Summer is coming quickly—that busy time of year that is filled with vacations, camp meetings and summer youth camps.

So what are you doing this summer? 

Whatever you do, don’t let yourself or your music team dry up or regress this season! Here are several ways you can stay fresh during the summer months
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Your music team
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• Refresh  choruses your praise/musicians team learned over the past year but didn’t quite “jell.”
• Review songs you want to incorporate into music program in coming months.  By listening and learning just one or two songs during the summer months, you’ll be prepared to start your fall music program with a whole lot less stress!
• Find out when your musicians and praise singers have scheduled their summer vacations.
• Plan to use less experienced singers and musicians to fill in.  With enough time and preparation, even mediocre musicians can play for a few worship services.  Begin training as soon as possible!
• Provide lead sheets to all of your fill-in musicians.
• Encourage fill-in musicians to play in children’s church or Sunday School to get more experience.
• Sing “re-runs” or repertoire with which they are already familiar.  However you MUST go over parts again to refresh them.
• Cut back on your choir practice schedule to every other week or once a month.  Don’t cut choir completely out!  It is hard to re-motivate the choir into activity again! Use smaller groups such as duets, trios, ensembles, and chorales to fill in your music schedule.

Your Personal Musicianship….

If you only play with chords or by ear, teach yourself to read notes! Learn to sing intervals and identify them by ear. (See Major Scales and Intervals file.)Focus on learning several new chords (diminished 7th, augmented, etc.) and learn to use them in new progressions.