Rehearsal and the White Board
posted May 26, 2007 by jordan
I learned this method to efficiently arrange a song from a University of North Texas jazz guy years ago. Roll a giant whiteboard easel that the entire band can see onstage at rehearsal. Then write out the rough idea of the song structure such as:
After discussing and tweaking the structure, write down the dynamic flow of each section giving each section a rating from 1-10.
Finally, determine how to hit those dynamic flows creatively. Note who is in where and what creative parts come in and out where. The beauty of a white board is you can experiment. Maybe the first attempt the bridge is tried at a 2, but it doesn’t work, so it is ramped up quite a bit. Maybe someone comes up with an inventive part, note where it should occur.
This method keeps everyone on the same page, allows total arrangement flexibility, and fosters creativity in arranging. Keep working until you have an arrangement that is God honoring and inventive…and remember the eraser is your friend.
May 26th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Way cool, Jordan - way cool!
Thanks for sharing it!
May 28th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Hey man
That looks awesome. Before I saw this post, I did something similar for the first time last week. However, people just wrote what was talked about on their own sheet music. I agree with what someone on the worship freq board said that this would mean everyone is on the same page at the same time. I am going to give it a go!
The other thing I might do is similar to what we’ve done with our service design meetings. Rather than writing on a white board during brainstorming, we use colour-coded 4×6 cards and write our ideas on them. We use different colours for different categories, such as blue for songs, yellow for video, red for outside ideas, etc.
Thanks again for the tip!
Pat D
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 am
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September 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Beautiful! Very helpful!
September 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am
That’s a cool idea!
For a while, I spent a ton of time talking dynamics with our team. I added something similar on the actual chord sheets of music the band used. A column down the page with different shaded boxes next to the different song segments. The darker the shading the ‘heavier the dynamic’ the lighter the quieter. Then we’d go through and discuss how after we’d played it through once.
I like the visual this concept has though.