“Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy house of worship...Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin.
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!”
With three months out from December, It's wild to start talking about Advent and Christmas Eve services, but trust me, If you have yet to think about it by now, you're already behind schedule. One way to include beauty and variety to enhance your congregational worship is by having a live string section play alongside your worship team. The string ensemble could be a duet (violin and cello), a trio (violin, viola, and cello), a quartet (violin 1, violin 2, viola, and cello), or even an entire string orchestra (5-8 violins, 3-5 violas, 2-4 cello's, and possibly, 2-3 acoustic bassist). Of course, the more you have in numbers, the more challenging it becomes to arrange effectively for the entire worship service. This is why much time should be spent on song analysis, tonality, feel, and message before you even approach arranging for strings. If done correctly, you can have a wonderful worship time during the Holy Days that your church (& team) will remember. So, here are 7 tips to consider while arranging for live strings on your worship team.
FOUNDATIONAL ARRANGING TIPS
Tip #1: Give Yourself Time
I have solidified conversations with worship leaders about song forms and keys for each song and find out if there are any 'open flow' moments in the set WAAAAY before I start arranging. Starting with a formalized blueprint of the music helps me confidently arrange.
Another arranging tip to help save time in your preparations would be to find a song where you can feature one of the string players instead of the ensemble. If you find a good violinist or violist who can improvise, consider featuring them with a more bluegrass/country feel type of song. Or do you have a good cellist who can riff around on a chord chart? Feature that cellist in a worship song. One less piece you need to arrange properly can save you multiple hours of prep work.
For an example, click on the video below to view a 2023 Good Friday service where the New Life Downtown, Midtown, and Manitou congregations worshipped together. I had minimal time to arrange for a small worship ensemble with two string players (violin and cello), so I decided, in advance, to save time by asking the violin player to improvise on the song "The Wonderful Cross" with only a chord chart. I knew she was already familiar with the song. It turned out nicely, IMO:
Tip #2: Invest in good arranging tools
I love using Finale software to help me arrange. I wish I were good at writing on manuscript paper only, but I need the help of a software program that can capture and notate my written sounds. And not only that but to play back the notation I've written even to hear if my writing makes sense. Other score writing software programs exist besides Finale (i.e., Sibelius, ScoreCloud, Notation Composer). The great thing about using a software program is that you can set up a MIDI keyboard to the program and perform your arrangments while it notates them. This is helpful if you're not used to writing out music or want to save time.
Another helpful tool I use is after I've finished arranging a piece for a worship song, I'll export the MIDI sounds into mp3s and compile a sample demo version of the song so that the worship team and string ensemble can hear what the finished arrangement should sound like. I usually use Logic Pro X for this, but you can use any recording software (i.e., Garage Band, Ableton). This is helpful for everyone's song preparation.
Lastly, If you want to ensure that your string ensemble is heard in the live mix during the service, consider having prerecorded the ensemble or having great plug-ins for the MIDI string arrangements to be used as backing tracks. The last thing you want is to put in months, days, and hours of work into arranging and rehearsing only to have the strings heard at minimal capacity because they were too close to the drum set 🙃
Tip #3 - If you're going to use them, make sure you use them.
While I love creating different shades of beauty, having a sonic reason to include a string section is essential. You need a set list worth utilizing strings if you take time to recruit, arrange, rehearse, and worship with your string ensemble. When it comes to making this decision, it helps if you have places for the string section to stand out (Chorus and Instrumentals), places for them to soar (Bridges and Outro), have featured moments within songs (perhaps in Bridges or Verses, a single string player is featured or even a string sectional), and even have places in mind to make use of a variety of playing techniques (perhaps using tremolo in certain sections to create suspenseful movement along with the band). To justify utilizing a string section, you must create a set list that invites them into the collective sound.
Click on this video below to view a worship team/string arrangement of the song 'How Great Thou Art' that I enjoyed arranging at the 2022 Good Friday Service at New Life Church. It features places for the strings to stand out and soar, uses different plucking techniques, and even features the cello in the first verse.
