Guitar In The Church 9: Kevin Twit Of Indelible Grace Talks With Sojourn's Mike Cosper, pt 2

In today’s churches, the guitar is coming to dominate the landscape in the same way that the piano and organ once did. It’s important that as church musicians we give great care and thought to our guitar playing – everything from chord voicings to tones – so that the instrument is a servant of the congregation, not the star and not the distraction. Each week on Sojournmusic.com, Pastor Mike Cosper will post a guitarist’s feature, which will range from articles to links, online lessons and interviews.  Here, Mike concludes his two-part interview with Kevin Twit, the founder of Indelible Grace:

M.C.    What common mistakes or poor decisions do you see guitarists making in church contexts? What remedies would you recommend?

K.T.     I think one thing I would encourage is to make the beat very clear to those trying to follow you. Sometimes good guitarists will use strum patterns that are too complicated. I am thankful for my background in playing guitar at Young Life meetings because it helped me learn to keep it simple and solid.

I think about what a drummer with a kick and snare would do and what a bassist would do and incorporate that in how I approach playing acoustic guitar. I also generally think two acoustic guitars will make the beat less clear and the same is true with using too many instruments. I also find guitar players leading worship often don’t give any kind of clue, musically or visually, as to when the next verse will begin. If you are going to lead, then lead. I also think using effects rarely if ever makes an acoustic guitar sound better. Throw away your chorus and your reverb and try to get the richest full sound you can from the instrument itself.

We do this regular series because guitar – in many contexts – is replacing the piano and organ as the primary instrument for accompaniment in the church. What do you see as the good and bad of this shift?

Good question. I don’t think you can make much a Biblical case for piano or organ instead of guitar – each of them have their advantages and disadvantages. For one thing, it is prohibitively expensive for a new church plant to invest in an organ.  And using piano at an RUF meeting where we sometimes have to change rooms etc. doesn’t always work out.

I think that modern music is more based on rhythm and groove and the guitar can generally do this better than piano – unless you’ve got a great piano player. Guitar usually won’t overwhelm the singers as an organ can do. But then guitar can be limited harmonically – you can’t always pull off the inner harmonies of traditional hymn block chord style on guitar – unless you are changing chords on every beat – and that is tough to do with any kind of musicality.

I enjoy traditional organ and piano worship – but it isn’t realistic in my context of working with college students to have an organ – and even the keyboardists in our group tend to balk at lugging a heavy keyboard and amp to our RUF meetings. When we did the first Indelible Grace CD the studio we worked at didn’t have a piano – so there isn’t much keyboard work on the record.

For Dear Refuge we had to sneak into the teaching studio of one of our students who taught piano at Vanderbilt – but we had to record it during the lunch hour while the other teachers were gone because we were in this hallway with all these other piano studios and you could hear them in the room where we were. We barely got the take before the teachers all came back and resumed their lessons!

Anyway, back to your question. Another good thing about guitar is that it is easier to pick up and learn a few chords – and so you don’t need to be as proficient on the instrument to help God’s people join in worship. And you can fairly easily involve other portable instruments with you, like percussion, mandolin, other strings etc. I also like the sound to be a sound that invites people in rather than being a sound that pushes them back due to it being overwhelming.

What are some other things that guitarists should look out for?

I think sometimes guitar players can strum in ways that are too complicated, and obscure the groove. I try to get guitarists to focus on rhythm and laying down a good groove with their strum. I think being a Young Life guitar player helped me with this. When you have to get 100 high school kids rocking in a living room to old Motown songs (my high school Young Life leader was a Motown freak), then you can to learn how to incorporate the bass line and the kick and snare pattern into what you are playing on the guitar. I really try to think of the bass guitar as well as the kick and snare when I am playing solo acoustic guitar.

As far as electric guitar, I think most people play too loud and there is this tendency in Christian music to use this cheesy 90s overdrive sound that (for me) instantly stamps it as typical Christian music production. We try to avoid that guitar sound like the plague on our Indelible Grace CDs. I think less overdrive is always best – and it will sound bigger on a record too.  That great AC/DC tone is actually not very distorted at all.

Playing your pedals and knowing how to use your different guitars and amps as an orchestrator is something you need to practice and work on as well. In my current context, at City Church of East Nashville, we are trying to incorporate a black gospel sound and that has me going back and digging out my R&B chops from Berklee College days.

But I am finding that not all the guitar players around here have much variety of styles in their background. I would say, try to get a great grounding in the blues and learn some jazz and funk and country so that you can incorporate all of that stuff in your playing. I find a lot of guitarists are pretty limited in their vocabulary – especially younger players.

Are there any resources you’d recommend to guitarists wanting to step up their game (educational books, DVD’s, etc?)

Berklee College of Music has so much of their stuff online. I think they have a great approach. You really need to learn all your notes on the fretboard and you should learn how to read music. The best thing though is listening to records and trying to play along.

But vary the stuff you listen to. Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn, and listen to George Benson (his Breezin’ record is great for starting to play jazz – as are the various Grant Green records.) Those old video lessons they had out in the 80s were really helpful too. And then get together and play with other musicians. One of the best thing about Berklee was that they had something like thirty ensemble rooms, with a piano, guitar amp and bass amp in each one. And every one of them could be signed out for two hours to gather some guys and just play together. I think most great players have been through a season of playing at least six hours a day – there are just certain plateaus as a player I don’t think you will reach any other way.

Who are your top five favorite players?

Larry Carlton, Jeff Beck, Wes Montgomery, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and lately Bryan Sutton (an amazing bluegrass and country guy.) But I cut my teeth on Joe Perry (I learned to play guitar from the first four Aerosmith records I bought at a church rummage sale), Johnny Winter, Angus Young, Steve Lukather, Skynyrd, and George Benson (he would still be in my top 10 – have you heard his version of “Billie’s Bounce”?)

I also love David Grisman and used to play along with his stuff for hours. I have to say, that attending Berklee, and then working in a recording studio in Nashville for a few years, I got to see so many great players and learn so much about getting a good tone in the studio. I have been very fortunate in my experiences.

You work in a college ministry – surely you’ve played Guitar Hero? What do you think of it?

Well, too many of my students are way too good at it! I can’t hardly play the thing.  The picking is too weird.  And with songs I know how to play on guitar, it messes me up to see the wrong notes on the fingerboard on the screen. And I am skeptical about whether it will help my kids learn to play real guitar, so we have not bought it. Though I was sorely tempted when they came out with the Aerosmith versions. I still think Aerosmiths first album is one of the greatest rock records ever. I love to play it for my students who only know modern Aerosmith.

Guitar In The Church 8: Kevin Twit of Indelible Grace, part one

Guitar In The Church 7: Guitar Scale Length

Guitar In The Church 6: Tuning And Intonation 102

Guitar In The Church 5: Tuning And Intonation 101

Guitar In The Church 4: Less Is More (Playing With Distortion)

Guitar In The Church 3: Adding Color To Guitar Parts

Guitar In The Church 2: Pursuing Excellence With Acoustic Guitar

Guitar In The Church 1: Jim Campilongo On The Lost Art Of Melodic Guitar Playing