I'm surrounded by all these awesome musicians, like the best of the best, but most of them are on the road all the time. And I didn't know any of my teachers that, had a happy marriage and family and kids and all those kinds of things. And then that kind of unsolved me on the whole music thing. So I stopped doing music and I got into other parts of business, mostly to do with marketing and online business and those kinds of things. And then when we finally moved back to South Africa, I decided, let me take my skills and my passion for playing guitar and specifically worship guitar and all the marketing things that we did together and start. Building a platform that we can reach more people out there. So that's what we're doing now. we started a full time gig doing just that. We're still doing a couple of other things, as well, but we're trusting that we can start making this the full time gig because that's some real, eternity impact that we can get made like us collectively at, just helping and raising worship guitarists across the world, because we know now more than ever, people need that connection with God and that touch from God and unity's voice and all those awesome things. And what better way to use the stuff that we love and are super passionate about. So that's my story. I'm happy to dive deeper into anything else, Dave, but that's about it. And then I'll stop.

Joe Miller: 19:40

Thank you, Charlotte. Now, we heard a little bit already from Justin and also a bit. I think Sam, you all, both of you touched a little bit on your transition story. Tyler, I think we, we got a kind of a feel for the multiple things you're doing. so do you have anything to add? Was there a moment that took you into worship ministry to begin with? Cause I know you've been doing that in parallel with other things for a while.

Tyler Miller: 20:05

Yeah. Pretty much as soon as I can play a song on guitar. I've been playing guitar in church. can't remember a time in my life where I knew how to play guitar that I haven't played in church, honestly. that's just all I've known since, I've been able to play guitar and to this day I maintain it. I love it. in my opinion, the best guitar tones are in CCM music. Alright. And, I'm a big tone guy, and, just that alone keeps me, keeps me engaged on a pretty much weekly basis, there. And then, I've just grown up in a household that's always been a church, been a Christian my whole life. That's just what I know. That's a big part of my life, whether I play music or if I didn't, and it just so happens to coincide with music in this, in this situation. That's

Joe Miller: 20:46

awesome. that's a good segue to the next question. I'll go ahead and pop it up on the screen here. how is worship ministry music different from the other? genres out there for guitarists. How would you differentiate? some of you guys are playing, we have you playing in a country band, Tyler, we have other people playing in different settings as well. So what are the key things that worship guitarists? Need to understand about the differences between other genres, because I think this will lead us into tone discussions, gear discussions, and other questions. So anyone can jump in who wants to.

Matthew Dale: 21:23

I would say that, and we were talking a little bit about this in the chat before the live stream, but, Understanding the proper chord voicings and the proper ways to actual comp, like rhythmically comp, in a worship setting are dramatically different than blues, rock, and other classic styles from, from the 1950s up to the 1990s, something like that. Um, the best thing that I teach people when I teach them, this is get to know your triads and please believe me. It's true. I've got a

Joe Miller: 21:59

course going on that. Yes.

Matthew Dale: 22:00

and it's, it sounds bad that we have to like, We have to just plead with people, please study your triads. They will make a world of difference. And in the way that I got started with it, I was in that same boat where, I was playing, I just joined a church after college. And I was, they needed a guitar player. So I was, I signed up. And I got all this music and I got all this recording, but I never did, worship guitar player or worship guitar playing and in college. And it was, a newer style, especially when like Hillsong and Bethlehem and a lot of these, more contemporary bands came out. it was very different than just, your worship leader strumming, GC and D and just following suit. There's these really subtle parts and everything is highly nuanced and you've got a ton of delay. So if you hit a bad note, it's going to sound bad for a long time. so you got to be careful. You got to be careful when you, when you're doing that. and the best thing that I did was when I was listening to and picking out parts was, Okay. This is a triad thing. I had the school knowledge, so I knew what it was. Okay. This is a triad thing. They're voicely in a lot of triads and Oh, you know what? They're actually not always playing the full triad. They're actually doing one sus four. And that's what they do for the four chord. And they're doing like one sus two. And that's what they do. And for the five chord, what if I take that and I move it around the neck? Oh, I'm now, I'm getting these other parts together that sound within that style. And I can make up my own stuff. If we don't have any dedicated, written out parts. I can sound in the style of this, this music, just like you would with jazz, blues, rock, whatever. And you develop a language that way. and it comes from, from my experience, it comes from really breaking things down in a musical context. what is this musically? How can I apply it to the fretboard all over the place, but it's, it, there's, you can't really go to a blues gig and only play, with a bunch of reverb, people will look at you like, what are you doing? and that's just the same way. If you show up Sunday morning and you plug in your Les Paul to your Marshall half stack and you're in your chunk in power chords the entire time, people look at you like all time, the whole time you're going to be doing power chords. That's not what, not what you're doing. So that's a little bit my answer. it's highly nuanced. And you have to know, really how to feel your way through a song appropriately.

Jason Houstma: 24:16

Yeah. There are a lot of choices. it's every time I pull up a song for a tutorial, there's at minimum seven stem tracks of just electric guitars, nevermind the 17 keyboards and the loops. it's crazy. it's so different than most of the music I listened to. And, and so learning how to make the choices around, okay, what are all these parts doing? What's standing out? Yeah. What role are they playing? Not even just where is it on the neck, but okay, this is a rhythmic piece. Okay. If we don't have this rhythm, the song starts dying. Okay. This part's more of a lead piece. Oh, we need this hook in here. And so there's so much, I always say, like with worship artistry, the main thing I'm doing is just taking away your five hours of arrangement. Cause I do that. And then just okay, focus on these and then play these well, So I think when it comes to worship and on top of it, you're not always playing with the same people. we talked about it a little bit before we got on, but Okay, the people on my team are all over the place in terms of skill. We don't always play all the same times, so it's like being aware and just being adaptive and being able to make good choices in the moment, I think are just, are really important to the worship, environment.

Sam Wittek: 25:25

Yeah. I feel like adaptive is such a good word because it really is. You don't know what you're stepping into on a Sunday morning, but I feel like also with it just being in the context, like we play such a more supportive role to. The vocalists to like the actual like word of God being sung and like the congregational singing happening. So yeah, definitely not trying not to come in with these like ripping guitar solos and stuff, like totally going off the rails. obviously there's a time and place. So if it calls for that, you'd go for it. Cause yeah, but I agree. Yeah. I think, definitely adapting with what the, setting calls for and what the worship leader calls for and what the environment looks like in that moment.

Matthew Dale: 26:05

And I'll just tag in with one other thing. Also being adaptive when you're playing with another guitar player is huge and understanding like, what are you doing? What am I doing? And how do we not cross each other's toes? and also, working with different people, when you're trying to get a couple of parts together, arrange what you're going to be doing on a weekend, working with other people of varying skill levels and knowledge levels. to try, try to get together the best possible thing that you can have.

Joe Miller: 26:37

Other thoughts, guys?

