In Pursuit of the Beautiful Rider
Jake Hamilton
Record Reviews Rend Collective Experiment l Kutless l International House of Prayer l iWorship Now/ Next 2014 l Elevation Worship l
Product Review
PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2 AI
Product Review Heartbeat Cymbals from Turkey
MAR/APR 2014 Volume 12, Issue 2 03
0
74470 58440
7
US $5.95 Can $6.95
“Music on Purpose” by Tom Lane
l
“Reverberation Effects” by Bill Gibson
E!
F R N EW IS E SU E
Finding the Right Music Gear for Your Church Just Got Easier!
Get the Newest FREE Issue of Worship Sound Pro — the Ultimate Music Gear Guide for Houses of Worship! Call Today for Your FREE Copy! The Best Technology for Worship
Worship Sound Pro features the latest and most essential music equipment and technology for today’s houses of worship.
Sweetwater-exclusive interview: The Digital Age
Former David Crowder Band members talk with us about their new sound, their approach to recording and performing, and the gear they use to share their musical message.
Essential Guides for You and Your Volunteers
In-depth, down-to-earth articles help volunteers, pastors, and worship leaders understand the ins and outs of the latest in worship sound technology.
THE
DIGITAL AGE
In January of 2012, the David Crowder Band ended their 12-year run as one of the Christian music industry’s most successful groups. Former DCB guitarists Mark Waldrop and Jack Parker, drummer B-Wack, and bassist Mike D went on to start a new musical venture called The Digital Age. Their debut album, Evening : Morning, was released to rave reviews in 2013. Recently, Sweetwater’s Jeff Barnett caught up with Mark Waldrop.
Can you give us a little history and recap what has happened since the last David Crowder Band show? For those who don’t know what the David Crowder Band was, we started as a little worship team from University Baptist Church (UBC) in Waco, TX, a church that David Crowder founded with Chris Seay in the mid-’90s. We toured for about 12 years. Then in 2010, David transitioned from Waco to Atlanta, and the rest of us really wanted to stay in Waco and stay involved with UBC. So The Digital Age is essentially that. We’re still involved with UBC, and we’re still writing the same genre of music: upbeat, programming-heavy “fun worship,” as we call it. The Digital Age has been a band for a little over two years, which is crazy to say because it still seems so new. We released a live EP called Rehearsals in 2012. We were just rehearsing for church, tracked it, and released it as an EP. And in 2013, we put out a record called Evening : Morning and followed that with a fall tour. Evening : Morning doesn’t sound like just another DCB album, though. Can you describe the sound of The Digital Age? When you’re in a band and have an established sound and way of doing things, then you start a new band, you get to pick and choose what you liked about what you’ve been doing. But you also have a really natural moment to question what you want to do differently. With The Digital Age, we’re still writing songs for the same congregation. UBC is about 70% college students, so we tend to sound like what college kids are listening to. We keep a close pulse on that.
The Digital Age’s latest album, Evening : Morning,, is available now. To find out more, go to thedigitalagemusic.com!
David led from an acoustic guitar, and he would be a hard person to replace. One of the very first things we all agreed on was that we shouldn’t attempt to replace him. I usually play an electric, so now I’m leading on electric, and that fundamentally changes the sound of things.
You mentioned your studio in Waco. What made you decide to open a studio? When David moved to Atlanta, we effectively lost our recording and rehearsal space. We found this place in downtown Waco that was an old dirty boxing gym, and we built a studio in it. We spent three months renovating it. The boxing ring was where our control room is now. It was designed by B-Wack, and it’s been really great for us.
We’re very programming-heavy, and we use a lot of synths onstage. We’re multitasking a lot more, too. As for what we sound like, that changes from one song to the next. All of us listen to different genres of music, so, “What do we want this to sound like?” is a conversation we have with every song. We don’t like to be the same on every song and on every album, so the sound of The Digital Age from album 1 to album 2 could be completely different.
We practice and rehearse there, and we also have bands come in and we record them. It’s an extension of our ministry. It’s been great for us to be able to help new worship bands.
Walk me through your creative process in the studio. We all have our own mini Pro Tools studios at home, and we track these ideas as they come. Sometimes they’re full songs, sometimes just pieces. When we each have a handful of ideas, we all get together in our studio. All of these ideas start coming together, and we start to figure out how we are playing things as a band. We’ll either sit around the computer and start programming it out or head into the tracking room and start recording live parts. We all write, but we realize not all of us have the same strengths. I think one of our collective strengths is that we keep a really loose attachment to our ideas, and we see that they are all just pieces to a larger puzzle.
You still lead worship at UBC? We’re still very involved at UBC. When we were in the construction phase on our studio, we took a break from leading and just went to church without leading worship for the first time in a decade. Those three months were amazing; it was something we took for granted, and we didn’t realize how important it was. Now, we’re one of several worship bands at UBC. Our goal is to play there around once a month, depending on our tour schedule. What gear do you use in your studio? We are running Pro Tools HDX in our main control room. We use a lot of API preamps and the PreSonus ADL600. We use an LA2A compressor and a lot of gear that B-Wack made himself. Our main vocal mic is the Blue Bottle — so much character and so easy to change sound. For guitars, we use a mix of Shure SM57, Sennheiser e906, and Royer R121 mics. For bass, we use the Shure SM7B microphone. On drums, we mostly use the same Sennheiser Evolution series dynamic mics that we use live. We use a Yamaha SubKick on kick drum, and a Sennheiser MD421 on snare. We’re really into soft synths. We use Native Instruments Komplete. We also use Native Instruments Maschine heavily for programming. We lean a lot on Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere for pads. We use Reason a lot for piano sounds and sequencing. We also have a lot of vintage synths. How do you translate an album like Evening : Morning to something that works live? A lot of it is decisions made in production. We use a lot of loops live, but one of our rules is that we never put anything in the loops that can be played live — no vocals or guitar parts. That makes it more challenging in a live setting. So when we record, we have to be very intentional with things like guitar parts and not put anything on the record that we can’t re-create live. What software do you use onstage? Ableton Live. On Mike D’s keyboard rig, he runs Live and Reason. He has a slew of Korg Nanokeys in addition to an M-Audio MIDI controller, and some of the keys are assigned to things such as mutes and changing different values instead of triggering notes. We also run some vocals through Live for effects. What kinds of technical challenges do you see worship leaders facing today? For us, the coolest thing you can do is create your own loops. I think when a lot of people see something that is loop heavy, they think that it doesn’t fit into the way they do music. Or they think they can’t do the songs because they don’t have the technical know-how to pull it off. It’s possible to do it. You can get a copy of Ableton Live and a MIDI controller for next to nothing and make incredible sounds with it. It’s been really cool for us to travel around and see these churches start to learn and incorporate the technical stuff into the church services. We love it when churches take one of our songs, create their own loops for it, and make it their own.
