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.