Tip #4 - Use Volunteers & Utilize Professionals (when possible)
While I am a fan of recruiting and developing the Body of Christ for service, there is a vast difference between having an average-volunteer orchestral musician and a professional when considering arranging for your team. Anyone who has worked with string players knows how distracting it can be if you have an out-of-tune quartet. That's why it's helpful to be open to hiring professional string players if you need a high-caliber violinist, violist, or cellist represented in your congregation. Hiring the right professional could also help you find the right 'leader' in the quartet who helps navigate the group's sound and tempo. My take is that I usually like a mix of both professional and lay church members in an ensemble, as the experience could encourage your volunteers to play at a higher level with a professional in the mix.
STRING ENSEMBLE ARRANGING TIPS
Tip #5 - Four and no more
You can use many combinations with a solid string section in worship, but I have found the most effective times have been with a quartet: violin 1, violin 2, viola, and cello. I choose not to include an Acoustic Bass in the ensemble because that frequency usually gets lost with the actual Electric Bass player in the worship team. Also, a cello has a fantastic range (more than four octaves), which can function as a bass and lead string instrument.
Keeping it to a string quartet could limit your options to any string notation purchases you need for songs, but this is the most functional and stable setup I have found.
Tip #6 - Start simple, then experiment
For those arranging for the first time, I encourage you to start by turning tetrad chords (4-note chords) into your string score. Violins 1 & 2 get the top 2 voicings (or start in unison on the top voicing), the viola gets the middle voicing (or starts on the root then moves to a different voicing on the next chord), and the cello brings the low root voicing. Not all tetrads should be in the root position. Instead, you should follow proper voice-leading guidelines and smoothly have each instrument either move to its following note stepwise or stay on the note into the next chord. For example, below is an excerpt of a string score from the Hillsong song “King of Kings” in D major I arranged for Easter Sunday, 2022. This portion of the arrangement starts on CHORUS 3 of the song.
Figure A - King of Kings CHORUS
In the example above, notice how in the first measure, both violins 1 and 2 starts on the same concert F# note (which is the major third of the chord D major). At the same time, the viola and cello both play the note concert D to establish the root of the chord. Although the start of this CHORUS is not even a triad, I began this section outlining simple intervals within the quartet to think about building from there. In the third measure, I used voice-leading techniques to split the intervallic chord into a tetrad chord (the cello plays the root, the viola plays the minor third, violin 2 plays the fifth, and violin 1 plays the flat seven of a B minor7 chord). Like a flower blooming, my approach was to start small and then have the quartet expand sonically away from each other so as to produce outward movement. This is a simple but effective technique for building musically within a song.
Although it might be hard to hear within the mix, click on the video below for a sample of this section from a 2022 Easter service at New Life Church.
Tip #7 - Tell a story, not simply write a score.
As mentioned earlier, you need a musical reason to have a string ensemble with you on the platform. And the reason is justified when you can answer it with a meaningful and beautiful arrangement. As Cardinal Ratzinger once pointed out after having a profound musical experience at a concert of the music of J.S. Bach in Munich, "Beauty can be the most effective way to bring man to Jesus Christ.” (1) So, express beauty through your arranging by telling a story.
Below is a New Life Friday Night service where I arranged a string quartet with our stripped-back, acoustic-style worship team. I decided in advance that I wanted to arrange a tender version of the song "Silent Night" that would reflect the stillness of the song. Having the song be less of a band moment and more of a reflective/contemplative moment was a stylistic choice based on assisting in telling a story through song.
Hopefully, these tips can help you in the right direction if you're thinking about (and even planning) to use a string section in your worship team. My prayer for you today is that the creative God would grant you wisdom to create beauty for the majesty of Christ and His Kingdom. I hope these tips help you effectively arrange a string section with your worship team. And if you want to use a string section but need help with arranging, I'm available for consultation and hired arranging support. If you are interested in this service, you can reach me at seth@sethputnam.net