blisskatherine.com
You guys have had a very long relationship with Sweetwater. Why is that? Relationship says it all. We love that if we have questions about gear, we can call and ask. We love that if there is something that piques your interest, we’ll get a phone call to tell us about it. The prices are always competitive, and as far as customer service goes, it’s always great. If anything is ever wrong, it’s always taken care of quickly. We travel a lot. If something isn’t working, getting a replacement quickly and easily is really important. It’s great to be able to get things fixed or questions answered without hassle. We really love the personalized nature of what Sweetwater does. You’re always great about asking what we need the gear to do. Even with a band like us, it’s so good to have somebody showing us how the gear we use can help us be better at doing what we do.
Photos by: Bliss Katherine
You can find out more about The Digital Age at thedigitalagemusic.com.
!
Freelance live sound engineer
Daniel Ellis
FOH engineer for The Digital Age How long have you been working with The Digital Age? The first tour I did with them was as the David Crowder Band, during the Remedy Club tour in 2007. I was with DCB for five years. Then, when they started The Digital Age, I mixed their very first show and I did their first tour, as well. What gear do you use with them onstage? We use mostly Sennheiser mics, on just about everything. Mostly the Evolution series. One thing I don’t think I’ve seen anybody else do is that we use a Sennheiser MD441 on B-Wack’s snare. It works great and gives us a fatter sound than other mics I’ve tried. On vocals, Mark and Jack both use a TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch to add reverb and delay to their voices before they ever get to me. That’s cool; it makes my job easier. At front of house, I run a Behringer X32. We use the S16 digital snake system, as well. That console is amazing. It’s so small and light — I can set it up by myself if I need to. When we started the tour, I was thinking, “There has got to be a reason this thing is so inexpensive, and I’m going to find out why.” I still don’t know why. It’s a great console. I love it. The guys use Sennheiser 300 series in-ear monitors, and they mix them themselves using Behringer’s X32-Q app for iPhone. That’s been amazing. It’s so much easier to not have to worry about doing FOH and monitors at the same time, and we don’t have to have a monitor engineer.
NEW
FREE ISSUE!
Are there any unique challenges working with The Digital Age? Since they run all those effects on the stage, what I get is a wet vocal. When we started out, sometimes it was way too wet, and we didn’t really have enough clarity in the FOH mix in the vocals. So we had to work on getting those reverb levels down and make sure that they trusted me to add more reverb at the console if it was needed. You and The Digital Age have been very loyal Sweetwater customers for years. Why is that? Because of the relationship. Because of you! Seriously, it’s because of you. We don’t just call a 1-800 number and get some random guy; we get the same guy. And the candy. You send candy with everything we buy. I never share it.
From left to right: BWack, Mike D, Mark Waldrop, and Jack Parker
Online
W NE
101 Guides
Sweetwater.com/worship
With valuable advice on live mixing, miking techniques, instruments, and more, our informative guides give you the tips and tricks you need to make your services sound better.
News and Articles
Get useful, up-to-date editorials, reviews, and information from experts in worship sound — and stay current on the latest developments.
Multitracks and the Modern Musical Message
Find out how you can enhance your worship performances with professional-sounding accompaniment — and learn about the tools that make it happen.
(800) 222-4700 • Sweetwater.com FREE Expert Advice • FREE Tech Support • FREE Shipping • FREE 2-year Warranty
WE’VE TAKEN DIGITAL WIRELESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL . . .
THE FLOOR
SYSTEM
STOMPBOX
DIGITAL 2.4 GHz HIGH-F IDELITY WIRELESS Combining advanced 24-bit, field-proven performance, easy setup and clear, natural sound quality, our System 10 Stompbox delivers the ultimate wireless experience. With the tap of a foot on the rugged, metal Stompbox receiver, guitarists can toggle between dual ¼” balanced outputs or mute one output without affecting the other. And, since the System operates in the 2.4 GHz range, it’s free from TV and DTV interference. You can also pair multiple UniPak® body-pack transmitters with a single receiver to easily change guitars. So go ahead, give it a try – we think you’ll be floored. audio-technica.com
Covering You. Over 158,000 churches across North America count on CCLI for license coverage and worship resources—each and every week. See how CCLI can help cover you.
Music Licensing and Resources
Covers the copying activities that assist with your congregational singing. Over 3,000 publishers/ copyright owners & over 300,000 worship songs are covered.
Song lyrics, audio samples and transposable chord sheets, lead sheets and vocal sheets. Choose the version that best suits your needs.
Allows your worship teams and choirs to legally copy and share commercial audio recordings for rehearsal purposes.
Allows you to stream or podcast your live-recorded worship music on your church’s website or other streaming service.
Movie/Video Licensing and Resources
If your church uses movies for any ministry-related activities, you’ll likely need the legal permission that the Church Video License provides.
http://www.ccli.com
Movie clips and ideas to use for your sermon/teaching illustrations.