Charl Coetzee: 26:39

Yeah, I think the one thing also to bear in mind, like some of the guys have mentioned, is if you go to a rock gig or a blues gig, it might be a blues trio, so there's a lot more space for the guitar to fill. Number one, but in worship teams, the there's a lot more people on stage so you need to adapt your playing so that you can support properly and because we play the same chords it's not going to cut through the mix if you play the same licks it's going to step on toes It's adapting your playing to fit within that role. And then I think two other things that's quite important. Sam mentioned that he's like the ultimate purpose of worship is to bring that congregation together so that they can engage in powerful moments of worship. And if you play the wrong thing at the wrong time, you can either jolt somebody out of the moment or, but if you play the right thing at the right time, then it can really give expression to something that someone might feel. in the moment and actually pull them into that worship experience. So I think in order to do that expression part and like getting people to engage, that requires a different skill set as it relates to your voicings that you're going to play, the kind of melodies and emotions that you, the stories you might, tell on the guitar, emotional. if you look at the Psalms, right? David was a man after God's own heart and he didn't have a problem with emotions. So we've got to be able to pull up some rocking power chords versus some ambient tones versus some sweet stuff versus some whatever the case may be. I think when you start adding those flavors, then, it makes a sweet aroma. People pull people into that moment. So we get a lot of comments on, not a lot, but the hater comments that we get is that there's no such thing as worship guitar, And then I always think, there's jazz guitar, different kind of big voicings, there's blues guitar, there's rock guitar. So definitely there's worship guitar from that point of view, it's a different style. And also the outcome is different instead of us being the main thing. And like you would get at a blues gig or whatever, right? we are there to, to play a serving role. So I think, those couple of things, when you take that into consideration, it helps your approach and to Prepare your heart as well, because your heart has to be right. You can't have all the skills and step on stage with your heart not being right. Whereas, I heard Bono once say something about the fact is that, all the rock stars definitely need to have big, issues that they're dealing with because they need all these thousands and tens of thousands of people to scream at them and tell them how great they are. So there's like a hole that needs to fill. And maybe he was saying that as a joke, but I think that having the heart right and understanding community and connection and all those kinds of things. There's quite a lot to get right, and yet at the same time, God can use whatever you've got in your hands. So you just got to bring that with the right heart and then, God can multiply that.

Justin Chan: 29:15

I used to joke that worship music as a genre, it's like how if you hear, and the beautiful thing about worship music is that it's multi genre in that You hear all the music of the world, right? Like blues, rock, country even, and all these genres exist in worship CCM as well. And the joke is you take the difficulty slider from 10 and you drag it all the way down to two or three and that's where you get the level, of, music in church. And, I don't mean that as a bad thing. I say that because, the music that resonates on most on Sunday is the music that people can relate to, people can sing along to, and the musicians who can, play the most proficiently. So I do find that worship music is, at least the music that resonates more to congregation is simpler and vocal focused. And, and the parts are not, instead of a 128 bar blues bar, a blues solo, it's. eight bar solos or, or four bar solos even. And this having to serve the vocals, having to serve that vocal layer to make sure that every, people are singing the lyrics right. that's, and that influences note choices as to both note and tone choices as to whether the part is going to be, taking away attention from the vocal layer or, from the lyrics. And so there's a acute, sort of attention paid to layering, I think, especially for modern CCM and modern worship. Like when Jason said that you had to choose between, seven or nine guitar stems and some of those parts are like one note throughout the session. some of those are just like this, a hundred percent reverb mix. And just like this guy in the background, like doing a mosquito trail thing, but you'll see.

Matthew Dale: 31:00

Those are the parts that I always learn. That's

Jason Houstma: 31:02

what a great way to get ready for Sunday.

Justin Chan: 31:06

Yeah.

Jason Houstma: 31:08

Yeah.

Justin Chan: 31:09

so that's, So that's worship guitar. And we have to play these parts, without, distracting people. And I think that to me is both the beauty and the challenge of playing in church.

Joe Miller: 31:21

you remind me of Steve Luth, Luthifer's comment about, I think it was human nature, where he's brought in to that session. I don't know if you guys saw that or, the producer basically said, I need something here. I need something. It's missing something. I need glue. And he had, has that little rhythmic line that he plays over and over again, simply. and then repeats. And if you listen to that song, it's Oh my gosh, you can't imagine that song without that little hook and that lead part in there. and I think it's a challenge sometimes. this is where I think God deals with people internally. when you're a guitarist on stage, you want to do more sometimes when really it's much more powerful to do something clean and simpler, less is more kind of thing. But that's hard to swallow sometimes when you come in and the worship leader says, can you simplify that? You're like, ah, I spent 15 hours and I really want to hear it. You got to park it, park it. Oh, not only

Tyler Miller: 32:18

that, but not knowing when not to play as well. And not white

Joe Miller: 32:22

space.

Tyler Miller: 32:22

There's a, yep. Yeah, definitely got to leave space for sure. And, trying to, coach other, younger players, that is, something they don't, easily, get right away. Yeah. otherwise I think you have to be. And in CCM, I think you have to be a little more surgical with your EQ as well. Oh yeah. There's so much more going on in the tracks or on stage or both, that you need to find your specific lane that you're occupying. Whereas if you're playing in like a five piece rock band or a country band or whatever it may be, it's not quite as relevant as long as it sounds good. but in CCM it really is. Otherwise you're getting money up your mix super quick. And then. On top of that, like paying really close attention to like your reverbs and delays, because easily, if you dial a decay wrong or a repeat, too high, it can get in the way of the part and ruin that as well. So I think totally in EQ wise, there's, more attention that needs to be paid, especially on modern CCM music than you would maybe have, to the same degree in other genres. So true. So

Joe Miller: 33:29

true. I call it the mid range mush, mid range mush. And we were talking before we started a few that were in the green room here. We're talking about, the battle between the pianist's left hand and the bass player. And then, There's so many other kinds of instruments, that aren't traditionally in, say, a rock band, you might have orchestra instruments and tonally, it just gets so muddy so fast. So I really love that comment about being surgical on tone. Let's press on. And I would like to just, Get into some things that are probably a little more specific, and people who have hung on with us this long, thank you for your patience. You probably want to talk about this question, and that is, what are the common questions you get, from your followers or for people that you're mentoring and coaching, either through your offerings online or just your interactions on, the worship team in regards to gear, in regards to voicing. Yeah, just, What are the common things people ask you? I'm starting to bring out sort of some Irritations or pet peeves you might struggle with it. There probably is a bit of an overlap here So let's see that one up.

Justin Chan: 34:39

Can I go first? absolutely One question I keep getting on especially for like DMs and stuff is How do you get that bracket, expensive revolt sound with a$200 revert pedal or like a hundred dollars revolt pedal? And I'm like, that's not that. Why is that the first part of call when it, when it comes to, to gear questions. But, yeah, it's so not just ret pedals, but delay pedals over dry pedals. So that's, and particularly because I think my audience, was also from the Southeast Asian country. so budget guitar gear is a, a. Big concern. And so the, some of the questions I answer revolve around, getting, I guess the studio sound from the albums with these hundred dollar pedals.

