One of the topics we have recently mused about on the Worship Released forum is Categorising Worship Albums by Instrumentation. At church our “band” typically consists of vocals plus bass, drums, acoustic guitar and flute. In contrast, most of the recent worship albums I have bought seem to default to vocals plus bass, drums, acoustic guitar, electric guitar and keyboards. While I am not one for slavishly following recorded arrangements it would be useful to have some more material that demonstrated the kind of ideas skilled musicians would draw on given the instrumentation we have available.

In fact, I think the idea would be useful beyond just supporting contemporary Christian worship. For example, what jazz albums use the bass, keys, drums, sax and vocals line-up that feature as the stand line-up of The Pico Brown Five? It is even less the case that we would want to paint the same pictures but there is a lot that could be learned to paying attention to the brushstrokes others chose to use when working with a similar palette.

I have some formative ideas but, before writing about them, I want to make a start on trying them out.

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