17201 NE Sacramento Street Portland, Oregon 97230
503-257-2230 800-234-2446
A160
Editor’s Corner
Did I Mention Disneyland? Part Deux Last issue I tried to encourage you, our faithful readers, to plan on attending the Winter NAMM Show in 2015. We were preparing for NAMM 2014 and all of the activities there that we had a role to play in. So I thought a report back to base camp for you might help cement the deal for your 2015 visit. This was my 34th year of attending and I know I said this last year – but this year was the best one yet! In Christian Musician I’ll speak more about the new gear and some of the happenings for our new third publication “Collectible Guitar” magazine (which was very well received – thank you Lord!). But for this editor’s missive I want to focus on the ministry side of what went down in Anaheim during this large-scale mainstream music equipment dealer/manufacturer’s convention. Brian Felix, Joe Riggio, and I arrived at the Anaheim Convention Center Wednesday afternoon, January 22nd, to set up our exhibit booth (along with 1,500 other exhibitors) in anticipation of the opening of the show the next morning. After the booth was prepared I wandered through the busy convention halls handing out tickets to our Night of Worship concert the next day… to me that was the start of planting seeds for the ministry time. Our booth was in the best location yet, and over the course of the next four days Brian actually had 10 or more different folks come into our booth and ask him for prayer. Brian is faithful in praying for folks right there in the booth and also afterwards. The Night of Worship concert drew over 1,000 people again. Casey Corum’s worship team from the Anaheim Vineyard started things off by backing Rita Springer on several of her songs, and then Casey led worship with his team and Rita supported him on the keyboard. After that Matt Maher touched peoples hearts with his unique style of leading worship and our friend and local Pastor Holland Davis gave a short salvation message. Next Rita sang two beautiful worship songs at the keyboard while some people came forward for prayer. Six folks rededicated their lives to the Lord… what an amazing way to wrap up our concert. What I saw that I thought was so cool is what the Lord was doing in and around the Hilton Hotel that whole night. At 6:00pm Jonny Lang was playing on the outdoor stage that NAMM had set up, and in his subtle manner he speaks about the Lord in his music and stage comments. Then at 8:00pm, inside the Hilton’s bar area, the Altar Billies took the stage. You may remember them as the alternative music Christian band “the Altar Boys”. They now play rockabilly music. So we had three concerts going on at 6:00pm, 7:00pm, and 8:00pm, all with Christians presenting the music… pretty cool for a mainstream convention eh? Saturday’s H.O.T Zone workshops drew more folks than I had Continued on page 48
4227 S. Meridian. Suite C PMB #275 Puyallup, Washington 98373-5963 Phone: 253.445.1973 Fax: 253.655.5001 Email: bruce@christianmusician.com Website: www.worshipmusicianmagazine.com Publisher/Editor: Bruce Adolph Vice President: Judy Adolph Customer Service: Brian Felix brian@christianmusiciansummit.com Copyediting: Kevin Wilber Design Layout & Production: Matt Kees Advertising Sales: Bruce Adolph bruce@christianmusician.com • 253-445-1973 Worship Musician! is published bi-monthly by The Adolph Agency, Inc.
MAR/APR 2014
VOL. 12, ISSUE 2
Features 8 Product Review By Matt Kees PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2 AI 10 From the Drummer’s Perspective By Carl Albrecht Always Drumming for the Song 12 Keyboard By Ed Kerr Make Yourself Sixths 15 Bass By Gary Lunn Listen, And Listen Well 16 Vocals By Sheri Gould Coaching the Coaches -The Order of Things 18 Tips for Tight Teams By Sandy Hoffman You Can Be the Band - Part II (No Harm in Harmonica) 26 Songchart By Jake Hamilton The Father’s Song
42 The Band By Tom Lane Music On Purpose 44 Camera By Craig Kelly Ready, Setup, Go 46 Ministry + Artistry = Profitability? Creating your MAP™ By Scott A. Shuford Facebook Changed Policy – Allows Users to Create Contests Directly 50 Percussion By Mark Shelton Setup Strategy 53 Product Review By Carl Albrecht Heartbeat Cymbals from Turkey via Canada 54 A Few Moments With... The Musician’s Doc: Timothy Jameson Honoring God with our Bodies
30 Record Reviews By Gerod Bass • Rend Collective Experiment • Kutless • International House of Prayer • iWorship Now/ Next 2014 • Elevation Worship 34 FOH Engineer By Bill Gibson Reverberation Effects 38 Worship Team Training By Branon Dempsey Lend Me Your Ear 40 Guitar Grab Bag By Doug Doppler Play It Like You Mean It
Interview 20 In Pursuit of the Beautiful Rider: an interview with Jake Hamilton by Aimee Herd
WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM MAR/APR 2014
7
PRODUCT REVIEW
By Matt Kees
PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2 AI I had the privilege of reviewing the SL 24.4.2 console when it released a few years ago. And now, PreSonus has stepped up its game with the release of digital consoles with Active IntegrationTM. The first generation of Studio Live series introduced us to an affordable digital mixer with a user-friendly, layer-less surface-driven interface for simple mixing, great sounding preamps, and a bunch of digital signal processing options with the impressive Fat Channel and built-in effects. The new Active IntegrationTM consoles (available in 32, 24, or 16 channel models) feature so much more than their predecessors with 64 times more processing power and 10k times more RAM than the previous 24.4.2... yes, 10,000 times more RAM! This allows for twice as many internal effects buses, plus the ability to create 2 complete sets of EQ & dynamic settings (gate, compression, limiting) for a single channel, giving you the ability to make AB comparisons on the fly. Active IntegrationTM also includes Wi-Fi remote control over a variety of features, using free Mac®, Windows®, and iPad® software. So... you’re thinking, “Yeah... these consoles have a ton of processing power, have super fast RAM, and allow for wireless control using my iPad or iPhone... BUT, does it sound good?” Well, for me, that’s the bottom line. It may tout all the coolest and latest gadgets and tools, but for it to pass the test, it has to sound good... plain and simple. Short answer for the StudioLive 32... Yes. I’ve always been impressed with the PreSonus XMAXTM Class A preamps. They are extremely clean and
8
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
transparent. I love ‘em. You will notice an immediate difference from your older analog console when you plug in a mic to one of these preamps. Richer lows, smoother highs, and a nice full sound before you even touch an EQ. For our church, it was like night and day...
then played it back for them as soon as rehearsal ended, and they were blown away!
