by Don Chapman

Have you noticed it's sometimes hard to fit a choir into contemporary worship? Especially with those insanely high tenor worship leader keys (i.e. Chris Tomlin!)

The typical paradigm in contemporary services is the male worship leader with band (similar to a secular male lead singer and rock band.) They're almost all tenors (ever heard of a bass rock singer?) He'll often have a female backup singer or two standing behind him.

The next popular paradigm is worship leading by both male and female worship leaders. At Seacoast Church, Chris Sligh (before his American Idol gig) would lead the more rocking high tenor stuff and Kim (a talented alto) would sing backup and lead lower-keyed ballads. Lee McDerment and RoseAngela Merritt take turns leading different songs at Newspring Church.

So where does a choir fit into the mix? I've been pulling my hair out over this and finally think I've found an answer.

I had a really, really hard time arranging Steve Smith and Adam Fisher's pop praise song All For the Son for our choir (download a free MP3 and chord chart at this link.) It's the typical TomlinRedmanFee type upbeat rocker in the typical high key. It sounds great in the male leader/band singer setup, but, like all those tenor praise songs, it goes really high. Choir sopranos do not sound so great singing high on a pop song.

First I tried arranging it with the choir singing the entire song, and I have this arrangement at WorshipIdeas.com. A good rule of thumb for pop praise songs with choir is to let the men sing melody and have the ladies sing a lower harmony part (which I have on the verse.) This arrangement works okay in A major but sounds even better in the lower G major version.

Then it hit me - I DON'T need to have the choir sing-ing ev-ry sing-le note like a hymn. Instead, I wrote a version with choir BGV's (background vocals) and the whole thing just fell right into place.

The male worship leader is leading the melody, out front, and the choir punctuates phrases and adds harmony along with "ooo's" and "ahh's." In the video you'll see and hear Steve singing the high chorus melody and the choir is singing lower harmony parts.

It works - and it's fun for the choir to sing. The same choir parts work for a praise team, too. You can purchase and download either the regular version or the new choir BGV version at this link.

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