Music Selection

[worshiprod]

Just wondering what your music selection looks like? In other words how many songs are readily available for you to choose from for you set list? What's your process to add and take away from that list?

[efrisch]

I would say that at any given point, we probably have about 50 songs in our regular rotation. That's not any kind of dictated number, just the way it works out. Our addition and subtraction process is pretty natural... we add new songs (or re-add songs we haven't played in a long time) whenever something really feels like a great fit for our congregation, or occasionally a specific series. When I and our other worship leaders haven't scheduled a song for a service in a long time, it falls out of rotation. Again, none of this is anything that we do intentionally, but it is what our process looks like.

[mikeymo1741]

We used to keep an actual list of songs, which fluctuated from 75 to 100. We found that kind of stifling.

Right now I have 146 songs with arrangements/keys in Planning Center. We probably heavy rotate 80, with another 40 in occasional use, and the rest are special occasion. (Christmas, Easter, etc...) We tend to have fairly large sets : an opening song, four or five in the main set, and one during the offering.

[efrisch]

We tend to have fairly large sets : an opening song, four or five in the main set, and one during the offering.

That's an important factor in library size that I failed to mention. A normal week for us is only 4 tunes.

[Cindy]

I have been reading here at The Worship Community for several months, but this is my first time to post. I just wanted to share what has worked well for us.

Our church has responded well to having a "song of the month". We currently have about 125 active songs, but there are some that we feel need to be phased out. Instead of dropping a chunk of songs, we decided to start replacing them with good quality, Christ centered songs, one month at a time.

We choose 12 new songs at the beginning of a year and assign them a month. During the month of May, we put May's song in EVERY Sunday morning set somewhere. This helps us feel comfortable that all members of our congregation are hearing and learning the song. (We were caught off guard a couple of years ago by how many people "didn't know that song" even though it was one we sang often.) We also have the new song's title/artist put in the bulletin every Sunday, as well as where they can go to listen or download.

[billy4t]

We've got about 100 songs in Planning Center but we have a core songs group of 26 songs that we will almost always pick at least 2 of our 4 weekly songs from. We don't introduce more than 1 new song a month. We musicians tire so quickly of songs the congregation is just getting to know...

[milepost13]

I have a general rule - the number of songs we use per week multiplied by ten. For us, that is 6-7, which means we usually have 60-70 songs in our repertoire. This equation seems to work really well for us. Once we've phased out a song from our repertoire, it goes into a file I call "back burner"...these are songs we no longer use regularly but that we could pull out with short notice if needed because our band already knows them...I only dig into this file a few times a year, however.

Nate

[mikeymo1741]

I have been reading here at The Worship Community for several months, but this is my first time to post. I just wanted to share what has worked well for us.

Our church has responded well to having a "song of the month". We currently have about 125 active songs, but there are some that we feel need to be phased out. Instead of dropping a chunk of songs, we decided to start replacing them with good quality, Christ centered songs, one month at a time.

We choose 12 new songs at the beginning of a year and assign them a month. During the month of May, we put May's song in EVERY Sunday morning set somewhere. This helps us feel comfortable that all members of our congregation are hearing and learning the song. (We were caught off guard a couple of years ago by how many people "didn't know that song" even though it was one we sang often.) We also have the new song's title/artist put in the bulletin every Sunday, as well as where they can go to listen or download.

Having a system is good. For us, anyone on the team (or off) can suggest a song. If someone on the team wants to try a song, we ask they bring a recording, lyrics and either bring a chart, or give me a heads up so I can get a chart. We will listen to it, read it, decide if it fits us, and give it a whirl in rehearsal. Usually we will spend a couple of weeks with it before introducing it to the congregation.

When that happens, I like to do the 2-1-1 method. (Run it week 1 and 2, off week 3, on week 4) By the end of the month, we have a pretty good feel if it's a good fit or not.