The New Song Cafe always seemed like an interesting feature at Worshiptogether.com. I mean, I don't remember anywhere that, on a regular basis, mainstream pop guitarists I admire like The Edge and Pete Buck ever did TV shows or released videos showing you how to play their hits. But each week, Christian pop artists are showing how to play their tunes at the website -- Michael W. Smith and Leeland Mooring are on there this week. 
But -- and it may be because, having just celebrated my first-annual 39th birthday, I am getting old -- setting up at my computer with my guitar just didn't seem like a thing to do. Plus, the videos were so tiny, it was hard to tell where the players' fingers were, and streaming video can sometimes be a bit testy.
But the insight is invaluable, as chord charts often come up woefully short in terms of showing how to play a song. If only the Cafes came in a more user-friendly format.
Worship Together has addressed that with Live: Training for Modern Worship, a DVD of a dozen New Song Cafes, and an accompanying CD of the songs. It is actually the fifth DVD of New Song Cafe episodes, which are available at the Worship Together store. But the new disc is my first go around with it.
Overall, it's pretty good. All of the episodes have a fairly standard script: The hosts, Brenton Brown or Vicky Beeching in most instances, introduce the artists who talk a little bit about the origins of the songs they are playing, they play the tune and then talk through the chords. Some of the episodes are quite interesting or amusing, like Chris Tomlin comforting all of we beginners by saying he looks for the easiest way to play tunes or David Crowder discussing how his mother inspired the word play of Wholly Yours.
The most useful episode was hosted by Peter Furler of Newsboys with Beeching (photo right, courtesy of EMI Christian Music Group) sharing her Yesterday, Today, and Forever. Furler has a very easy manner as a host and makes his questioning valuable with a few words: "How about the rhythm."
The biggest frustration of the episodes is a concentration on chords, almost to the exclusion of rhythms. On Third Day's discussion of Communion, it is easy to pick out Mac Powell's chords, but I needed the sheet music to see what exactly was happening with his strumming hand. (As we've mentioned before on this blog, Worship Together does offer free sheet music to download each week, and often one of the titles is the song on that week's Cafe.)
This DVD also exclusively features guitarists. Granted, guitar is the lead instrument of pop music and modern worship, but it may be nice to give keyboard players, even bassists and drummers, some insight as well. I'm not sure how many Cafes do bring in other instruments. Smith is on there playing a keyboard, this week.
Those things said, the disc is really interesting, and several artists offer a few different ways to play their tunes. I was amused, for instance, that demonstrating Everlasting God, Brown (photo, right) shows a completely different (and harder) way to play the main theme then I had learned. But then, at the end of his chat with Beeching, he swings back and shows the fairly simple G-Gsus sequence I know (once again though, you really need the rhythm to make that work).
Whoever's song you try to play, unless you are a fairly accomplished guitarist, you'll need to watch the DVD with the remote nearby to pause. But if there are selections you really want to learn on this or any of the New Song Cafe discs, you should be able to do that with most of these episodes, even if you're an absolute beginner, like me.
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