Kim Gentes

Worship leaders and acoustic guitar players need to be wary of a major illness that can infect their playing. This malady is called complacency. It comes to rest all too often on rhythm acoustic guitar players, especially worship leaders. But fortunately there is a cure. And it comes in a nice, low calorie package. It is "Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar".

When I began watching this DVD set to help understand what it was, I quickly realized this was more than a 1 hour DVD with a few "tricks and tips". Instead, "Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar" is a complete, and fully featured 7 hour course that will revamp and energize your acoustic guitar skills. This is a resource that is meant for rhythm players, and especially worship leaders. In fact, much of the items covered in the course, targets common applications for worship leaders such as fresh strumming patterns for common worship song rhythms. But the DVD's do not get you bogged down into bastions of skill sets for long periods of time. Instead, like other Musicademy products, this course flows from point to point and interjects interviews, quick tips and concepts that apply to the lessons being learned.

This is a true course, not just a terse summary of best ideas from a guitar guru. But because it is broken into several lessons, this DVD could be used as a weekly teacher. Plug it in for 30 -40 minutes, work through a few lessons. Then work on that for a week. Come back in a week and roll through a couple more lessons. This DVD set works well as a self-paced course that will propel a rhythm acoustic guitar player. The amount of content in the DVD set is so voluminous, you may not believe it- it is over 7 hours (yes, I said seven) of digital video content, across 3 DVDs. The content starts head-on with strumming and moves through that extensively. All the while, the instruction compliments both single instrument and band contexts. In fact, worship leaders will especially appreciate the regular tips explaining how to apply concepts and skills in the worship team/band settings. Most of the strumming patterns actually accompany a drum click pattern that helps the player understand the rhythm context for their strumming patterns being learned.

Topics move on to chord voicings, complex chords, barre chords and picking techniques. Even included are specific flourishes/licks that an acoustic guitarist can learn and put in their toolkit for appropriate settings/use. At first, the DVDs don't tackle classical music terms and foundations (other than timing), but as you work through the course, you learn keys, notes and timing, even Nashville Number system information. All of this would be far too much information, if the course was not well segmented, nicely paced and easy to watch and take at your pace.

While this course is definitely not for the beginning guitar player, it is going to be very effective for those who play well enough to lead worship in a local church context. It will help take those people into an entire new strata of expression on their guitars, by providing very methodical, though engaging, lessons to invigorate their playing. The details about this course are much rather seen than read, so I highly encourage you to view the important detailed info that is linked to from this page. (go here)

The bottom line- if you are a worship leader, or know a worship leader, this course is a beautiful tool that will help you and work for you in your local church bad context. If you are an acoustic player looking for a sure-fire resource to move you along to the next level- this is it! I highly encourage you to consider the Musicademy: Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar resource.

Product link: Intermediate Acoustic Worship Guitar Course

Review by Kim Anthony Gentes