When it comes to leading worship, having your music memorized has some major benefits. It helps you be more engaged in what you're doing because you aren't worried about reading from a piece of paper the whole time. Plus, it forces you to be more prepared because you have to spend a little extra time learning the song.
However, getting into the process of having your music memorized can be tricky. And it seems intimidating if you haven't done it before.
Here are 3 tips for memorizing your music:
1️⃣ Memorize sections of songs
When people start out memorizing their music, they get intimidated by the big picture. They think, "by the end of this process, I'm going to have to have every single chord memorized." The truth is: it's not as much work as it seems. Chord progressions repeat themselves not only per section of the song (ie. every chorus uses the same chord progression) - but they also repeat WITHIN the sections themselves. Look at the chords to a chorus - chances are it's the same few chords repeated over and over again.
You can use this to your advantage. Instead of memorizing each individual chord of a song - memorize sections of songs.
2️⃣ Use the Nashville Number System
You've already got the chords to one key memorized but if you want to play the song in a different key - do you have to learn a whole new set of chords? Not necessarily. That's where the Nashville Number System comes in.
The Nashville Number System allows you to learn the number of the chords in a song (ie. the one chord, four chord, five chord, etc.) And then you can use those numbers to figure out the chords in any key you want.
3️⃣ Practice practice practice
Finally, this DOES take time. Memorizing your music is a skill you have to put time into learning. Start slow - commit to memorizing one part of a song and not using your music when you lead worship. From there, slowly work up until you have a whole song memorized. Then add another song... and another... until eventually you have your whole set memorized.
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5 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Worship Leading
FREE AUDIO TRAINING: Discover 5 simple tips that will instantly improve your worship leading.