6. While I may not do this frequently, I love the option to do a virtual sound check. After recording the band during rehearsal using Capture, I was able There were a few other reasons our to come back on an ‘off’ day without church was interested in the StudioLive disturbing anyone and re-mix the band before Sunday morning. I tweaked 32. the drum sounds, re-EQ’d the singers, 1. 32 mic inputs was a better number compressed the bass... super cool, for our medium sized church than 24. super handy. (If I wanted to, I could With only 24, we’d have to re-patch the have even remixed their monitor mixes console from week to week, depending to clean them up a bit, but I didn’t :) on the size of the worship team, or additional programatic elements, like 7. The price. It’s so reasonable. You get SO much for so little. This is a great choirs, dramas, etc. console for medium-sized church, and it 2. We loved the idea of iPad & iPhone fits a new gear budget so nicely. If you wireless monitor control, especially if have a smaller church, you can go with our sound tech was not available for a the 16 or 24. rehearsal. Either the worship leader or One of the complaints you may hear myself would have to run back and forth adjusting levels, interrupting the flow of about regarding these PreSonus consoles the rehearsal... and with the ability to is that there is no Automation with the adjust EQ, or any of the Fat Channel faders. My response... you don’t need options on each monitor send from an it. There are no ‘layers’ that you need to worry about. A lot of other consoles iPad makes it even better. require automated faders because they 3. During rehearsals or sound checks, only have 16 faders on the console our sound techs, with iPad in hand, can for a 32 channel board. So, switching walk around the platform, adjusting back and forth to these different ‘layers’ the levels of each monitor mix while requires that your faders move, too. The standing next to the musician making PreSonus board has a simple ‘Locate’ requests... provides for some great feature that shows you where your relationship and trust building between faders ought to be located when you musicians and techs. recall a scene, or when you make a 4. It’s a relatively simple console change on your iPad or the Universal to figure out. But even so, it’s great to Control software. have the option to save scenes for each PreSonus has been making high worship team. It makes it so easy to quality gear for years, and they haven’t recall a scene with the Fat Channel info stopped. It’s a name I trust when it comes saved for each singer... High Pass Filter, to quality, reliability, and customer EQ, etc. support. If your church is ready to move 5. With the included Capture to a digital console, this is a great way Software, recording portions of the to go. service are a breeze. And it sounds StudioLive AI - 32.4.2 $3,999 phenomenal! I recorded a portion of the bands rehearsal a few weeks ago,
The Audix MicroBoomTM
Flexible, Scalable Microphone Systems for
Choir Miking The Audix MicroBoom System is a uniquely flexible and scalable solution for ensembles of any size. Rather than hanging fixed mics, the MicroBoom system lets you place them where & when needed, for any size choir or orchestra. Award-winning MicroBoom models feature the M1250B Micros Series condenser or the higher output M1255B. Available in cardioid and hypercardioid polar patterns to achieve the precise coverage pattern required. Lightweight, carbon-fiber booms are available in 24-, 50-, and 80-inch lengths with flexible steel goosenecks that place mics precisely where needed. Booms include standard mounts that work with any mic stand. This system yields a clean, minimalist look on the platform and on video.
Mount Pisgah United Methodist Church John’s Creek, GA Photo by Andrew Howard
“The sonic quality, coupled with the small footprint of the MB5050, make these a great solution for our choir. I can easily move them or add more as needed for any situation!”
Mickey Lyons - Technical Director, Mt. Pisgah Church
FROM THE DRUMMER’S PERSPECTIVE By Carl Albrecht
Always Drumming for the Song Ah, yes . . .another seminar and concert event has finished. Great teaching sessions and nights of worship have been followed with many discussions about technical and spiritual matters. Questions about how to tune the drums or what equipment I prefer are fairly common. Also, comments about how certain songs touched people, or the positive team spirit of the band are heard. But the most popular topic here, by far, is the “busy drummer syndrome.” This doesn’t mean keeping the calendar full of appointments either. No, sadly, I frequently talk with worship leaders, music directors, and other musicians about their drummers “over-playing.” OK, drummers, here’s the deal! Most people don’t want to hear a fill every two bars. They don’t care how hard you’ve practiced to play those 32nd note patterns, or to “nail” the solo from your favorite drum recording. They just want you to PLAY THE SONG! Keep the tempo steady, and play the tune the way you hear it on the recording, AND THAT’S IT! (The bold letters mean that I’m shouting… Oh, I’m sorry . . . I mean . . . speaking with a strong emphasis.) Actually, I’d pull my hair out except that I shave my head now and have nothing left to grab. Why is it that so many drummers don’t get this? … It is a mystery. You may have heard me say this before, but it’s worth repeating. I always tell my students and clinic attendees to “Play music, NOT drums.” Serving the song and your team is your primary objective. If you think those things are suppose to serve you and give you a way to show-off your “sweet drumming skills” you’ve got it all wrong. Gosh!!! Now I know I’m making a big deal out of this, but it IS a big deal. Making the song sound great is EVERY musician’s job. If that is your heart about being a drummer, then people will love your playing. If the music calls for a lot of activity, then go for it… but if it’s just playing grooves for tunes, then master that skill as well. Every great drum icon I’ve seen and heard made the whole band sound fantastic. Especially when working with singer/artist types they always play for the song, and it is a magical experience. Drummers often think that their drum hero must be very restrained in their ability to just play songs. “They must be bored out of their mind! … I wish they could really cut loose!” But, you know, the “regular” people listening never think of it like that.
