Why a Piano and Not a Praise Band?

.....since Riley mentions "Dropkick", the man who made that song famous was Bobby Bare, and it appears that a major contributor might have been none other than Shel Silverstein, author of "where the sidewalk ends" and a number of articles in Playboy. So if one wants to argue that's representative of CCM....um, not exactly.

I concur with Riley's point that the poetry and music matters, and that too often, CCM lacks both. But I don't know if I can go along with the notion that a praise band cannot do things as well as a piano--or for the true traditionalists, a pipe organ, or for other true traditionalists, no instruments at all. But if we pay attention to the Psalms, when instrumentation is mentioned, it often mentions an ensemble. So to "wall off" praise bands....can't go there.

The "easy familiarity" argument fails on a couple of levels. First, popular music styles are capable of communicating a sense of awe and subtlety, which you can see in works like many of Iron Maiden's literary songs, as well as Eddie Van Halen's intros like "1984" and "Eruption".

More importantly, there is the reality of familiarity with the Father, as in Romans 8:15, exemplified by using the familiar 'abba instead of simply 'av. So there should be some level of both awe and familiarity in the music. It's not a matter of instrumentation or single instrument vs. ensemble, but rather....mastery of musical skills.

Which is, IMO, the biggest gap in church music. On both sides of the "worship wars", certain mistakes abound, like using all the same volume and same cadence, adding instruments and voices without seeing if it actually adds to the music, and assuming that "turning up the volume to 11" is synonymous with "emphasis" or "enthusiasm".