Matthew Dale: 35:29

Yeah, I get similar. I get a lot of gear questions as well. it seems like most of my questions are gear related. Now I'm a fractal guy, so I get a lot of fractal people, usually asking me, Stuff about routing, and stuff usually with regard to, FRFR speaker systems or going in front of house. And usually the thing that I say that kind of goes in with like mid range mush is, You don't need the amount of low end you think you need. in fact, you need quite a bit less of it. A lot of, especially my tones that are, put together for worship are much brighter than I would be playing in, in, other bands. usually I like the Vox AC style of amplifier. I think, we are probably all familiar with that platform. If not, we all probably use that platform. that just seems to, it already has such a nice bright high mid that cuts through, and there's not a lot, you don't need a lot of bass going into that amplifier. They don't have a ton of bass. And then you have drives that cut less space and then you have boost that probably cut less space and then having a little bit of a, of a high shelf, for me, it's anywhere between, five and six K. what's your low cut? My low cut. If I'm doing live stuff. 100 hertz, a fairly aggressive 100 hertz, if not going up to maybe 120. and if I'm dialing in that low end, I really want to hear it in the space, in the worship space. And these are big rooms we're usually talking about. So low end can build up there. So in my studio, I started about 80, 80 hertz. And then if I'm dialing in an EQ specifically for live, I start around a hundred. And then from there, I give it to the, the sound techs. if you less bass for me from there. You can wind it up some more.

Joe Miller: 37:12

Other comments.

Charl Coetzee: 37:13

Yeah. the gear thing is definitely the biggest one. People always ask, how do you get the tone? And, so yeah, that comes up a lot and the guys have already touched on all the things that you need to have dialed in. And, so one thing I normally tell people, of course, you gotta get all that stuff dialed in correctly, but. tone is definitely that thing that was in the fingers. I think there's a lot of truth to that because I never truly understood that, but I used to work for, the Guitar Techniques magazine in London. And one, I used to like then go and interview famous guitar players, and then I'd sit and talk with them for an hour or so while they would play, and then afterwards we film it, we'll transcribe it, and then it goes into the magazine. And one day, we were lucky enough to do an interview with Joe Cetriani. And, we had to take an amp to the hotel because he didn't have all of his gear with him, it wasn't at the venue. And so a friend of mine who I was studying with, he had like a blues boutique amp and like a tone bone pedal and was like all super classic blues sounds. And then Joe just had his guitar with him, and as soon as he plugged in, even into that bluesy rig, it just instantly sounded like him. And it wasn't a high gain amp or any of that kind of stuff. So then that just reminded me that I always read about that, the toners and the fingers. And then, as I Thought about it more. It's like when you can trust your technique to really dig into your guitar and you can strike the strings with confidence. You're not going to get a idle string ringing out. It's going to make your voicing sound bad or you're okay with your picking or whatever, all those kinds of things that just that bit of confidence can make average gear sound much better. So people tend to think that I need to have this mega rig. And yes, it does help when you have, proper deal delays and Reverbs and you can do your EQ and you have drives and boosts and all these kind of things that we have access to right now with all the units. But yeah, so the technique thing is something that definitely helps people. And then on top of that, the second biggest thing there is. like Jason mentioned, there's all these stems and you got to learn all these parts. So for a Sunday, and that brings a lot of anxiety for people because you only have so much time in the week. A lot of them are volunteers. Their skill level is at a certain level as well. And so with the little bit of time, with the skill that they've got to prepare all these songs. And that brings That level of anxiety and overwhelm. And if you're in that state of mind, you're playing is not going to be good because you're going to be worried. You're going to be stressed or you're not going to prepare well. So they're looking for ways to learn new songs and all guitar parts. It's going to sit well in the mix. It's going to perform well and that they can play on, on, at the drop of the hat, because obviously if you're going to play something like. if you don't do Lion and the Lamb, the congregation is going to expect to hear that intro line, right? But I, I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't learn all the other songs note for note, because first of all, you can't, it's too many of them. And you need to find that balance between serving the song, playing the parts, but also giving your unique touch on that. And then how do you do that if you haven't studied music and if you don't have incredible fretboard knowledge and all the rest of it. and then I just tell the guys, there's a couple of techniques. if you look at, King David, he had to put on Saul's arm. It was too much, right? So he just took that off. He had a slingshot and a couple of rocks and he took down Goliath like that. So you've got to find, You're seeing shot in a couple of rocks and see what you can do with that. So that's fun. Traversing those two big things, the tone and preparing songs. And then obviously everything in between. Yeah, that's great.

Sam Wittek: 40:31

That's so good.

Jason Houstma: 40:33

Oh, sorry. Yeah. Go for it,

Sam Wittek: 40:33

Sam. I was just going to say, just to piggyback off that, that's really good. Cause I think it's one of the coolest things about music, in general, like we could, I could plug into any of your rigs and sound like me. And likewise, like you could plug into my rig and sound like you. And so I tend to get. DMs or comments a lot that are like, Hey, here's a picture of my pedal board. I bought all the pedals that you have. Why do I still sound the same as I did before? And it's Gear can help a lot, but like Charles, it's like what you were saying. it's, you really gotta use your ear and you really gotta learn and you gotta listen. And you're gonna sound like you, which is super cool. that's such an asset to your. unique context and your church like to be able to step in and serve in that way. It's like one of my favorite things about all this stuff. So the gear is like the icing on the cake, but you gotta have a really good base. You gotta have a really good cake that you're working with in the first place.

Matthew Dale: 41:24

And I think that's more worshipful too. if rather than focus on say learning a part note for note, at least for me, it's much more worshipful to not only play the song, actually play the structured song, but add in your own voice to that. is a much more worshipful experience for me. I would say the go to, if anyone asked me, how should I go about learning worship songs? Start with just your basic chord progression and learn the melody. I think the melody is something that is absolutely essential to learn and actually to absorb and. and live within a song is learn the melody, learn the lyrics, actually understand what the song is about before you go, you just dive into, let's take a look at this part that is played in the bridge of the song and do that sort of thing. Really understanding the song from just a foundational point is a great place to start.

Jason Houstma: 42:11

Yeah. I get a lot of questions about, I taught privately for a long time too, and it's a constant question of, okay, I play it, but I don't sound like you when you play it. How do I make it sound like music? And there's so much that's just time on task, like a lot of worship musicians are just, all they're doing is getting ready for Sunday. So it's just I got to play new songs. I got to figure out these parts. I got five new songs I got to do. And, and we try and help that with our service and go, okay, here's how you. Here's how you can do that. But it's very different when I, even when I'm teaching a lesson, I always have to do the music video and I have to do that in a full take. I can't punch anything there. And so there's always like the first time I get it through. And then there's if I do this about three more times, it's going to be awesome. I'm going to feel better about it. I'm going to fall into the pocket a lot more. I'm going to just play it very differently. And I think so many musicians stop at that, like worship musicians, especially stop at that like 80 percent mark. And so they never get that feeling of being confident and starting to move outside of what they practice because, their heart is involved and they're engaging with the congregation and what's happening in the room because we're just staring at our pedal board and our fingers going, this is what I need to do. and it's that time on tasks, just that extra hour or two can make such a difference if you do that over 52 weeks. Like you're going to become a much better player and you're going to do all the stuff that, Matthew's talking about. Oh, we'll find these different spaces and, like being able to adjust in the moment. And so that's the question. I always go, how do we make this sound like music? you practice. It's like the most teacher thing to say ever. It's like the most, Like the dad, my dad ness just comes out. if you stop playing around with your pedals and you actually practice the part, you'd probably be just fine.

