It’s bound to happen. Nobody is perfect. We all have flaws and we all make flubs. Every musician makes a flub the key is how do you come out of it?
Piano mistakes when you are the sole musician who is playing for a congregation seem to be a bit more noticeable (to me) than at [...]

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The songs you prayerfully choose for Sunday morning worship are dependent upon many factors.
To begin with you should work on creating to forms to help you put together Sunday morning worship.
A worship planning sheet. This sheet or form should be a layout of your worship service with slots for you to plug in your selections. [...]

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I find one of the most frustrating things to do when playing the piano for congregational singing is the introduction.
Beginning the song with the right tempo and just enough of a tune to help the singer’s tune into the song to be sung has always been a bit of a struggle with me.
The easiest way [...]

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Greg Howlett is offering visitors a free limited download from his latest CD Portraits of home. Featuring renditions of such favorites as It is Well, To God Be the Glory and more. Enjoy the lovely music of a talented Christian concert pianist. Ends July 24, 2009

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My slight arranging and improvisational skills, be they what they may, came about from necessity. When I started playing the piano I did not play by ear and many of the songs that the pastor wanted to sing in church I could only find in lead sheet format. Or chord symbols above the lyrics.
My piano [...]

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Once you get started playing the piano, unless you already have a set system working at your speed an dexterity, you may come to wonder if there is something you can do to improve your piano playing.
Not just your knowledge of chords, how to form them, and sheets music, but also how fast your fingers [...]

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1. Pray before your practice time and before you play on Sunday.
2. Warm hands make for better playing. If you play in a cold building run your hands under warm water, and rub them briskly before heading up to the piano. If I try to play with cold hands on Sunday they are stiff and [...]

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Like me Greg Howlett was becoming increasingly frustrated to find that piano improvisational DVD courses only offered you an overhead view of what the pianist was playing. No real concrete information and theory examples to help you apply these same techniques to whatever song you chose to play. Mostly just fancy playing and a lot [...]

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Come first Sunday it is nice to have a set of special songs to sing of Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary.
Back when I was growing up the song to be played during communion was “Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees”. The pianist would play and everyone would sing while communion was being given.
In our [...]

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One of the first things my piano teacher worked on teaching me was to be able to play from a hymnal. Being able to improvise out of a hymnal is a very good idea for a church pianist. Written for singers singing four part harmony a lot of what is sung in Christian churches are [...]

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