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 any other time.  At any other time you really can just flub your way around it but when you are playing for a congregation who is singing along to your playing and then you a) get lost and don’t remember for several moments where you are within in the music b)forget what the song sounds like entirely c)give an intro with the wrong tempo.   Then you know because of piano mistakes…

It’s one of the reasons you practice.

One of the reasons you may want to learn about chord patterns or progressions in music, which ones are most likely and which ones are in the songs you are playing.

It’s one of the reasons you may want to learn to play by ear.

It’s one of the reasons that even though you play fabulously by ear, just as the musicians I’ve spotted on the numerous Gaither tapes I own you may want to have a lead sheet available in case you flub up.

It’s the reason it’s a good idea to make notations on your lead sheets…in red.

Flub ups are likely. It’s how you come out of them that matters.

More tips to avoid mistakes:

• Practice. This of course you already know.
• Practice and pay particular attention to the sections where you seem to have a bit of difficulty. When you have mastered them then play through the whole song again.
• Practice the song with hands apart.
• Use a metronome and practice the song at tempo.
• Practice again

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. If you play for other services, such as Wednesday group etc. make a separate for each type of service.
A list of musical selections from which to choose your musical selection. There is so much worship music available these days that any one compilation of music can limit you severely. Many church services have a blended type service and play both old hymns, and contemporary worship music.

Once you have created your list and form it’s time to start working on selection.
First and foremost pray. God doesn’t make mistakes. Maybe this Sunday He will lead you to play a piece that will speak to someone particularly needing encouragement.

Next What type of service is this? Are you choosing songs for Mother’s Day service? You may a list of songs already for Mother’s Day and it is a matter for picking from that list.

Then what Sunday morning’s sermon theme? The pastor should have shared this with you. This is a good time to have a song concordance. I use this one which is a companion to Sing to the Lord Hymnal. The song titles are indexed by theme and scripture. While I play songs that are not listed in this resource it still helps because the vast amount of song titles it does have.

Now you need to look at the area of the service in which you are choosing songs for. Such as prelude, offertory, the actual worship portion, call to prayer etc. Here you will may have a set of songs you always use for such times as offertory and call tow worship. Be sure to pick appropriate tempo’s.

Finally, and I think this is important for a solo musician whether a small or large church. Can you play the song? Maybe the song seems perfect but if you haven’t perfected your playing of it mark it as one to learn and move on to one where you will not struggle so much with the technicalities you miss out on the worship.

God lead you and guide you on your worship planning.

This works quite nicely when you are first starting to play accompaniment piano but as your skill at the piano increases you may find yourself wanting to do a bit more for an introduction.

Some Tips:

• If you are moving from an upbeat tempo to a slow worshipful song take the time to convey the theme, mood and new tempo. This can take longer than the usual 4 measures but it will help you and the congregation to slow things down and be in a more reverent mood.

• Listen to how other pianists begin songs and see if you can figure out the chord progressions they are using and how maybe you can borrow from that.

• Don’t get too fancy or too busy with your introductions. You are attempting to accompany not drown out.

• When practicing a song practice the introduction too and make notes in your music if you play with sheet music or a lead sheet.

• Make sure your introduction is evident and don’t ‘suprise’ your singers with a new one if it is different from what you normally do. Play it for a few Sundays during times such as offertory, prelude, etc.

Not just your knowledge of chords, how to form them, and sheets music, but also how fast your fingers are on the piano how well the music is coming forth from your own hands and so forth.

Yes there is. You can exercise your fingers.

Not a new idea in the world of piano playing exercises for your fingers dates well back into the 1800’s when classical composers such as Hanon and Czerny put together several series of exercises designed to improve the strength, movement, agility of each of the individual fingers and as groupings also.

In addition to having hand posture and correct fingering developing your finger’s agility and strength and flexibility can have a dramatic impression on your piano playing.

As the owner of small woman’s hands I often stared in envy at the octave and above reach of male pianists. I really felt I could never do that and if so it would not be comfortable.

Many years later, and having spent some focused time on strengthening my fingers reaching an octave is no longer a problem. And it happened very quickly.

To start receiving the benefits of regular finger strength exercises add a few minutes of this to your piano practice each day. You can find finger exercises for the pianist’s hands in the resources below.

Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist, Complete Edition By Charles-Louis Hanon. Edited by Robert Heath. For Piano. FJH Classic Editions. Traditional Studies. Book. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc. (H1006) See more info…

Practical Finger Exercises, Op. 802 (Complete) Piano Technique. By Carl Czerny. For piano solo. This edition: LB192. Piano Method. 68 pages. Published by G. Schirmer, Inc. (50253360) See more info…

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 I mess up a lot.

2. Even though it’s not going to happen overnight each step you take at improving your piano playing will help you along the way and you should notice immediate results.

3. 15 minutes every day at the  piano in much better than 5 hours for one day a week. if you haven’t been playing every day try it and see if it doesn’t make a difference in your piano playing.

4. Try focusing on one key a month. Learn the scale, chords, and their progressions. Play songs in that key at your practice time. Focus on perfecting one or two songs in that key. I got the base of this idea from Duane Shinn.

5. Even if you are learning chord piano take the time to practice playing from sheet music. Work at improvising hymns from your hymnal or try your hand at some harder sheet music.

6. You are always learning when you play an instrument. Never think that you are done learning. Keep seeking new ways to improve.

But unlike me Greg Howlett has the skills and education to provide church pianists with a piano improvisational product designed to give you those tools you need to upgrade your Sunday morning performance on all songs not just one.

As a very talented church pianist himself (listen to some of the audios and view the clip at greghowlett.com) Greg understands the needs of church pianists.

Enter Inspirational Improvisation: A Nine Step Approach to Becoming a Versatile Church Pianist. A piano lesson program Greg has designed specifically for church pianists to not just to show you how great one hymn is when improvised upon but to teach you the concepts of improvisation to apply to any hymn or song you wish.

Inspirational Improvisation is designed to be used as if you were taking a piano class. Nine lessons equal nine months of getting your hands, and ears familiar with the concepts needed to improvise at the piano the songs and hymns you play each Sunday from your hymnal or songbook.

This piano DVD program is ideal for intermediate to advanced piano players who may have the basic concepts of piano playing down but want to improve their sound and know how improvise songs. You will learn music theory and how to apply it. In other words Theory and Application.

What you get

• 5 DVDs with a total of  six hours of piano improvisational lessons.
• An accompanying booklet outlining the concepts in each lesson to reinforce what you are hearing.  And your homework assignment for each concept.

With many of my learn to play piano courses while I may have learned to play the particular song the pianist performed I was rarely if ever given the concepts behind what was being played. And if I was it was only in relation to that one song so unless I knew my theory backwards and forwards it was difficult to translate to the songs I really wanted to improvise on. This was extremely frustrating.

That is what differentiates Inspirational Improvisation. Greg has taken the steps to show the why and the how of improvisational concepts so I can apply it to any song I want to improvise.

Starting with lesson one Greg Howlett’s lesson approach is to familiarize you with several of the most common complex chords used in Praise and Worship music. These are the chords that add feeling and depth to songs of praise and in order to apply them when you want and to whatever song you want you need to become familiar with them.

In lesson two you begin to learn how to apply improvising techniques to songs of your own choosing.  You learn how to transform those tired old triad (3) note chords you’ve been leaning on too long into fuller richer variations of 7th chords.

Then the fun begins. Thank you Greg you have created a program that is badly needed!  Greg begins to show you how and where you might change out some of the regular chords in the song of your choice. How and where! Where in (insert hymn name here ) can I change the chord to give a richer deeper sound? You will start to learn the rules and ideas behind how songs are improvised on.

After each lesson you are presented with a homework assignment to be worked on each night. While you may only need to view the lesson once it would make sense to watch it several times during the month of the lesson you are in.

It is recommended to stay on a lesson for a full month. It is this amount of time that allows you to not just learn but become very familiar with the concept you are learning and therefore be able to use it at any time.

These improvisational techniques and sounds will work well on older hymns and contemporary Praise and Worship songs mostly. While some pianists may look for styles such as Black Gospel and Southern Gospel Inspirational Improvisation is not designed to teach you a certain style but instead how to develop your own.

This isn’t an overnight piano improvisation program. I doubt anyone can teach you to play with feeling and understanding in 24 hours. As a church pianist if you can devote 30 minutes of your day to bettering your piano playing and you know you want to change the sound of that old hymn(insert name here) then this program is for you.