Matthew Dale: 43:54

When was the last time you played this? Oh, last week in lessons. Yeah, that's why. Oh my gosh.

Joe Miller: 43:59

so the mantra is, no expensive piece of gear is going to make up for that lack.

Matthew Dale: 44:05

Unless it's a vintage 808, then you're gonna need to sound like

Joe Miller: 44:09

Steve R. E.

Matthew Dale: 44:10

B. Are we guitar players or what?

Jason Houstma: 44:13

Yeah. As long as you have Lambert tones, you'll

Justin Chan: 44:16

be fine. That silver clawn pedal.

Joe Miller: 44:21

And actually that, I'm just gonna step outside of the whole worship genre. Guitars for musician genre. This is true in other walks of life, as a career coach and executive coach. I, these types of questions come up there and completely different venue. it's, or maybe, for Sam, maybe if people are trying to figure out how to make a living on video. on YouTube. to

Sam Wittek: 44:45

say there's a lot of similarities here.

Joe Miller: 44:46

So they're going to, they're going to say, Oh, what do I need to do to get more clicks? maybe make better videos of content people want to watch, because you might have a cool thumbnail, in two seconds, they're out of there. So that's a basic principle. And I think people tend to go, especially in this hyper engaged world with no attention span, people get programmed to try to get the quick solution right now. And they don't want to go pay the price. And in this particular setting, we have Mostly volunteers, and, when you get a professional musician in the worship team, I was blessed to be in a worship team in California at a larger church and there was a basis there that was phenomenal. And I learned more under him because he just leaned over and go. You don't have to play every string or he'd say you might try playing the second or third inversion this time You could just like or he might lean over to the worship leader who was leading from the piano and say Put your left hand in your back pocket, but it made such a difference because he has such so much skills. He was a master, so he had the freedom, but he paid the price. he put the time in. And, so anyway, that's a bit of a rant, even though I get, I've gotten ranted at on those points myself, because I get, Matthew and I engaged a little bit on his channel. I'm like, I think I might need to throw my head rush in the trash and get a fractal, I like the head rush. But the thing is like 250 pounds, it seems like for an old guy like me, it's just a monster. So

Matthew Dale: 46:29

yeah,

Joe Miller: 46:30

that's or an

Matthew Dale: 46:31

FM nine.

Joe Miller: 46:32

Yeah. So anyway, yeah. So anyway, that's a key principle that has leveraged in a lot of our discussion, I think. Other thoughts though, what are some other common things that come up?

Matthew Dale: 46:44

Yeah, I think it's really common to just sit, especially like with a lot of my students, the tone under the fingers sort of thing is really. is really common because, if I teach, a younger student, here's what a C chord is, and then we play the C chord. I've played this C chord hundreds of thousands of times, at least, Yeah. No, you've learned this 10 seconds ago, it's not going to sound the same. And that, that I think is a little bit of a different experience from, say like a piano player or the instrument, the way that piano is constructed. If I go up and I just hit middle C on a piano. It's not going to sound that different from a master piano player going up and just touching the middle C. Now, master piano player can just play circles around me, right? But the mechanism for creating tone on the instrument is much more automated on something like the piano. so the tone is being generated by the piano, but with guitar, you need calluses, you need proper technique to, sometimes it's an arch technique. Sometimes it's a flatter technique. It depends on what you're playing. You need to sit with the guitar for much longer. longer amount of time. And whenever I see someone getting caught up on these minute, tiny details of just trying, you're just trying to strum this one secret in the song. Just try playing the entire song. I don't care how it sounds. It might sound absolutely terrible. Just make the video. It might look bad, complete the task and try to make it a little bit better next time. And then make it a little bit better next time. And then as you do that, as you live within it, then you're actually going to improve and you're going to enjoy the process so much more than just saying the C chord isn't still sounding right or this frame of this video, my jump cut isn't looking and I have to spend a half hour or 45 minutes trying to get this cut to be exactly right. just sitting on one and ruminating on just one, minute thing really pulls you out of the element of actually developing skills.

Jason Houstma: 48:46

Yeah. There's a lot of, I get a lot of questions too, about breaking out of patterns. How do I grow? cause, because what ends up happening, I think, especially with worship, which I'm totally guilty of this myself. Oh, it's a new song. Okay, click on these pedals and I'll go bing, bing. And I can do it. I can fit in, I can stay out of the way I can do it in my sleep, and usually it's, I do think it's sometimes looking at some of those details and learning things note for note, because it's like you being able to copy something allows you to create things, And so it's, I know what I tend to do. Even when I'm like learning these songs, I'm trying to learn them like the record, right? And how much that actually expands what I normally play because yeah I always do this run and I can just do this and nobody will know the difference But I know the difference. And if I start going, Oh, actually weird. That's he's throwing the third in there. And there's this little, actually, it's more of an arpeggio there. Okay, cool. now I can start incorporating that into everything else I do, but sometimes it's taking the time. we so quickly want to be like, cool, I can play it that we jump over those things. And people are always like, what scales do I need to learn? What, how, what theory do I need to learn? It's how are you at playing that one riff? it's, it sounds great. No, it sounds like a. Tennis shoes and a tumble dryer. it's uh, it's, maybe tighten that down. And it's funny because when you force people to slow down and actually really work on those stupid little details that we think don't matter and make it, it actually makes a huge difference.

Matthew Dale: 50:10

Everyone wants the secret. And then you tell them there isn't just slow down and take a really close look at this and then YouTube

Jason Houstma: 50:18

guys that keep going. If you just do this one thing, yeah,

Matthew Dale: 50:22

this is a guitar thing, but, I don't know if you guys have seen, but it always annoys me when someone just pops up on a YouTube ad or something and they're like, this one pattern will get you to break out of the box, but it's that pen.

Joe Miller: 50:33

Yeah.

Matthew Dale: 50:33

And I'm like, you're not breaking out of the box. You're just tying them together. you're just moving the box. You're just, you're stretching the box. It's the same thing. you want to break out of the box. You truly want to break out of the box. on one string at a time. The best advice I can give to any of my guitar students, try to make music without any boxes, just one string. And if you can't do that, then you don't know the music. You don't know how music actually works. Try to build nice, compelling melodies on one string at a time.

Jason Houstma: 51:03

Great tip.

Joe Miller: 51:05

What about specifically musically then? So are there, I obviously triads are powerful, understanding your scales, understanding common tones, to keep yourself out of trouble. What are some tips we could offer that we think would be helpful, especially in this genre?

Matthew Dale: 51:25

The major scale is pretty good.

Joe Miller: 51:27

That's a good, pretty good place to start.

Matthew Dale: 51:30

Yeah. I would say that for. for most worship musicians getting into it, understanding how chord progressions work is really good. I, I said major scale four as a joke, but it is true. Like really understanding where a lot of most worship music is diatonic harmony and understanding the one chord, the four chord, the five chord and the six chord, the four main chords.

Joe Miller: 51:55

And being Mr. Nashville, Tyler, Nashville numbering system to be on.