10
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
The non-musical folks are just enjoying and experiencing the music.
Finally, practice groove ideas with a click track for eight bars without any changes. Only do fills at the end of an eight bar phrase, and then maybe go to a variation of the groove for the next section. Do not even do fills in the 4th measure. This is an exercise in restraint. Not physically difficult, but it can be a real mental challenge. Do it! Listen closely to how consistent you are with EVERY element of your playing. Do the snare hits sound exactly alike? Is your hihat pattern maintaining a steady pace? Does the bass drum perfectly line up with your hands and sound solid? Put your playing “under the microscope” and perfect every element to the best of your ability.
So, how do you keep from falling into the “busy drummer syndrome?” The first thing I do is just copy what has already been done. Listen to the original recordings and just do what they do. It’s that simple. And yes, SIMPLE is usually the operative word. Most songs are arranged very carefully. Check out any of your favorite artists or worship recordings and you’ll hear what I mean. Intros, verses, choruses, etc. etc. all seem to have specific musical ideas OK, so you say you’ve heard it all happening. Play it just like that. before --- Great. --- BUT . . .are you Yea, I know, you’re thinking… “But doing it? Are you really honing in on your musical artistry? Do not become Carl, that’s sooooooo boring!! complacent or rest on yesterday’s I want to add some flash to it; put some accomplishments. Keep moving ahead. of my own personality into it! Man, I’ve Improve what talent you already have. got to express myself!” Arghhhhhhhhh! Get over this attitude as soon as possible. 1. Copy the drummers on great recordings. Express yourself at home! Blow off that creative drive during your practice time. 2. Ask for honest feedback from those Otherwise, just play the songs. you work with. Doing a great job IS expressing 3. Record yourself all of the time and yourself. It is the most mature thing you review it. can do as a musician. Making great 4. Practice the 8 bar phrase concept music and bringing the songs to life is with a click. what it’s all about. There is not one artist that I’ve worked with that doesn’t feel Playing simple great grooves is NOT as the same way about this subject. simple you may think. It takes a strong, Another way to battle this illness is to mature player to do this. But the pay-off talk to your worship leader or music is amazing. The whole band is going to director and ask if what you’re playing sound better. Your singers are going to is working for them. If you’ve started love how open and spacious the tunes with the recording as your reference, feel. And you should feel more confident they’ll usually like what you are doing. and solid in your performance. But there are times they do want a little Again, remember it’s all about the more activity just to add energy to music. Play what’s right for the style of certain songs. Don’t get carried away songs your doing and you’ll be honored though. This is not permission for you to amongst your peers. become a “drum monster.” (You know, the big creature stepping on everything “PLAY MUSIC, NOT JUST DRUMS.” that gets in its way.) Yes, you must ask them. Sometimes people are afraid to talk to you about your playing because Blessings, everyone knows how sensitive musicians Carl can be. Recording your rehearsals and performances is also a great tool. Videotape it if you can, but do something so you can go back and check out how it went. Be honest with yourself and make note of both your great and bad moments. Let others review your recording as well. Then change anything you need to in order to make your performance even better.
Carl Albrecht has been a professional drummer & percussionist for over 25 years. He has played on over 70 Integrity Music projects; Maranatha Praise Band recordings & numerous other Christian, Pop, Country, Jazz & commercial projects. He currently lives in Nashville doing recording sessions, producing, writing and continuing to do various tours & seminar events. Visit his website: www.carlalbrecht.com or send an e-mail to: lmalbrecht@aol.com.
Š2014 Avedis Zildjian Company
GEN16 DIRECT SOURCE PICKUP
THE NEXT GENERATION
The perfect complement to electronic drums, the Gen16 System makes playing an electronic drum set a more enjoyable experience. The Gen16 Direct Source pickup eliminates feedback, crosstalk, and phasing associated with microphones, making them perfect for both live performance and practice. Unlike electronic hi-hat pedals and triggers, Gen16 cymbals can be played with sticks, rods, or mallets. And they can be brushed and choked like a traditional cymbal because they are real cymbals. DCP Access Tool provides even greater flexibility and allows the user to customize tone shapes and create up to 99 tone shapes per cymbal. To download the Tool free of charge, visit Zildjian.com.
SOUND LEGACY
KEYBOARD
By Ed Kerr
Make Yourself Sixths In my last article, I focused on the use of a static, droning pitch For even more contrast with example A’s static soprano note, as the top note (soprano) of a keyboard part. In this article, I’m here are some larger leaps in the soprano. going to expand on that concept, using the first four chords of the verse and chorus of “10,000 Reasons” in G.
Note that in the right hand I’m always omitting the chord tone that’s between the notes of the 6th.
Here I made the D my static note in the soprano. Perhaps as I prefer this more open sound that results from omitting that the song progresses you decide you want to develop a more middle note. Including that note nets more of a hymn sound. involved piano part with more movement in the top note. Using Here’s a bit of melodic activity you can create using the a sixth can lead to some very satisfying results. notes shown in example D. To create a sixth, start with a note in the scale and then find the pitch that’s 6 scale tones above or below it. Here are the notes in a G scale and the pitches a sixth above and below them. Note 6th Above 6th Below G E B A F# C B G D C A E D B F# E C G F# D A
There’s no end to the variety you can create by using sixths. Below I use quarter notes and a long string of sixths, which For this exercise you won’t keep a static note in the soprano. is definitely a significant contrast to example A that I first Instead, that note will change often and you’ll focus on the showed you. intervals you create below it. Take some time and explore the sixths you can create with the notes of the C chord, C E and G. They are C with an E below it, and E with a G below it. Then choose one of these for the first chord in the phrase. Here I use C in the soprano with E below.