This is not a program for beginning pianists. You already should be familiar with basic music theory, all 12 keys of the Circle of Fifths and be able to play out of a hymnal.

I’ve been working with Inspirational Improvisation for a few weeks now and I really like and appreciate the way this program is laid out.

Each night after dinner is my “piano school” time. If I need to refresh I watch the part of the DVD I need to review before moving to the piano. I spend about 15 minutes going over the homework before moving on to other items in my practice time.

Greg goes over each concept in detail. The lessons are effective and I’m already getting some extra comments in church even though I’ve been disciplined and keeping myself with lesson one until a month passes. Meaning I’m only on lesson one and it’s having an impact.

I highly recommend this piano course. I used to look for piano workshops covering just these topics. If you are still a struggling church pianist and you would like to improve your piano performance each Sunday this Piano Course is for you.

You can purchase it directly from Greg’s website here.

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 church service today we have silence during communion and then after it is taken we sing a rousing rendition of “There is Power in the Blood”. I play guitar for this.

During the entire service at various intervals and during the Praise and Worship we sing of the price paid for our sins with many other songs.

Since there are many songs fitting for communion I had to get organized. To prepare for this special service I have put together a series of some (operative word some) songs that are fitting to play at this time.

It helps tremendously to have this list of songs prepared in advance and set up in their own notebook for quick access.

Below is my song list for communion along with notes on where the songs my sound best, the tempo and what songbooks in my collection they are in.

As I like to always say… This list is in no way exhaustive. These are just the ones I currently play. Our church sings a mix of traditional, gospel, and earlier contemporary (1990’s).

• There is Power in the Blood – Good for congregation or solo. Can be played uptempo (fast) or slow well. (Gospel’s Greatest Fake Book)
• Nothing but the Blood – Good for congregation or solo. Can be played uptempo or slow well. (The Hymn Fake Book)
• Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees – Good for congregational singing. Slower tempo. (The African American Heritage Hymnal)
• Oh, The Blood of Jesus – Good for congregational singing. Slower tempo. (The African American Heritage Hymnal)
• The Blood Will Never Lose It’s Power – Good for solo. Slow tempo (Gospel’s Greatest Fake Book)
• It’s Your Blood – Good for solo. Slow Tempo (The Best of the Best in Contemporary Song and Worship)
• By Your Blood (Funk)- Good for congregation. Slow Tempo (The Best of the Best in Contemporary Song and Worship and Hosannah! Music Songbook 6)
• By Your Blood (Grondin/Hamlin)- Good for congregation. Slow Tempo (Hosannah! Music Songbook 6)
• Come to the Table – Good for solo. Slow Tempo. (Hosannah! Music Songbook 6)
• Remember Me – Good for solo. Slow Tempo. (Hosannah! Music Songbook 6)

She would grill me on what chord I was looking at in each beat of the measure. I really really disliked this part of my training but it was invaluable.You see the music in a hymnal is really boring. If you play it as written it seems choppy and void of feeling. That’s because it’s written for singers not for pianists.

Once you know what chord you are seeing you can then arpeggiate, add a chord progression or other little melody fillers when appropriate.

In piano music most people find that playing chords is easier. Why? I’m not sure but I guess somehow seeing that little letter at the top of a piece of sheet of music just puts people at ease. It could be that you recognize what you need to play as a group that your hand has already memorized. Your hand can form that chord faster than you can think about it but if they are just separate notes your brain must think about each note as an individual and that can be a little taxing.

You don’t get the chords in your music with the older hymnals (you may with the newer ones) so it is pretty nice to be able see those notes in the music and instantly know what chord you are looking at.

Being able to play from a hymnal makes sense and is a good idea for whatever situation you may be thrown into.

Here are some great places to start learning to play from a hymnal.

1. Greg Howlett Free Church Piano Lessons (this is a very nice site and well done)
2. Henry Slaughter introduces playing out of a hymnal in book 3 of his 6 book series. These are harder to find these days but you can get some on  (You can see and hear Henry playing on some of the older Gaither Homecoming videos).
3. Hymnproviser series. Just that, improvising out of a hymnal.