“Nexus is a one-year music training college that is designed to develop musicians into godly individuals who can express their hearts to God and others through their instrument and the whole of their lives.”
(This is a self-description of Nexus and to be quite honest I couldn’t put it much better!)
My time at Nexus will be a very intense year of musical and biblical study. As the college is very small (somewhere between 50 and 100 students each year), classes are very small (there will be no more than a dozen people in my class!). And small classes means a lot more one-to-one tutoring, which also means there is great opportunity for forming fantastic relationships with staff as well as other students.
If you hadn’t gathered already, I am doing the ‘Piano & Keys’ Course at Nexus. I know I lead a lot on my guitar at Church (it’s fun and I feel more flexible with it than the piano at the moment) but I want to pursue keys further, gain more experience, explore the instrument in different ways, and increase my flexibility on it.
Through the year, we have a lot of instrument-based classes in which we will be learning different styles, techniques and more. We will also learn about where these styles came from and how they work/how we can apply it to our playing (music history + music theory = not so fun for me… we’ll see how it pans out. I guess there’s always going to be topic areas I’m not so keen on).
We will also have a lot of Biblical study classes. We have an overview of the whole Bible (looking at its content and its impact) where, by studying Genesis through Revelation, our aim is to understand each book’s context and how it applies to our life today. We also look at the main themes running through scripture, focusing on what it reveals about God, us and our common purpose as God’s people (this includes the Names and attributes of God, Salvation, the Church and Worship). We also have Bible Discovery Groups (like homegroups) where we can delve deeper into God’s word, build strong relationships and learn what it means to be a disciple of Christ in a smaller group setting. We will meet to look at various areas of Christian life with the goal of maturing as a believer and understanding what it is to walk with Christ more accurately.
On top of this we are put into bands for the year, which is part of the practical application of our classroom learning. We will have weekly tasks as a band which may include:
- constructing a pop medley for a given audience
- re-working a classic well known song in a different style
- re-arranging a song for a ‘live lounge’ type of setting
- learning a song individually, but having limited rehearsal time (eg. 1hr) together to create the right sound
- performing original material
Each week there is an LPW (Live Performance Workshop) in which we will have to perform the product of said task in front of everyone and reveice constructive criticism from our tutors. This is to help us understand how our classroom learning is applied to a practical setting, hear what we did well and how we could improve further (helping us grow and develop in these areas). Our time spent together as a band will also help us get to know each other as musicians and learn how to ‘read’ each other musically when in a band setting. It does also mean that we are constantly having to work with people we may not get along with all the time, and helps us learn how to deal with this in a productive way (after all, in the ‘real world’ it’s very likely we’ll have to work with people we’re not so keen on at some point).
As mentioned with those weekly tasks, we will get some experience in songwriting. Nexus provides a forum where we can learn and experiment with song writing in a supportive, shaping environment. This includes a mixture of practical music lectures, teaching sessions on biblical perspectives and student presentation workshops to help us develop key skills as well as gain a deeper understanding as to the eternal purposes of song writing. If this just sounds fun… well, maybe it is! But seriously we sing songs at church by Tim Hughes, Vicky Beeching, Matt Redman etc. and one day my name might be added to that list! Scary (but exciting) stuff =)
Pursuit of Worship (POW) is a chance every week to look deeper into why we worship, how we worship and how we make an open hearted connection with the Living God. We explore the Psalms and look at how to creatively write our own responses to God; we look deeper at songs and what they are saying; we look at church structure and what that means for us as musicians serving in that context. We look at scripture and what it says about worshipping God and those set apart to do so and we worship together. Whether in bands or on an individual basis it’s a chance to explore the meaning and heart of what we call worship and let that permeate our whole lives, not just our musical expression.
