- Have you ever wanted to memorize
the chords of a worship song?
Or transpose the key of music on the fly
without having to print out new charts?
Well, in this video you're gonna learn about the chord wheel
which is a cheap but powerful tool
for equipping any worship leader or band member
with the essentials of music theory.
(upbeat chill-hop music)
This video is brought to you by Worship Leader School
where you're gonna find the essential training,
advice and support you need to plan and lead worship
as well as grow as a worship leader.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
My name is Jake Gosselin,
and I'm the creator of Churchfront.com,
an online resource for innovative
and creative church leaders.
Make sure you subscribe to the channel
and hit the notification bell so you receive
all of our latest content to help you
grow yourself and grow your church.
And be sure to check out the show notes below this video
for some free tools and resources for your worship ministry,
including a link to the chord wheel,
which is the topic of today's video.
So now let's talk about this guy.
First, for just a review of the product itself.
So the chord wheel is a very thin book
with a very special cover on that book.
So on the cover of this book,
you have printed all of these different chords
and there's different colors,
and you have a bunch of other symbols going on here,
which we'll talk about later.
And then on top of this book cover
is this translucent plastic wheel
that you can spin around like this.
And as you spin it around,
you're gonna notice that there's this triangular
diagram right here that highlights
certain chords within the wheel.
And then inside the book you're gonna find
instructions on how you can use the wheel
and there's lots of great tips
and advice here on the topic of Music Theory.
This book only consists of about 12 pages.
Very short book,
but you're not really paying for the book.
You're paying for the wheel.
So now I wanna cover how you can utilize
this chord wheel in your worship ministry.
The way they have laid out the structure
of this wheel is by using the circle of fifths.
So when you're looking at the wheel
and you go around this inner circle,
this is called the circle of fifths in music theory.
You don't really have to know
the details of the circle of fifths,
but real briefly, basically the circle consists of
going up to the fifth, so from C to G is a fifth,
G to D is a fifth, D to A is a fifth, and so on.
It goes all the way around
the circle until it gets back to C.
Music theory is cool like that.
That's why you should learn it.
The first way you could utilize this tool
in your worship ministry is it can help you
quickly memorize the chord progressions
of different worship songs.
And, of course, worship music tends to be pretty simple
and it's usually in keys that don't contain
lots of sharps and flats.
So you could almost make this the chord half moon,
and cut this thing in half because as worship musicians,
you know, we don't like to go into any of these
complicated areas of the wheel with all these flats
and sharps and all those scary-looking chords.
Let's stay up here on the orange,
yellow and green, tealish side of the wheel.
So watch what happens here as
I navigate to the key of a song.
Let's pretend the song is in the key of G.
I'm gonna put the arrow on G here.
It's gonna tell me what chords are in that key.
I have G, which is the one chord,
and even puts the numbers underneath the chord too,
so you can start memorizing the Nashville number system.
And then it has C and D.
These are our dominant,
D is the 5, the dominant,
and C is the 4, the subdominant chord.
Don't worry if you don't know what those words mean.
I'm just trying to sound like a smart music theortician.
If that's even a word.
And then you have the minor 2,
the minor 3, the minor 4 chords.
A minor, B minor and E minor.
Then we have the F sharp diminished 7 chord.
And don't worry, as worship leaders we never play
diminished 7 chords because those are from Satan.
So I think the first major way that this tool
is gonna help us as worship leaders
is it can help wean us away from our chord charts.
It's a really good idea that we start
memorizing the different chords
that would be within a worship song,
and also the different chord progressions in those songs.
So instead of using a typical chord chart,
challenge yourself to start developing your ear,
but use the chord wheel as your guide
to tell you what the possible chords
are gonna be in that song.
And in reality, you only have six options.
Another way this tool can come in handy
for your worship ministry is when you want to
chart a new song for your band members.
And maybe you're super cheap
and you don't wanna spend $2.50 on a great chart
from like PraiseCharts.com,
or you just wanna challenge yourself to hear
the chord changes in a song
and create your own chart within planning center.
All you have to do is know the key
of the song that you're listening to
and then navigate to the proper key on your chord chart,
and now you know the 6 to 7 potential chords
that are gonna be in that song.
So that could be just a great tool to have
on your desk as you're listening
to a song trying to chart it out.
You're listening to those chord changes.
Maybe you have your guitar on you too.
You're trying to play along to make sure
you're picking the right chords.
And again, this chord wheel can remove
a lot of the guessing out of it.
Another way to utilize this chord wheel
is for quickly transposing songs on the fly.
A lot of worship songs are recorded in keys
that are too high for your average Joe to sing.
So maybe a song that's recorded in the key of A,
you wanna bump it down to the key of G.
