Fresh-Baked, Homemade Chord Charts
We just made chocolate chip cookies from scratch. But get this! Part of the process was to grind our flour by hand.
My wife has long asked for a grain mill. And she insisted it be manual, not motorized. I finally picked up a Wondermill Junior. It’s red.
After putting it together and clamping it to the countertop, we were ready. I added a few cups of brown rice, and off we went. All of us. Each child wanted their turn to grind the flour. My eleven-year-old even took off his shirt as he had to put all of his body into it.
Once we had ground the four cups of flour needed for the triple recipe, my teenage daughter proceeded with the mixing and baking. We could hardly wait.
They were some of the best chocolate chip cookies we’ve had! There’s just something special about being more involved in the process. Sure, it would’ve been easier to buy flour, but this connected us more to each other and to the source of our food.
Can I tell you another story?
I started leading worship so long ago that we used to write our chord charts out by hand. BY HAND! That’s the worship world equivalent to walking to school uphill both ways in the snow.
I remember going to my university’s computer lab and typing up some songs. We also used our church’s typewriter.
Once I got good at Microsoft Word, I began what would be about 25 years of creating chord charts in my formatting. I made one thousand five hundred chord charts in that format. That’s 1,500!
Then in 2018, I left behind my beloved Word format and switched to creating my charts in ChordPro format in Planning Center Online. I haven’t looked back! I’m already up to 241 of them.
My point? It’s worth it to make your chord charts yourself.
Yes, it’s simpler to use the SongSelect chart. (If they are accurate)
But there is something about interacting with the words and chords that helps me internalize the song. I get to know the flow and sections, the phrases, and the repeating chord patterns. I am more able to use the song as I lead it because I know it inside and out.
So, I encourage you to work that muscle a bit and grind up your flour, er, I mean chord chart, next time. See if it makes a difference.
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
Fresh-Baked, Homemade Chord Charts (Nº 285)
