Guitarization of Worship Piano

Picture this: it’s the caveman-internet era. You’re a young, enthusiastic mega-church musician. There’s a huge shortage of worship guitarists at the cell group level, and you come up with a system: a way to teach strumming without needing standard notation. It’s brilliant. It works. Suddenly, more groups have guitarists who can hold down the chords and keep worship going. 

Then the knock comes: “Hey, what about piano? Can you do the same for us?” 

Now, what’s the fastest way to get a pianist “ready” for worship? Simple. Treat them like a guitarist. Give them one (maybe two) shapes per chord. Show them a couple of comping patterns. Drop them into the songs. Done. Congratulations: you’ve just created the guitarization of worship piano. 

Fast forward a few years: what do you get? Pianists who can play “patterns,” but not music. They can thump out chords, but can’t adapt when singers go off-script. They can fill space, but not lead people. Worst of all? They start believing that’s all there is. 

When such people see my piano playing at church, they miss the principles and dive straight for the formula. They don’t want to learn how I build vocabulary to support the song; they just want more stock phrases to dump into their playing, to impress themselves with their own cleverness. It’s the musical equivalent of forcing kids to memorise “风和日丽,” “my jaw dropped,” and “my face turned pale” for PSLE “creative writing.” That, applied in spades to piano, is what many of those “pianists” want.

But that’s not music. That’s mimicry. Real playing breathes. It reacts. It listens. It anchors the song and opens space for others to sing and respond. The goal isn’t to copy what sounds impressive, it’s to serve; it's to make the whole team sound like one body instead of five individuals fighting for air.

The piano can be so much more.

As long as people are effective and they can serve, I won’t criticize. Plenty of pianists are happy to just strum along on 88 keys, and if their churches are blessed, that’s enough. But if you’ve done enough of that and you’re restless for more (or you’re classically trained and the cookie-cutter chord approach gives you musical acid reflux) know this: you’re not crazy. The piano really can be more.

When I sit at the piano, I don’t want it to be a large, heavy and loud guitar substitute. I want it to breathe, to carry, to shape the worship. And if you feel that tug too… well, maybe we should talk.

Where to find me? Over here

Why Foundations Matter: Part 5 - Why Your Strumming Sounds the Same

Preservice rehearsal. Small team. Worship leader on guitar, another vocalist, me on keys.

Worship leader: “We sound monotonous. How can we vary the dynamics?”

Me: “You know why we sound monotonous? Because you’re strumming non-stop.”

Him: “Okay… then some parts I play softer?”

Did I stutter?

People wonder why I’m such a grumpy old man. But frankly, I don’t blame the guitarists. I blame how they were taught.

If they came from a cookie-cutter, mass-production school, odds are they were made to memorize a few strumming patterns by rote. Instead of learning to build rhythm from the ground up, to adapt to chord changes, to accent key parts of the singing, just be glad if they can even keep time with drummers at different tempos.

Critical details, such as:

• Where to strum
• How to use the palm for percussive drive
• How to move between whisper-light accents and floor-holding power

…Forget about it.

In the rush to churn out factory-preset guitarists, basics are always the first to die. Same as with drums: stick drills reveal if the wrist motion is correct. Strumming has its own checkpoints too, but they take time, they take correction, and correction doesn’t sell.

Because too many adult learners don’t like being corrected, and too many teachers won’t risk losing students to the “fun” music school down the street. So what we get is a generation of guitarists who sound the same, no matter the song. In a small group or prayer meeting, the continual spamming and right-hand spasms might still be tolerable, but in a church band? You should see the horrified expressions from guitarists when I suggest they maybe take a break during the verse and let the pianist anchor, just for sonic variety.

So what’s the answer, JJ?

I don’t have one. God didn’t appoint me the Church Music Standards Police. I’m not issuing chord-offence citations every time someone abuses G-D-Em-C. And I’ve got no interest in starting another cookie-cutter factory school to compete with the ones already out there, cajoling adults who think learning skills are supposed to be as easy as casual hobbies. I’m too old for this.

But if you’ve ever felt stuck, if you’ve wondered why your strumming sounds the same no matter what you play, maybe it’s time to stop memorizing patterns and start learning rhythm for real.

[Click here if you’re ready to trade cookie-cutter strumming for real rhythm →]

Why Foundations Matter: Part 4 - Shortcuts Cost You Freedom

The Acoustic Advantage

I was at a small conference not long ago. Two instruments sat there waiting: a shiny digital keyboard with every patch you could imagine, and a plain Yamaha upright. I went for the upright. Why? Because when you’re leading worship in an unfamiliar place, with no idea what might collapse mid-set, you don’t want to gamble on gadgets. With the acoustic, it was all or nothing. No transpose button. No space age pad to cover weak voicings. Just ten fingers, muscle memory, and guts. That’s how I like it.