If you ever utilize string players on your team, or are using a string sound from your keyboard, keep in mind that 6ths work very well. Play the right hand of example G with a string sound and you’ll see what I mean. Experiment with sixths in your playing. You’ll like what you hear. Look at the 1st measure played an octave lower.
As a songwriter Ed has written over 100 songs with Integrity Music. He has a Masters Degree in piano performance. Ed and his family live in Washington State. Ed plays Yamaha’s Motif XS8. www.kerrtunes.com
12
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
STOMPHARDER
RoCKTRoN BouTIQuE sERIEs These pedal designs come in a rugged metal chassis with retro custom design laser etched artwork and provide true-bypass. EMBRACE •• METAL Distortion in a heavy metal dream. ChoRus •• DREAMsTAR Two independent chorus voices. CELEsTIAL DELAY • Out of this world classic analog delay. CoTToNMouTh • Rocktron’s hot newFuZZ fuzz pedal. BLACK RosE oCTAVER • • Great octave effect for guitar. Achieve noise exterminating bliss with Rocktron’s incredible new ThIRD ANgEL DIsToRTIoN •• Incredibly GUITAR SILENCER that combines patented HUSH® noise reduction technology • heavy sound. with a noise gating process. This combination of two means to achieve noise VII DEADLY sINs •• Auto elimination provides one outrageous noise killing device! The Guitar Silencer wah filter with A.D.S.R. allows you to go from heavy all out distortion to SILENCE by muting your TRu-LooP • Give true bypass to any pedal. guitar strings! All this WITHOUT changing your tone! Wipe out hiss while letting your sustain ring out, or get instant noise kill with “hard” gating. VALVE ChARgER • Overdrive that blends crunch and power. MEgA BoosTER •• Add gain and dynamic thrust. TEXAs RECoILER •• Makes all single coil guitar pickups sound better. Check out the full line of Rocktron stomp boxes at rocktron.com
800/432-ROCK 2813 Wilbur Ave. Battle Creek, MI 49037 Rocktron is a division of GHS Corporation HUSH® is a registered trademark of GHS Corporation
BASS
By Gary Lunn
Listen, And Listen Well Surprisingly, I have suddenly found myself on tour with a living legend: Dolly Parton. What an amazing blessing, though I am pretty selective about the kind of person for whom I might choose to leave my family and go on the road. I had worked with Ms. Parton some years ago on a production basis, but after a favorably fateful, word-of-mouth opportunity, here I am traveling around the world again after a twelve-year hiatus from the road (as of this writing I am in New Zealand). After two months of rehearsals and five shows under my belt I have had ample opportunity to figure out my place in the show and get comfortable with my in-ear monitoring situation. I have also chosen which bass I need to play for this particular complement of instrumentation, dynamic range, and the foundational range that my bass part needs to adequately occupy. I’ve also had to pick up the acoustic bass, dust off what little upright chops I have, and plunk away on several bluegrassstyle tunes (it’s actually quite fun!). First off, let me say that I am very fortunate to be amongst a world-class group of musicians and singers, all with histories that are nothing short of legendary. There are three background vocalists, a primary keyboardist, an auxiliary keyboardist (who also plays mandolin and dobro on occasion), an amazing electric guitarist/band leader who doubles on acoustic guitar, an acoustic guitarist who also can “wear out” a banjo, a masterful dobro player who doubles on fiddle, a fabulous, high-energy drummer, a click track, and finally, me on bass. With all of that said, you can probably guess what getting the IEM (in-ear monitor) mix is like. With so many different feeling “pockets” on stage, you can imagine the challenge toward achieving a proper mix. Even with the amount of awesome talent present, the differences of “opinion” that are there to be considered when attempting to sit squarely in the groove as a bassist, and as the proper foundation
of the band can be quite massive. But... many layers of parts, I came to the not impossible! conclusion early on that I needed find a way to stay out of everyone’s way. For the last 12 years I have grown so The Tyler has such a focused bottom end accustomed to dialing in my own mix that I figured it would be my best choice on personal headphone mixers that I have had to re-learn the communicative for occupying all of that unused space. art of accurately conveying exactly The Tyler also has the “punch-through” what my listening needs are to our capability that I need for the more very professional monitor-mix engineer. pop sounding songs (“Here You Come Mixing monitors is an art form in itself, Again” or “Islands In The Stream”) when melodic, higher-register bass lines are and our technician is not only an artist, he is a drummer and a singer (he pays needed, so I didn’t feel it necessary to close attention to the bass). Panning is take any of my Fenders out with me. the key (for me) to solving overlapping The front-of-house engineer graciously rhythmic reference problems, and our offered to bring his beautiful, blue, monitor guy understands that completely. Lakland 55-94 5-string out on the tour Having clarity and perspective between as a backup in the case of a technical the many different instruments, the lead problem, but everyone agrees that, well, vocal, and the click is paramount to the Tyler sounds huge and is an absolute finding the groove. My solution is this: perfect fit for this tour. acoustic instruments panned to 8 o’clock and 5 o’clock, electric guitar panned to 11 o’clock, the piano panned to 9 and 3 o’clock in stereo (as well as the bgv’s), the aux keys panned hard left and right in stereo, the click panned to 2 0’clock, the hi-hat panned to 10 o’clock, the overheads hard left and right, the kick and snare at 12 o’clock (the snare is set substantially lower in volume than the kick), and the bass at 12 o’clock. The kick, bass, and click are the loudest elements in my mix. As you can see, everything has its place in my stereo spectrum. This allows me to be aware of who is rushing, who is dragging, and who’s right in the zone (that I want to hear the most of). I never turn anyone else off (if I had to do that, they probably wouldn’t be in the band in the first place) but I do turn some more “drifting” elements down a little. Overall, my desire is to hear a wonderful, CD-sounding mix, with the bass, kick, hat, and click louder than everything else. But hey, I don’t really want THAT much. :) Because of the intense musical complement of this band, I decided to go with my Tyler 5-string bass. After listening to all of the songs with their
As far as my upright goes, I was able to acquire a gorgeous, early-to-mid 1900’s, Juzek, 3/4 scale bass (it actually belonged to the bassist for “Riders In The Sky” many years ago). After having an amazing Nashville acoustic bass luthier (Jim Ferguson) install a new fingerboard, buying a Lifeline acoustic-bass pickup, and resurrecting an old hard-shell bass case that we found on eBay, I finally wound up with an excellent playing upright bass to play. I know that I am out here for a reason and for this opportunity, without God, I surely would not be here. I hope that sharing my perspective and my process for achieving a (hopefully) complimentary musical position in this band will be a help to you. May God truly bless the work of your hands!!
