End The Awkward Silence: Ambient Drone Pads For Worship
The uncomfortable coughs and sniffles seemed amplified by a factor of 100, babies that I didn’t even know were in the room started crying, and I think I heard someone say “how much longer will this last”.
No - it’s not the waiting room of the Urgent Care - it was my song transitions when I started leading worship. Last week I wrote about the importance of intentional song to song transitions during our worship services and how a poor transition can pop the balloon and steal all your momentum (check it out here). But what do you do when you’re leading all by yourself? Maybe you’re in a smaller church, have team members out of town, or you just find yourself leading with a really small band.
Please learn from my pain and agony and END THE AWKWARD SILENCE!
The Early (Awkward) Days
When I started leading worship our church was a brand new church plant (aka really really really really small). Did I mention it was small? The “worship team” was me and one of my buddies (that I begged to come help me!) and both of us played guitar. We were really novice at that time - I could barely play and sing at the same time and I don’t think he could play and stand at the same time. We were young, hungry, and determined, but really green.
We discovered the GOLDEN KEY TO LEADING WORSHIP FROM A GUITAR early on. Can you guess what that is???? THE CAPO. You can literally play 1,000s of worship songs with 4 chords and a capo. G D Em C for days!
Despite our best capo’d efforts we still ran into trouble when transitioning from one song to the next - aka moving the capo. Even though we got really smooth at changing the capo position and key those moments between songs often felt like and eternity. We hadn’t learned the tricks I mentioned last week yet so I did everything you don’t want to do including praying between every single song, saying strange things, rushing through transitions and starting singing in the wrong key, you name it we butchered it. Those seconds between songs seemed to kill all of our momentum and we could feel the mounting awkward silence and tension in the room.
The Anti-Awkward Silence Secret Weapon
Then something changed and I stumbled upon a secret weapon that I call the “Anti Awkward Silence Worship Weapon”. I don’t even remember when or where I made this discovery, but when I did our worship game went to the next level. This discovery that changed everything was - AMBIENT DRONE PADS. Drone pads are atmospheric keyboard type sounds that offer a constant “droning” note (or multiple notes) in the same key. These pads are pre-recorded WAV or MP3 files that can be loaded into a computer, iPhone, iPad, tablet, or in my case an original iPod (this was 15 years ago). These drone pads are specific to the key of the song, but not the tempo of the song (you don’t need a click, or in ears to follow along). They are typically about 10 minutes long so you can play a full song without running out of time. Think of drone pads as a warm blanket that your song can sit on top of.
Pads to the Rescue!!
At first, I created my own drone pads using some free software I had on my computer. As I mentioned I used my iPod to play my drone pads back through the sound system. I used a simple 1/8 inch to stereo XLR cable and plugged right into our stage snake that ran directly to our sound system. Instantly we had this nice foundation to play on top of and it really helped with song transitions. I could simply track forward on my iPod and we were on to the next song. Voila - no more awkward silence between songs, no more feeling like I had to rush to do the transitions faster than I wanted to, and it even covered up the sound of people sniffling and coughing between songs.
Ambient pads have come a long way since my early days and you can find them all over the internet. There’s even apps for your phone to trigger pads. You can play them from your computer via iTunes or any audio playback program. You can load them into software like Ableton Live or MainStage and trigger them with a midi controller. PRO TIP - add a light reverb with a 5-second decay and your pads will fade out rather than abruptly stopping when you hit stop.
There’s some great places out there if you’re interested in buying great pads check out www.worshiptutorials.com or www.coresoundpads.com. Core Sound Pads also has a mobile device app that you can play the pads back on.
Everyone Loves FREE STUFF
Buying stuff is fine, but free stuff is better. I’m giving away my ambient drone pads for free just for signing up for the mailing list. Drop your email address in the box below and I’ll email you the pads (don’t worry I won’t spam you - I just don’t have time for that and you don’t either).
These are not my original pads, but a couple generations later. I still use the pads for worship at my church (in fact I used them this weekend in church). I use them when I lead by myself with guitar or piano and I use them when I have a full band. It just helps glue everything together and keep a nice foundational layer going - freeing up the band to not always be playing.
I highly recommend using ambient pads to help fill the space between songs and smooth things over. They really helped me overcome a major hurdle early on in my worship leading days and took my song transitions to a whole new level.