Well, viola, you can go from A to G,
and you can quickly know what chords
are gonna be in that song that you're playing.
Another way this chord wheel can come in handy
is when you're planning out your worship set,
and you're wanting to be aware of how different
song keys relate to one another.
Because that has a big effect on
how easily and smoothly you can
transition from song to song.
Obviously if song A and song B are on the same key,
that's gonna be a pretty smooth and seamless transition.
You can just drone out the pad
and the same key in between them.
But maybe songs can't be in the same key,
but you wanna see if you can figure out
how to get them in a closely related key
that's gonna make that song transition sound smoother.
Here's what this looks like with the chord wheel.
If I'm playing in the key of G,
I know that some closely related keys are gonna be
the key of D or the key of C.
And these keys are closely related
because they contain a lot of the same chords.
You'll notice that in the key of D,
you have G and E in here, then D of course,
and in the key of G you also have G, E and D.
So a lot of these chords overlap.
So when you're on the chord wheel,
you can easily visually tell what keys
are related to a particular key.
And that'll hopefully inform the way you pick
different song keys throughout your worship set.
And just to kind of give you an idea
of how this actually happens in real life,
let's say we are in the key of C
and then we get to the end of the song.
Well, it's gonna be a pretty smooth transition
if we want to go to the key of G,
because then that C, if we just held it out, becomes the 4,
and then we can just land on the 1 of the next key.
And there's a bunch of different fancy ways
you can transition songs and modulate to a related key,
but that's a very basic way of doing it.
One of my absolute favorite features
about this chord wheel is that it includes
the chord numbers, which is gonna be really handy
for you and your band to learn the Nashville number system.
So maybe you're wanting to transition your team
from the traditional chord charting system
that uses letters to the Nashville numbers system.
And that's gonna allow your team
to be able to transpose songs on the fly.
You just gotta tell them what key they're in,
and then they'll know what the 1 chord, what the 4 chord,
5 chord, 6 chord, et cetera, is going to be.
And you'll see here on the chart,
we have all of those numbers
associated with the different chords.
So maybe you're giving your team members
some chord charts that look like this instead of this.
But you have some team members who are struggling
with remembering what chord is what number in what key.
So I recommend providing your team maybe
with a couple copies of this chord wheel
so that when you give them the Nashville numbers chart,
they can use the chord wheel to navigate to the right key
and then they'll automatically know
what numbers are associated with the right chords
they'll be playing on their instrument.
And when your band does learn the Nashville numbers system
and they get used to associating the numbers
with different chords and different keys,
it's gonna be easy for you to
direct them on the fly as you lead.
Maybe you can just give them a subtle
number system by holding up your hand or down your hand,
however you want to do that,
but saying hey, 1 chord, 4 chord, 5 chord.
They know what key they're in,
so when you give them those numbers like 1, 4, 5, 6,
I don't know how you'd give them 6 with one hand.
Maybe there's a special way to do that.
I don't really do that much.
But they'll know what chords to play
because they know what chords
to associate those numbers with.
So you can direct them on the fly
during those more spontaneous moments in worship.
The chord wheel can also be helpful
if you're trying to write your own original worship songs.
And especially if you're newer to music theory
and understanding what chords are in which keys,
this chord wheel will provide you with a great template.
So you could be jamming along in the key of C
and you'll know what chords go in that key,
or maybe you're in the key of E,
and as you're writing a song,
experimenting with different progressions,
you'll know which chords you have to work with
and you won't be fumbling through chords
that don't actually fit in the key.
As worship leaders and worship band members,
it's really important for us to have a basic grasp
on how keys work in music and how chord progression works.
So much of the worship music we play today
is based on these principles and concepts
and a lot of the headaches we face with our worship bands
like not memorizing chord progressions or not knowing
how to transpose to different keys on the fly.
Those can be solved with a great tool like this.
In the end I want to encourage you
and let you know that it takes time
and practice and repetition.
You're not gonna be able to magically memorize
chord charts overnight using a tool like this,
but always have this out maybe next to your
worship chord chart so you can always understand
at a deeper level what's going on.
And you're gonna recognize some common
chord progression patterns that you'll find
in a lot of different worship songs.
You can grab a copy of this chord wheel
for yourself and for your band members
by clicking the link in the description of this video.
And if you're interested in learning more
about the essentials of music theory for worship leaders
I wanna invite you to check out Worship Leader School.
You're gonna find all the essential advice,
training and support you need to plan and lead worship.
And having a basic grasp on some of the
fundamentals of music theory is gonna
greatly enhance your ability to plan and lead worship.
So click the link below in the description to learn more.
Thank you so much for watching.
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