Gary is a session player/ producer/writer in Nashville, TN, currently touring with Dolly Parton. He records sessions at home (and hotel rooms...), plays for many recording session accounts, and attends Grace Church (gracechurchnashville. com) in Franklin, TN. Find him on www.facebook.com for questions or scheduling. Check out leonardjonesmusic.com
WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM MAR/APR 2014
15
VOCALS
By Sheri Gould
Coaching the Coaches -The Order of Things
I recently received an email from a gal who is kicking off her career as a vocal coach. She has some significant training in her background and feels qualified to teach, and yet she is running into a very typical problem for new teachers: lack of experience. She is young. She can sing. She’s been to school for music and voice. She’s studied on her own. What she CAN’T get through simply studying, however, is EXPERIENCE. Because she is a conscientious student of voice, she recognizes the importance of her position as a vocal coach and how important it is to be able to spot vocal issues in her students so she can help guide and direct them properly. She wants to be able to not only keep them healthy and safe vocally, but also to help them improve their overall singing quality as well. There are some things that just take TIME and EXPERIENCE. This is one of them. That is why she wrote to me…looking for help. I will never forget the very first time I directed my OWN choir in my first REAL position as a music director. As is the case with my new friend in the previous paragraph, I was very qualified for my position. But I will admit to you that I was SO NERVOUS when the time came for my first rehearsal! I remember thinking to myself “Oh I how wish I could feel like I will feel 5 years from now when I have lots of experience!” I did get through that rehearsal and did a fine job. But 5 years later I was definitely a more savvy and experienced choir director. I learned a lot of things along the way about what was important and in what order they should be taught.
16
information :) If I can, I will have them get my Basic Vocal Technique DVD before our first meeting and watch it. This will save me a lot of time, and it’s much cheaper for the student to spend $18 on an hour of my teaching than to have me do this with them in person. Then I have them sing for me and I make some overall assessments. If they play an instrument, I have them sing for me both with and without their instrument so I can see if there is any difference. Then I try to make sure I include proper training for those differences when we work. Instrumentalists need to work both with and without their instrument to learn proper singing technique and to create good habits while they can focus solely on their voice. But then they need to sing while playing, in front of me, so I can see if the good habits get replaced with bad ones once they start playing and singing at the same time. This is especially important when you work with worship leaders, since they are spread so thin mentally with everything they have to think of and remember! Posture is typically a big issue with instrumentalists. Untrained singers commonly have tension and strain issues. This is almost always the result of NOT using proper breath support (and improper posture). Almost no one actually USES proper breath support-even if they understand it and know how to do it correctly during lessons. The result is strain caused by using the wrong muscles for support. This point alone has to be HAMMERED HOME over and over again until the skills come without thinking.
So in responding to the email mentioned above, I took my 35 years of experience in vocal coaching and gave her some ideas to think about. Other coaches my not do things exactly in the same order, but I think the vast majority would agree with the general overall approach. Here is a portion of the email I sent:
Once we have breath support attended to, I focus heavily on eliminating throat tension by mastering a lowered larynx position. Sometimes along the way I may encounter intonation issues, which have to be dealt with up front as well. After these basics are under our belt, I will start to work on tone, and eventually begin to work on an actual song.
I always start off my students with a rigorous dose of vocal health care
This is the order that I personally take.
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
There are often twists and turns along the way and sometimes I will only have a student for a few, predetermined lessons and with specific goals. But as a teacher, in order to insure that they DON’T create vocal damage (that will have to be undone later) I feel strongly about getting these particular issues out of the way first. MOST of the time if a person has vocal damage, they have gotten it through improper SPEECH patterns and have only exacerbated it through singing. If I suspect vocal damage in a potential student I will require them to take a trip to the ENT for a full physical vocal assessment before I see them. I can take it from there, but I will not work with someone who has vocal damage until they are under the care of a doctor and HEALED. I will work with them through the healing procedure only in the sense that I will coach them through the recovery process. No singing at all until they are completely healed. Every student is unique and therefore each lesson is geared toward the individual, but I think it’s safe to assume that this is a good general outline to follow as a teacher. I love working with students, but I also love working with conscientious, caring teachers who are willing to learn how to be better vocal coaches. I truly admire this young woman who took the time to write to me and ask questions—that’s one way to keep growing. I also look up to and admire coaches that have a lot more experience and knowledge than I do. I hope to keep learning for as long as I am still breathing. God bless you and happy singing/coaching!!