The Shortcut Whisper

I don’t mistrust the transpose button because it fails. I mistrust it because it works, all too well. It whispers: why wrestle with a tough key when one press can move the whole world? Same with capos. I carry one in the guitar bag for emergencies; if someone insists on singing in E♭, fine, strap it on and get through. But capo-as-lifestyle? Second fret so you can play G-shapes in A? That’s when you’re no longer learning the instrument. That’s planting your rear end in the baby stroller and refusing to learn how to walk.

From Crutch to Cage

And here’s the problem: shortcuts feel like freedom at first, but they turn into chains. Soon you cannot imagine life without your trusty crutch. Effectiveness pays the price. Capo up a few frets and you’ve sawed off your low end; you’re basically strumming a six-string ukulele. Keep leaning on the transpose button, and you’ll never know what to do when it’s not there. Try leading worship like that. Good luck when the leader calls for a spontaneous key change, or when the only instrument around is the upright piano in the Salvation Army Chapel.

The Hard Road That Built Freedom

When I look back, I see how God used my lack of shortcuts to train me. On piano, I practiced songs like As the Deer in all twelve keys. On guitar, I had no instrument of my own, only whatever warped-neck loaners people were willing to bring along. Try forcing barre chords out of those. Frustration? Plenty. But the payoff was huge: today I can pull off mid-neck voicings in A, or throw shimmering chords in E that sound like the wind from heaven. People see “expert.” Truth is, it’s just years without safety nets.

Why It Matters for Worship

And here’s the ministry angle: worship isn’t a studio. It’s not about playing safe with your toys. It’s not about what makes you comfortable (God, how I despise that word!). It’s about service. Sometimes you’ll be in a big church with every gadget. Sometimes you’ll be in a village with only an old upright. Sometimes you’ll be leading prayer with just an acoustic guitar and your voice. At that point, shortcuts won’t save you. Only foundations will.

Your Turn

If this hit a little too close to home, good. That means it’s time to change. That’s why I built my Worship Piano and Guitar Mentorships: to help musicians trade shortcuts for skill, safety nets for real freedom. [Click here to explore them →]

Why Foundations Matter - Part 2: The Chordbook That Made Me Cringe

The Chord Book that Made Me Cringe 

 In the days before the internet (yes, I’m that old), worship guitarists had two main sources for chords. There were the official Hosanna! Integrity lead sheets (accurate but a little too intimidating for most) and then there were the coveted chord books: just lyrics with the chords on top. Simple. Accessible. Lifesaving… in theory. 

The problem? Many of those chord books were wrong. Badly wrong. 

While in university, I was serving at Faith Community Baptist Church, a well-established church with different ministries. One sincere and well-meaning leader from Touch Forces (our ministry to armed forces personnel) decided to compile a chord book for their own cell groups. He was a good man. I still remember him with his Ovation guitar (the coolest of the cool back then)… but his ear for chords wasn’t exactly stellar. 

The results were, well, obiang (Hokkien for clunky and off). 

The smooth C–G/B–Am progression? Reduced to C–Bm–Am. 

Those beautiful sus4s? Vanished. 

“I Worship You, Almighty God,” third line: that rich Gsus4 resolving to G became a blunt C–G. 

Still, I could tolerate it, because to me sincerity counts for something. What really got me was when I started visiting other campus groups like Campus Crusade for Christ, and saw their guitarists strumming from photocopies of the same book. “The chords can’t be wrong,” they’d say. “This is from Faith Community Baptist Church!” 

I didn’t have the heart to tell them. 

The Chord Sites that Made Me Facepalm 

Fast-forward to today. We’ve moved on from photocopied chord books… only to end up in the land of random chord websites, where users upload their versions of songs and hope for the best. 

Recently, I had a nasty flashback to the bad old days. One guitarist, sincere, eager, willing to serve, sent me screenshots of the chords he pulled from one of those sites for an upcoming worship session. My job quickly became emergency editor. I spent way too much time correcting the PDFs, fixing clunky progressions and totally wrong chords. 

But then the real problem surfaced: he couldn’t actually play the corrected chords. Esus4? Not happening. C#m–B–F#? Looked like a foreign language. Amaj7? Forget it. He just defaulted to a plain A. That was the best he could do, and I don’t fault him for it. He’d never been taught better. 

But here’s the hard truth: if you leave your musicianship at the mercy of random chord sites and the algorithm gods of YouTube, you’ll never rise beyond “tolerable enough.” 