Tyler Miller: 52:00

Yeah, it's a pretty critical. I've, I've played a four hour gig with 30 minutes notice knowing only the Nashville number system and the key we were in. So it's pretty helpful. otherwise I would say internalize the song and the chord progressions, be really familiar with the song where, and especially dynamically, big difference to sound more professional as. Playing with dynamics and a lot of people miss that. and so knowing when those moments are and why they're there, is important too.

Sam Wittek: 52:29

Yeah. I'd add learn to play in time. I think nowadays too. That can be helpful. That's true. nowadays everybody uses click tracks now. Yeah. there've been so many times back when I was, working in ministry where we had great musicians, they just couldn't play to a click. They couldn't stick to it. So I think like more and more nowadays where more churches are using tracks and especially as a newer musician, it can be intimidating. Like I remember putting in ears for the first time and it was just, difficult, but I had learned to play to a metronome. I had a old, when I was like 12 years old, I had one of those old fashioned, like analog metronome. So just slowly learning licks that way. So it's, really important to learn to do that. Yeah.

Tyler Miller: 53:11

Playing in tune is pretty big too.

Sam Wittek: 53:13

Yeah,

Tyler Miller: 53:13

boy, you're learning how to tune your guitar. the basics make a big difference.

Matthew Dale: 53:19

What to do for a worship guitar. Play in tune, play in time, play in key.

Joe Miller: 53:25

That's a good start. Turn on reverb. Get

Matthew Dale: 53:27

pretty far

Tyler Miller: 53:27

with those three

Matthew Dale: 53:28

right

Joe Miller: 53:29

there. Here's something about playing in time. I just want to throw out and see what you guys think. there are certain parts that we have in worship music that, that are U2 like that have a dotted eighth and, a quarter delay, and sometimes someone's playing the part, but they don't have any of those delays in, and they're somehow or other thinking they have to cover it without the delay. Have you had that come up? it's a wild situation where they're There's no hope for them to be able to cover the part without understanding this. That's a case where you do need certain gear to make it work. If you want to be faithful with what the recording is. Yeah.

Tyler Miller: 54:06

And those, in those situations, the effect is the part for sure.

Jason Houstma: 54:10

Yeah. It doesn't hurt to do play a different part though. It doesn't like it doesn't, that's fine. Come up with something that fills the same range. And

Joe Miller: 54:21

let's be honest, sometimes the parts I don't like, even if I can play them, it's it doesn't really work. At least not with this worship team, right? I did that in the last

Jason Houstma: 54:33

17 songs. Maybe I should do something different.

Matthew Dale: 54:35

Yeah. and that's true. Yeah. There's something like, you might learn the song and practice it in your own playing time, through the week and then you get Sunday, you get to a, Sunday morning or Saturday rehearsal or whatever and realize these parts that I thought were going to be what I play are really not what I need to play here. And I need to switch gears.

Sam Wittek: 54:56

Yeah. Yeah. Or the other guitar player plays those parts. So then you're like, okay, I got to be open. Yeah. We got to communicate, what's going on here. Or you're

Matthew Dale: 55:04

like, I think I'm playing it better. So you better change the

Sam Wittek: 55:09

awkward eye contact. You're like, are you going to change parts? Now I wanted to leave

Joe Miller: 55:12

enough time to get into the fun stuff and see you guys go back and forth. So What is your go to stuff?

Tyler Miller: 55:20

Oh boy.

Joe Miller: 55:20

Oh, it's got your gear of choice.

Tyler Miller: 55:22

Did we leave enough time for this part? Probably

Jason Houstma: 55:26

not. I'll get my short answer. It's whatever's closest. I Love it.

Matthew Dale: 55:33

I am I bounce between two guitars right now I DGT and a 594 and I have Strandberg's which I have played in worship before I did a worship guitar video on my channel and I played my Strandberg fusion for it. And someone commented, imagine playing this on Sunday morning. I'm like, I just did. and then I am, I'm totally of the modeler camp. I use a fractal. I have the whole ecosystem, the Axe FX3, I probably use the FM9 the most. It just has, all, the most switches on board for all of my tone changes and effects. And I can run stereo and running stereo, I think is huge to get that worship sound and to get those expansive delays and reverbs. I run two different IRs, so sometimes I'll run two different amps and I'll do a Fender and a Vox sort of thing. but sometimes I'll at least just do have a couple of different IRs going. So I have a 57 and a 121 on one side and really go for just the big added width that you can get. But, I will probably very rarely turn on my tube amps at a live gig these days.

Charl Coetzee: 56:33

All right. I was going to say, I used to have a big pedal board with all the amps and everything, but then I realized when I made the move to the Kemper, it wasn't so much more convenient, To play a couple of songs on a Sunday and you can just dial in all the stuff. And, like Matthew said, you can do the different amps and all those kinds of things. So I think, you just need to get a piece of equipment that can do what it needs To do and then you just need to get to know it, right? Because it doesn't help if you've got the latest and greatest, but you dunno how to use it. it's all about, actually knowing how to use what you've got. And, so it's not necessarily the latest and greatest gear out there because, gas is a real thing that gear acquisition syndrome. But that's one of the things that. It gives you a false sense of making progress, but you're not actually just spending more money and you're not spending time with your guitar. So I think that's a big thing. And, for me, guitar wise, I've got a couple of guitars, but, I mostly just use my PRS Custom 22, which I've had for over 20 years. And I think that's another important thing. You just got to know, where to find things because when I go to my Music Man or Strat, then all of a sudden the neck length and everything is different. It's not quite like it. So I can play that guitar with my eyes closed and I can really trust my gear. So I think that's important. If you need to get a certain tone or you need to get a certain note. to trust what you've got. and, funny thing is we normally do a live stream once a week and, we get cook questions and stuff, but I guess most people are doing other things while they're watching. So they're not always that engaged. But the one day I just asked people just to let me know what gear they used. And then the chat was just lighting up like a scroll, right? It was just like letting you know the gear. So it shows you there's a little bit of an unhealthy obsession on that side. Of course it's important and you've got to get what you need. But, I think we've covered those elements, just improving your playing. And then Jason said, the gear that you've got closest by should do the trick. It's not the gear it's about the application and how you use it.

Joe Miller: 58:28

The green machine is what I look at your guitar, your PRS, right? That's the one you're talking about, isn't it?

Charl Coetzee: 58:33

Exactly. Yeah. It's a green machine for sure. I love that one.

Matthew Dale: 58:38

And there's something too about, when you're really mastering the gear that you have. if like you said, Charlie, if you are just moving from the latest and greatest and moving from platform to platform, you're never going to master that new, that newest platform. if you can get, if you can get absolute Epic tones out of, a 10 year old piece of equipment. You're not going to get that same level of epicness from something that you picked up, last week, you're going to be learning that for, the next couple of years or so. So using what you know, The best is going to be a much safer and a much easier path forward and better sounding path forward to.

Charl Coetzee: 59:17

Yeah, that's so true. I had a funny story about, like photographers, people would then say, you must have a really great camera or whatever, but it's not the camera, it's the photographer. But I had a story about Chet Atkins was doing an interview with somebody and the interviewer said to him, wow, that's a really, that guitar sounds amazing. And then they just put it down in the chair and he said, what does it sound like now? A great response about it's not the gear and it's how you use it. But at the same time, we, we all love our gear, so there's nothing wrong with it, but you just got to get your balance right and not be over extended in one, one area.

