Basic Terms Every Worship Guitarist Needs to Know

Updated 2023
Estimated time to read: 7 minutes

It’s easy to get confused with the lingo used by musicians, especially if you’re new to music or only play one instrument (which is most of us). The point of this post is to clarify the most commonly used terms by musicians and specifically by church worship teams, to help you and your team better communicate your musical ideas. Whatever situation you’re in, you and your team can use this post as a guide for making sure everyone is on the same page.

Sections:

• The Most Important Music Terms

• Dynamics

• Tempo

• Key

• Pitch

• Notes and Rests

• Interval

• Chord

• Wrapping it up

The Most Important Music Terms

Let’s cover a handful of the most basic terms that you will use throughout your musical career. While these are considered basic terms, even professional musicians use them all the time. Every song you play has these elements in them. Every single one. If you’re serious about your musicianship, these terms are very important for you to understand. This is meant as an introduction, but the explanations here should give you a good grasp of what they are and how they’re used in the context of worship music.

Dynamics

Simply put, Dynamics of a song is the aspect of music relating to degrees of loudness. When a song goes from a big, loud Intro to a quieter Verse, this is an example of Dynamics. In the bigger picture of a song, the loudness can change depending on which section of a song you’re in. However, there are other factors that can influence Dynamics.

For one, it can depend on which instruments are playing. If the acoustic guitar starts the song and then everyone else comes in on the first Verse, that would be a change in the Dynamics. If the first Chorus starts out quiet but everyone comes in and builds up over the course of the second Chorus, that would also be a change in Dynamics.

Dynamics as a whole is simple, but as more instruments are involved and those instruments play different parts, then the Dynamics of a song can be all over the place.

I’ve found that Dynamics is THE NUMBER ONE struggle for musicians. Being able to control your playing and not overpower other musicians is tough. It’s easy to get carried away and to want your instrument to be the loudest, but that’s not what worship music is about.

Tempo

Tempo is the speed at which music is performed. Before tempo numbers, tempo was notated in words, such as allegro and andante. But in contemporary worship, a number often notates tempo. This number signifies the Beats Per Minute, or BPM (often seen in lowercase as bpm) for short. Written at the top of the page, it would look something like this: “bpm = 114,” “bpm 114,” “quarter note = 114,” or simply “114.” There are a number of different ways to notate this tempo marking and any of these examples means that there are 114 beats per minute.

It can be very difficult to automatically know how fast 114 beats per minute really is unless you have a lot of experience playing at that tempo. Some worship teams choose to use a click track. A click track is a metronome that is played through the in-ear monitor system so the band can hear the clicks while the audience can’t. This way, the band can stay together and in time (keep the same tempo) during the entire song.

Key

Next is Key. We’re not talking about the key to your house, but a musical Key. A Key in music is often synonymous with a scale, in that it communicates what notes are used and establishes a tonal center, or tonic. A tonal center, or tonic, is the first note of the scale, or the note that’s in the title of the Key. For instance in the Key of G, the tonal center would be G. G is the note (and chord) that feels most resolved after playing other notes and chords in the Key.

Sometimes, chord charts don’t have “Key of” before the actual Key, so be aware that it might just say “G” at the top of the chart. If you use lead sheets or sheet music, the Key may not be listed as “G”, but notated in the Key Signature at the beginning of the first staff. This would be notated in sharps or flats right after a treble clef (G is one sharp).

Pitch

Pitch is the perceived quality of a sound that’s a function of its fundamental frequency, which is measured in Hertz (Hz). The higher the frequency is, the higher the Pitch. The lower the frequency is, the lower the Pitch.

Pitch is often confused with Notes, however, Notes communicate Pitch in written form.

As a guitarist who plays Western style music (as part of the world, not the wild west), we tune our guitars to A = 440. This means that the A string is tuned to 440 Hz, and the string completes 440 vibrations per second.

Notes and Rests

Notes are symbols used in musical notation to represent the duration of a sound and, when placed upon a staff, to indicate its pitch. If that sounds confusing, how about this:

Notes are the realization of pitches. If you sing a random frequency right now, you would be singing a pitch (at a certain frequency) as well as a Note (the notation of that pitch which someone could write down so others could know what you sang).

Notes have a fixed duration that help us indicate how long the pitches are to be played.

More specifically, when written down on a staff, Notes are the actual dots you would see which communicate the melody, harmony and rhythm. There are Whole Notes, Half Notes, Quarter Notes, Eighth Notes, Sixteenth Notes, and so on. There are also corresponding rests that have the same duration values as these Notes.

Pitches and Notes are often used interchangeably because they’re really one and the same for the purpose of worship. So when you want the pianist to play a different pitch to start a song, it’s okay to say “Note” because it’s really both, as the frequency has a notation value assigned to it (such as “G” or “Bb”).

Interval

An Interval is the distance between two pitches. This is measured both in numbers - by the number of pitches between the two outer pitches - and quality, which can be Major, Minor, Augmented, Diminished, or Perfect. A couple examples of Intervals are Major 2nd, Minor 2nd, Perfect 4th, and Major 7th. If you don’t know what these are yet, don’t worry.

Intervals are everywhere in music! Every chord is a group of Intervals. Every scale is a pattern of Intervals. Every melody or harmony is a combination of Intervals over time. The reason Intervals are so interesting is that you can examine every aspect of music down to the Interval combinations and patterns.

The point here is to clarify what Intervals are. As long as you know that they are the distance between two pitches you should be good for now.

Chord

A Chord consists of three or more pitches sounding simultaneously or functioning as if sounded simultaneously. These are sometimes referred to as triads because they typically have at least three pitches (a G major chord has 3 pitches: G, B, and D). Chords are built out of the three initial pitches, consisting of two intervals, but can include multiples of the same notes.

For instance, on guitar a G Chord would use the notes G, B, and D. But with 6 strings you will need to double some of the notes so you have a note on every string, which would give you: G B D G D G (from the low E string to the high e string). There are variations of playing every Chord but this is the basic voicing of the open position G Chord.

In contemporary worship music the most common Chord qualities you’ll see are Major Chords and Minor Chords. These Chord qualities are unique because of by the way scales and intervals work together to create a set of pitches. Again, this post is about covering the basics, so all you need to know is that a Chord is three or more pitches played at the same time and is determined by the given key of the song.

Wrapping it up

Knowing what these common music terms really mean will help you tremendously as you grow as a worship guitarist. It can be confusing when talking with band members or other musicians who have different training. If you know your music terms, you’ll be able to better communicate with everyone else.

*All definitions are from The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians by Don Michael Randel