If you want to be better than that: if you want to grow past the shortcuts and have real confidence in your guitar serving, if you want your foundations examined (and maybe rebuilt) so you can soar higher and grow faster, you need guidance from someone who’s been there, not just a faceless upload. That’s why I created my Worship Guitar Mentorship. It’s not about hype or hacks, but about giving you the solid ground you need to play with confidence in worship.

Back then, it was chord books that spread like wildfire, filled with mistakes that became “official” just because of who printed them. Today, it’s random chord sites and YouTube tutorials doing the same thing, leaving eager musicians stranded with bad habits and half-baked skills.

If we want worship that’s strong, sustainable, and life-giving, we have to stop leaving our musicians at the mercy of bad sources and start investing in proper foundations.

That’s why I do what I do. Come check me out. 

Why Foundations Matter - Part 1: Expo Hall Noob Mistakes

I went for a couple of worship sessions recently, hosted by one of those local worship groups who apparently think they’re ready to “equip” others. 

Well, I saw noob mistakes, live, on a mega church scale. 

1. Wrong Key, Wrong Time

First one: the worship leader tries, on the spur of the moment, to lead the people to sing Lord, I Give You My Heart. Problem? They’re in C. The song is not. So what happens? Worship leader drift. You know the move - they sing one or two lines, ease the mic to their side, away from mouth as they raise the other hand upward, looking like their favourite worship leaders on the worship album CD covers. The congregation tries their best to keep on singing and the worship leader looks really good on the video-cam. In reality, however, the leader realized too late they were in the wrong key, and if they kept going their singing would crash and burn in front of everyone. 

And look, you think a small congregation croaking their way through the wrong key is painful? Try an entire Expo hall of croaking voices. That’s next-level judgment seat stuff. 🤣 

Worship Leaders: always be aware of what key you are currently at and the workable key ranges of whatever songs you want to switch to on the spur of the moment. If you are noob to worship leading, it will take you a while to get familiar with all this. Get mentorship and training from worship pastors or worship leaders who served long enough (or know worship leading well enough) to grow past this stage sooner rather than later. 

2. When Formulas Fail

Second round, same thing: start in C (I think), then the leader started singing the chorus of Here I Bow. Same leader drift, same Expo hall croak-fest. This time the bass player (most likely the Music Director) tried to salvage the situation. After one croaked chorus, the band hits the IV/V chord of the next key and waits for the worship leader to begin singing. Nice save. Almost worked, except that for Here I Bow, all the parts of the song (verse, chorus, bridge) all start with chord IV. The IV/V the band did would have worked IF the song sections began with the chord I. But they didn’t.

Essentially, that moment was less about knowing the formula to change key (IV/V of the new key) and more about knowing the song itself so they can tell when the standard formula won’t work or needed to be modded to apply. THIS is where you see the diff between a musician with merely formula & templates vs a musician who knows music. 

3. Band Leading ≠ Worship Leading

Then there was the whole business of the worship leader repeatedly turning around to flash the “C” hand sign at the band. Great. The musicians are cued. But what about us? The congregation? We are left guessing, spiritually speaking just that half beat behind. Functionally, that’s not worship leading, that’s band leading. And let’s be blunt: if you can’t cue your congregation, you’re not a worship leader. You’re just a frontman. There’s a difference. 

So forgive me if I don’t swallow the whole equipping others in worship leading, prayer & intercession and effective communications stuff. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Communicate? You can’t even communicate to a hall full of eager worshippers about singing the chorus again. 

4. Non-binary B minor

And don’t get me started on the guitarist. God, that non-binary B minor chord… You know the one: low E and high E strings both left open, musically nails on the chalkboard. Total clash with the vocals. The only reason no one noticed is because the guitar was buried under the rest of the band. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t teach that to any other guitarist who asks you for lessons. Does it really hurt that much to say “you’ve been playing guitar for a few months now, you should start learning barre chords”? 

Noob mistakes. Expo hall full of croaking. And yet these are the people “equipping” the body of Christ? Lord, forgive my cynicism. Now you know why I pretty much never go check out other worship groups in Singapore. It’s better that I stay away and have you think me a grumpy old man, than to turn up and remove all doubt. 🤣🤣 

Core takeaway - Look, we all make mistakes when we’re learning. But if you’re positioning yourself to equip others, the basics need to be solid first. 

1) Know your songs and their keys.

2) Cue your congregation, not just your band.

3) Play chords that actually fit (like a REAL B minor chord)

Because at the end of the day, if you can’t hold the floor steady, you’ve got no business building a second storey.

Still here? Then check out the training I offer at What I Do