Jason Houstma: 59:52

Yeah. I'm always one to, I'm like, yeah, you can do anything with anything. But at the same time, there are certain things that are just feel so much better. like I have, I have an El Capistan, D tape echo or whatever. I'll never take that thing off my board because I love it. It's quirky. It's weird. It does all kinds of stuff, but I understand that thing. And it's just I've had people like, Hey, why don't you put this on? no, I don't care what your thing does. I love that thing. And I feel like the gear, ultimately what it shouldn't be this, I need to get this because that will allow me to achieve something. The gear should be something that inspires you, it's I joke around saying, Oh, the thing that's closest, but honestly, I play every guitar really differently. Everything changes when I pick up my Strat versus when I've got my Tele versus the Les Paul, like the way I play the notes, the way I approach every part, it all changes, which for me, I get crazy bored. I've taught 700 song lessons at this point, guys, I'm going insane. I take my job. We most. It's, and so like anything that kind of helps inject new life into things is really fun. But it's all about like, how is this going to inspire what I do rather than help me achieve some thing that I hold at, some standard that I think I need to hold because that's what everybody does,

Sam Wittek: 1:01:10

Yeah, that's so good. That's that's exactly what I think through if I'm going to buy. New gear? maybe the first thing is is this a wise financial decision? do we have the money to do this? Is the juice worth

Joe Miller: 1:01:19

the

Jason Houstma: 1:01:19

squeeze? Is it worth, your wife is usually good at telling you that. Oh, yeah.

Sam Wittek: 1:01:24

no, but really, I think it's, it really is just an extension of our creativity and so I, I always think of just Is this going to want, is this going to make me want to create more? Cause I think a lot of this comes down to the like consumerism versus creating as well. So if we're just consuming all of the time and let me just buy the newest pedal, let me buy the new big sky MX because it's new and it's just gonna make me sound better type of thing. maybe it could really inspire you to pick up your guitar and play more. But I think whatever's going to lead you to create more, that's going to be the thing that's probably going to be worth it to keep on your board. Cause similarly, Benson preamp that's the L cap for me, similar to what you were saying, Jason, Benson preamp. I got it was amazing, made a horrible decision, sold it to try something else. It was awful and I got it back and I'm just playing so much more. So it's keeping its spot from now on. I think that's

Matthew Dale: 1:02:14

important too, for, for like students, if I'm teaching a younger student and a parent doesn't really want to like, we're just trying it out. We'll just see, we got this old guitar from our neighbor who. bought it, 20, 30 years ago. And it's not, yeah, bowed neck, not in tune. Like they're not going to enjoy playing on this. You'd be better off buying something that, that is enjoyable to play on. And if, and I'm of the camp, like if you're, if your student has been telling you time and time again, they want to learn electric guitar, don't buy them an acoustic guitar, get them an electric guitar. Cause that's what they want. That's what they're actually going to pick up and practice. If you want to get, you're the most bang for your buck. Get them the thing that they've been begging for.

Jason Houstma: 1:02:51

That's the parents. the acoustic guitar over the electric guitar is the, you got to learn piano first, but I don't want to learn it's six years of piano. And I got better on a guitar in six months. And I've ever got

Sam Wittek: 1:03:04

literally my story. No, I don't want to play piano. Give me an acoustic. I don't like acoustic. Give me an electric. And then here we are.

Joe Miller: 1:03:13

That's crazy. That's crazy. Any other thoughts there? we have a couple pedal board folks. I know Sam and Tyler, are you still pedal board primarily as well?

Tyler Miller: 1:03:25

Yeah, I'm, back to pedal board this year. I was on the FM9 for about four years and, yeah, back to the pedals, back on a big board right now.

Joe Miller: 1:03:31

Yeah. And Jason, your pedals mostly. And then we have Matthew and Charles doing all the ones of different types. And I know Justin, you go back and forth between pedals and all in once, as well. so that's an interesting thing. And then this whole capture technology versus modeling. I think all these things fit into the same theme is don't get distracted. By the, it's like the first 95 percent of getting there is all in the fingers and in the time practicing and in the stuff that is in the trenches, grinding it out, the last 5 percent are these where we spend most of our time talking to people about, right? So it's, yeah, that's an interesting thing.

Tyler Miller: 1:04:20

They're all tools. You just need to be familiar with what you have. Exactly.

Matthew Dale: 1:04:23

And we live in a time where, like 20, 20 years ago, 15 years ago would have been like, no one's using digital anything. and now we have, not only do we have the full like analog camps and the full digital camps, striving has been putting out digital pedals, fantastic digital pedals ever since they've been, in the inception. I just recently got rid of a Flint, and I thought I'd never get rid of a Flint cause I think it sounds awesome. But, I'm paring down and on all of my analog pedals cause I, I do so much digital these days. But that's another thing, the, we're never really gonna sacrifice in this day and age, we're really not sacrificing tonal quality for analog, for digital, for plugins, for modelers, for, for, capture devices, tube amps, whatever, we're never really going to be sacrificing. if you're buying, let's just say general, professional grade equipment, we're not really gonna be sacrificing tone quality, but, like we've been talking about, whatever you find is most inspiring to you, you're gonna get the best results out of.

Joe Miller: 1:05:21

And what we need is a company like a gear timeshare where you have certain number of credits and you can just swap things out, There

Jason Houstma: 1:05:29

are pedal subscription services. Are there?

Joe Miller: 1:05:32

Yeah. I never get an idea out there. You were that close, Joe. You were so close to be a part of the revolution. Oh yeah, so close.

Justin Chan: 1:05:42

Yeah, back in Singapore, we've got a service called Rent a Pedal and this company will, you apply for it and they send you a pedal out. You play for it, you play for a bit, once you're done with the 30 days, whatever, send it back, and that way you can have a revolving door of gear.

Joe Miller: 1:05:58

I wanted to switch back to another topic that I think needs some more discussion. I'll pop it up. And that is the whole silent stage challenge. And, one of my biggest frustrations over the years is the crappy sound I get back into my ears. And it actually wasn't until recently that I started going stereo and got two channels just so they could send it back to me. In two channels and I could pan them both left and right because it was so distracting I would dial my tone in at home and I'd start playing and I just couldn't even play because it just sounded like, the hammer had come down on my tone just completely crushed it. So I just, That's one thing and then the challenge of working with it's all about a lot of volunteers, right? so you got volunteers on the desk too and How do you guys deal with that? I've seen some of you have dealt with this a little bit in your content So I thought I'd throw that question out. I think it's an important one They won't let you put the Marshall stack on stage usually in churches I don't think maybe backstage amped up in a cab, you know

Tyler Miller: 1:07:06

I think inevitably that's just the direction a lot of things are moving Our church we just overhauled You Everything these past couple of weeks and even the drum sets. silent, they got a 10, 000 BWE kit. And so it's looks and sounds just like the real thing, but it's still a silent kit. it sounds incredible, but that's my first experience playing with a decent, even electronic kit that's been enjoyable and haven't even noticed or missed. Miss it compared to other electronic kits I've played, but like even, even outside the church spaces, a lot of national stages are silent stages. a lot of tours are silent stages, minus maybe the drum set. and I think that's just, Unfortunately inevitable, but thankfully the timing of that being inevitable. we have so many choices of solid gear that it's not really missed. I'm always going to love plugging into a tube amp. Just bought another one actually a couple weeks ago. Um, I think it's always going to have its time and place, but, it is an adjustment, but thankfully the gear is so good. And there's so many players in the game that offer great gear that I think, It's a great time to be a guitar player and have access to even the Tonics one that just came out for almost nothing. You can have an incredible sound and go stereo if you want for a couple hundred bucks and nobody would know the difference in the audience. and otherwise, like you were saying with in ears in front of house, unfortunately as a guitar player or as any musician, the best you can do is just make sure you're sending the best signal to front of house as you can. And inevitably what happens to it beyond that, you're at the mercy of who's in charge and the gear they're running it through. Sometimes they'll sound great. Other times you, don't want to pick up the guitar ever again after that gig. Um, it's tough. And, I think just being again, really familiar with your gear and adaptable, and flexible and knowing how to provide the best signal you can. And if it's not how to communicate properly and work with front of house or monitors, to try to find that signal otherwise, and then ultimately, if it's still not usable by the time of the show or, the church service, whatever. the event may be, just try to be a professional caliber musician and just play whether it sounds good or not because you don't have a choice much of the time.

Matthew Dale: 1:09:27

I think having a really good understanding of signal flow, not just from a guitar player standpoint, but, front of house volunteers having a really understanding of signal flow. One thing that I always say whenever I'm plugging in my modelers is I'm sending them line level signal and professional grade line level plus four. and I'm also sending them, self contained process guitar. So not only am I going through, yeah, so I have EQ in place, a lot of EQ in place. I have IRs, so there's already, a mic signature within the IR. I have compression already in place. So really, the only thing that you really need to do if your patches are set up correctly, on a modeler, you just bring up the fader and then adjust to the house. Very little room, just to the room. so a little bit of EQ, maybe some shelves on either side of the extremes in maybe a small, if any part of compression at all. And I think that big like that hammer coming down and squashing your tone that happens to me all the time because there's, a certain level of signal, process processing that happens on a board that I see with volunteers because, okay, maybe if you have a little bit of a background in audio, that, okay, I'm getting a guitar signal, so I'm going to want this EQ, I'm going to want this compression, and I'm going to want to set it up this way, and we need to turn up the preamps, and you strum a chord, and it's crunchy, and it's compressed, and it's absolutely awful, and that's, I tell them all the time, I try to be as nice as I can, but can we try turning off? Everything that you have on my channel and just start from there. And usually nine times out of 10, it, it ends up being better. And I, I tell them, bring the preamps way down or bypass them if you can bypass them. and understanding that level of signal flow is really important. As you mentioned, Joe, going from mono, to stereo for in ears is huge because not only does that. give you a little bit, of a wider space to actually exist in as we're, here in, in our head, but it also cleans up rather than actually getting dual mono. through your one aug send, it actually frees up. Now that you have two channels going, you have a, you have much more headroom. the common thing, if you're on your app and you're mixing, I can't hear the vocals, so I'll turn those up. now I can't hear my guitar, so I'll turn that up. And now I can't hear this. So I'll turn it up and you just, it keeps going up, up. And you don't really realize, cause you can turn your master down on your pack. But now, before you know anything

Joe Miller: 1:11:52

garage band time.

Matthew Dale: 1:11:54

Yeah, and you're clipping your, your output or the board is clipping the output and you might even have, it might not even look like it's clipping because there's a limiter in place, but then all that means is you're shoving everything up to that limiter and your dynamic range in your in ears is about that big. pulling things down, using that master volume on your pack, and leaving plenty of headroom on your augs, it's easier with stereo, it's harder with mono. those sorts of things, like if anyone's listening, how to get a better in ear experience. that's been my experience so far.

Justin Chan: 1:12:25

Can I share a quick tip with HX Stomp or Helix?

Joe Miller: 1:12:28

Yeah,

Justin Chan: 1:12:29

so with the HX Stomp, you have the option of decoupling the volume control knob from the level you send with the outputs. So, what we can do with the outputs is the outputs will send line level at max volume and the volume knob only affects the headphone. So what I've been doing sometimes, when I don't get a good mix is that I have, those headphone splitters, that I will, create a more me mix. So I will connect an aux out from the HX storm, to together with my in ear mix. cause I have a live, I have a, yeah, I have a live, What's the live mix station and I, as long as I route them correctly, I'm able to have a more me mix using the headphone output on the HX top, which is the final element in my signature anyway. So that, that gives me total control. So what I hear in my ears is completely the same as what I hear back home.

Joe Miller: 1:13:18

Yeah. Make sure you turn down your ME, do a mix minus on what they're sending back to you.

Justin Chan: 1:13:26

Oh, yeah. Yeah. so consequently, yes, in the IEM mix, I do, I will turn down my, my, electric guitar. And, because it's a shared, live station. Live mix station. they always, everyone doesn't like their guitar. They turn the, they turn it down, way down, like just wrong.

Joe Miller: 1:13:40

They miss the blessing

Matthew Dale: 1:13:43

That is one of my favorite features about the line six stuff is the fact that you can. Remove what that output knob because I've, going back and forth from being, different guitar players on a weekend to me coming in on a weekend, whatever those channels are always turned up way more because someone is using a helix and they have the output really far down low because that's what they're, if you're plugging into like their FRFRs at home, it's really loud here, so I'll turn down and you go and you have no signal when you go into a front of house system. And then I come in, I'm sending line level. this huge amount of volume that comes in. They always, you're really turned up really loud. Actually, you're turned up really loud and you need to turn down. These are the things that go through my head when I'm setting up

Jason Houstma: 1:14:22

sometimes. Yeah. The whole front of house thing is interesting in church world, because there's some, I don't know what it is, man. I swear everywhere I've ever played, the sound guy is just that's his little fiefdom and he's a little mad all the time and he's really sure of himself. And he doesn't, and it inevitably doesn't sound very good. And, like I think zooming out as we, when we're, the question, he had the question about like working with front of house. It's like treating the sound engineers like pastorally as part of the band

Joe Miller: 1:14:54

and

Jason Houstma: 1:14:54

recognizing that we're all on the same team and We're trying to get a good sound, you're trying to get a good sound, and you know what, Matthew's got some good ideas about what's wrong with this, and that's okay, getting some humility built into that arrangement, and it's difficult, especially if you're having different people all the time, but a lot of times it's there's kind of these undercurrents of bitterness and pride, all this stuff built in there and just being able to go, Hey man, we're all trying to lift up Jesus. Trying to make some good sounds like I can learn from you. You can learn from me. High five.

Joe Miller: 1:15:25

Yeah. the other thing it's in smaller churches in particular too, is that tends to be a position where they, all the Sunday morning experience gets to be thrown on them. That's not on stage. So at least at our church, a smaller church. down here in Florida. That's what's going on with that individual. He's a young guy, but he also has to make sure he has all the tables and chairs set up in the foyer. He's got to make sure that all the classrooms are ready to go. He's like the detail, he gets the last minute PowerPoint or slides to push up for the pastor, so they're under a lot of pressure and they typically don't have any training. And what they're doing. And so the other part of being on the same team, I think Jason is also advocating for them to get training and, and just say, we really need to invest in this person. This person is critical, And yeah, but a hundred percent agree. Sometimes we're a little rough on them because we get frustrated.

Jason Houstma: 1:16:20

you will always get way more value, way more ROI on investing in people rather than other things. So training people, building relationship is always going to get you way further than, the next big speaker or, we've got a bigger fog machine or whatever it is.

Joe Miller: 1:16:37

guys, we've been going for an hour and a half. That's, that was our target time. I wanted to just, pivot and see if you have any final thoughts, that you think could be good to share. This is a weird mashup, but, it's been great. I think we've got a lot of connection points here. We've, I helped me pull together some of the threads. We talked about not getting distracted by all the gear and all the shiny light syndrome, understanding that there isn't really a shortcut. In being prepared, you need to be prepared spiritually for Sunday too. and that kind of dovetails into the other thread that came in is, it's serving the song like in any kind of a musical ensemble, but it's also serving in a whole other different dimension and making sure the message is heard clearly through the lyrics, but also that we're serving the environment to help people approach their Lord. What are the things to be caught up with? Don't worry about the box or what we were talking about, the other musical things, but help me pull together a summary here, if you would.

Sam Wittek: 1:17:38

Yeah. Use a lot of reverb.

Joe Miller: 1:17:41

Oh, that's what worship is. Just all that washy stuff.

Matthew Dale: 1:17:43

that's pretty much it. Especially if you have a big room, you need more of it.

Joe Miller: 1:17:47

More is

Jason Houstma: 1:17:48

less.

Tyler Miller: 1:17:50

That's right.

Jason Houstma: 1:17:53

I think one of the big things is just you gotta work with what you have, right? Like we, we don't all have all the stuff, but worship music, like leading worship. is accessible to everyone. It totally is. Like you can sit there with a out of tune guitar and you can lead worship. That's a doable thing. It might not sound great and you might want to get better, but it's like God is accessible. And he will work miracles in the listener's ears. And it's a, yeah, it's not just we all love music. We're all super passionate about music. That's what we enjoy doing. And it is supposed to be fun and like fulfilling and all those things. But it's our God is accessible. That's the craziest thing. And just remember, remembering that, as people, I think too, in, in leadership and the things that we do to be inviters and be welcomers and just like, how do we help? How do we help you in? How do we help you get in? let's help this win. Cause we, the more, the merrier, amen.

Joe Miller: 1:18:43

Charl,

Jason Houstma: 1:18:44

you have any

Joe Miller: 1:18:44

closing thoughts? It's late there.

Charl Coetzee: 1:18:47

Yeah, no worries. No, it was great. A great discussion. And I like what Jason is saying here as well. At the end of the day. It comes down to us just understanding our role there because, it's not like we send a rider and you get to the venue and if the stuff is not there, you can, make a scene about it. that's not the way the Kingdom works. So we've got to go there with, Servant's hearts and be open to, whatever challeng it is we might deal with When it's volunteers, it's different levels of skill. It's different levels of equipment. And I think if your heart attitude is the right way and you work on your people skills and make the main thing, then God can do awesome stuff. But I think it's when we take it a little bit too serious. then we can lose the plot. So I think it's important to keep your heart right amidst all those challenges, then God can still move. because that's why the word even says, above all things, God your heart. And I think that helps a worship guitarist, right? So if your tone is not quite right off the sound guide, put some stuff in your, on your channel that you didn't like, there's different ways to respond to it. And I think it's a big challenge and we can definitely learn by dealing, leaning more on the Holy Spirit to help us. How do we solve this? How do we respond to this? And at the end of the day, I think that will serve the body of Christ in a much deeper way than trying to be a little bit more pedantic about stuff that has to be the right way. Even though we'd love it like that, it's a, the word we started at the beginning is saying it's being adaptable. So that will serve you super well.

Justin Chan: 1:20:14

I think I'd like to have a closing summary thought for different child. I liked his, I really love his analogy of the slingshot and having your personal slingshot. what's your slingshot versus the standardized military equipment that you see out there. And I think it's important for busho guitar players to realize that they have a unique voice. They have a unique, they've been made uniquely. And so they've got a voice to contribute to their ministry. So it's not about chasing after the big names. Dusenberg and the$10,000 paddle board. But if God has called you into a place where to serve him, you, if you just need an ivanez and a hundred dollars war pedal, let that be your, let that be the personal sink shot. Let if that exhausting shot, use that in shot to, to, yeah. to serve the Lord with

Joe Miller: 1:21:03

Amen. Amen. Great. Great work.

Matthew Dale: 1:21:06

And I would say that vocationally, as Joe, you've put this podcast together to, to, take people from one career into the next career, looking for something that is, a better fit, or they have a better calling to do, we're all here as musicians, because there's something within us that just calls us to music, that calls us into this thing. And it's really easy for us to. have these conversations. It's really easy for us to be really involved and I think that's a big thing where we can always get into the minutiae of, what effect settings, what, what part to play, this, that, and the other thing, we can ruminate on all those things, but living Within what it is that you're called to do and continuously doing it and going the distance and, worrying more now, I guess worrying isn't the word, but pursuing it over a longer period of time more day after day is much better than seeking perfection before you go do the thing. So even if someone is starting a brand new vocation and they're really, worried about this sort of thing, it's better to be just really involved in the process. And do what you can with what you got and then enjoy as much as you can, not that, that we don't have days that, we feel like our work, I'm sure we all have days where this feels like work today, but at the end of the day, I would assume that we all love music and doing what we do so much that we can enjoy the process going throughout and don't get too held up on seeking perfection. You're

Joe Miller: 1:22:38

not going to get there. Tyler, any closing thoughts?

Tyler Miller: 1:22:42

Dang, I don't know what to add there. Y'all have, don't have to. Practice that guitar.

Joe Miller: 1:22:47

Yeah, there you go. I will say it's been a real joy for me to have you guys together. I appreciate you, having the hearts you do to serve the Lord and being sensitive to that. that talent that the Lord has given you, the parable of the talents, that you're getting maximum gain out of it for the kingdom of God. So with that guys, God bless. And, Get ready for Sunday. And Jason, you got to hit a thousand tutorials before you complain, at least, right?

Jason Houstma: 1:23:17

you

Joe Miller: 1:23:17

it this

Jason Houstma: 1:23:17

way. I've done an acoustic lesson. Oh, that's for everyone. So technically it's more like 1400. There you go.

Tyler Miller: 1:23:25

I'm playing a new song Sunday. How quick can you get a video up?

Jason Houstma: 1:23:29

What's the song? He's probably got it.

Tyler Miller: 1:23:31

Another one. Elevation. Oh gosh.

Jason Houstma: 1:23:34

I'm literally working on that this week. All right, so you guys have each other's emails. Send

Tyler Miller: 1:23:39

it over before Sunday if you got it. All right,

Jason Houstma: 1:23:42

guys.

Tyler Miller: 1:23:43

This

Jason Houstma: 1:23:43

was really cool. God bless, stay in

Joe Miller: 1:23:46

touch. God bless, thanks so much for having me on. See you guys. All right, bye bye guys.