Sheri Gould is an internationally acclaimed vocal coach. With a degree from the University of Ill, she has been coaching since 1979 and leading worship since 1985. For weekly vocal tips, check out Sheri’s FB page at www.facebook.com/officialsherigould. For information on products, including instructional DVDs, check out http://sherigould.com
TIPS FOR TIGHT TEAMS
by Sandy Hoffman
You Can Be the Band - Part II (No Harm in Harmonica)
In Part I of “You Can Be The Band” (Worship Musician! Magazine, JAN/FEB 2014, Volume 12, Issue 1), we learned to flail, choke, and drone! We discovered that flailing our guitars (or other chorded instruments) means strumming in a passionate, rhythmic explosion of sound. We added to that choking the strings with the lower side of the right hand. Doing this during the down stroke of the pick, on the second and fourth beats of each measure, muted the strings and mimicked the sound of the snare drum. Rhythmically choking the strings in this fashion gave us the sense of more than just one instrument being played. Finally, we added drones (or common tones) to all the chords within a particular song. This tied them together into a unified chordal family and pleased our ears with commonality and continuity. (For useful, free PDF downloads of “Color Chords” [droning] in the keys of E and G, please visit: http://www.worshipworks. com/#!free-downloads/cwwi.)
with my guitar (or piano), giving a sense of musical space and variety to my occasional one-man-band worship leading style. This little musical miracle didn’t require a Master’s Degree in Performance to convince others. It was, and still is, one of the most forgiving of instruments, begging to be blown by beginner and master alike, then provoking an immediate and desirable response from all within earshot. We are discussing, of course, what is probably the eighth wonder of the musical world! A versatile little instrument, voted most likely to captivate your attention on this, or any other planet. Yes, friends, it could only be one thing: the diminutive harmonica! THERE BE LEGENDS
Bob Dylan (http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA), John Lennon (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=J1BmE3lDDio), and Neil Young (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Eh44QPT1mPE) are just a few A MONOPHONIC SYMPHONY! of the pickers from the past who have Now that we’re playing rhythm, snare enjoyed huge hits with the mighty little drum, and a droning pad of common tones mouth harp. Billy Joel, who’s still filling simultaneously, our solo guitar is sounding Madison Square Garden for his New more like a “monophonic-symphony.” It’s York concert series, also soloed with become a “six-string orchestra!” We’re the harmonica on his hit, “Piano Man.” ready to consider some ways to praise (Funny he called it Piano Man, since using our voice, instrument, and adding the obvious featured instrument was the a secret weapon or two from those who harmonica!) have successfully pioneered and innovated Whether you’re all alone on stage like before us. Let’s focus on what it means to Bob Dylan, or in John Lennon’s case, be the whole band, and how to step up enjoying the backing of a band as to that microphone with confidence and stellar as The Beatles (Happy 50th U.S. authority (and a few tricks up your sleeve) Anniversary, lads: “wooo-whooo”), the even if you’re the only one there. harmonica always shines through! It evokes emotion and audience response NO HARM IN HARMONICA with even the simplest of melodic lines. At about age fifteen, I recall being As in worship, playing the harmonica is introduced to an instrument offering all about heart and passion! Just take a such profuse auditory delights that it has deep breath and give it one good blow. never left my side (or ear) ever since! It You’ll hear what I mean. communicated deep passion and profound emotion. It allowed for both melodic and THE FACILITATION FACTOR chordal expression, ranging from great joy As worship leaders/musicians, our to powerful spiritual introspection. With it, goal is to facilitate, not manipulate. I could play folk, rock, blues, bluegrass, When we factor the harmonica, or and just about anything else (except other such emotive instruments, into our maybe opera). It blended wonderfully worship mix, we are almost guaranteed
18
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
an emotional response in return from those we are leading. One minute, we might be wailing on a jubilant song like “Hosanna” by Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown, the next could be a tune such as my song, “Lord, You Care For Me,” (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rqNpxhR1vuQ), reflective and deeply personal. Our goal should always be to stay yielded to the Holy Spirit as we introduce new motivational elements into our worship times. With pure motives, the harmonica, like any other instrument redeemed in the hands of the Lord, can be a powerful tool of encouragement to worshipers young and old. No manipulation is necessary. Just play from the depths of your soul, and watch the Holy Spirit take care of the rest. You’ll see it on their faces! May I challenge you to try playing harmonica or other solo instruments during worship? (Of course, the harmonica carries with it the unfair advantage of being able to be played at the same time you’re strumming your guitar. Just pick up a harmonica holder from any local music store or on-line. It might feel awkward at first, but soon you’ll be pouring out your heart as an act of worship to the Lord!) DIVERSIFY! You may also want to try using capos and cut capos to change the sound of your guitar from song to song during worship. Perhaps you could occasionally start a song a cappella. That’s always an eye/ear opener. Alternate between strumming and finger picking too. On piano, try moving from blocked chords to arpeggiated and back again. When leading alone, I like to set up two separate performance areas on stage. One is usually a chair with vocal mike on a boom stand. The other would be a spot a few feet away where I could stand up and lead/sing. I move between them depending upon the song list and direction of the worship time. Once again, this simple variation helps to keep people from mentally (or spiritually) tuning out. Continued on page 48
LET THE KYSER® SHORT-CUT™ PLAY THAT SONG FOR YOU.
www.kysermusical.com
In Pursuit of the Beautiful Rider
An interview with
Jake Hamilton by Aimee Herd
Prayer and being there. He came back four months later and said, “Hey, we don’t want anything from you, but we love your songs, and we feel like they need to be released. We’d just like to be part of releasing them to a generation.”
How do you define the music that moves you as you spend time in God’s presence? Does a certain sound come to mind? How do you think GOD might define the music that touches HIM? I would venture to say “honest” and “from the heart” could be a start. And those words could also describe the music of Jake Hamilton and The Sound. Perhaps not formatted to be CCM-Radiofriendly; Jake’s passionate pursuit of the Lord, put to song, is a raw, Psalm 63 cry to just be nearer to the God who saves.
Aimee Herd: Jake, my first thought on listening to your new album, Beautiful Rider, was, “Throw away the cookiecutters!” Seriously refreshing. Jake Hamilton: you, I appreciate it.
(Laughing) Thank
AH: But, it makes me want to know what went into this musical journey that brought you to where you are today. JH: Well, the small background is that I’ve been in full time ministry since I was 19-years-old. I picked up a $50 guitar when I was 18; I went to work at a Salvation Army camp for the summer. In two weeks I became a worship leader, because the other worship leader thought the place was terrible and left in the middle of the night. So, I took my $50 guitar, barely knowing how to play two chords, and I started writing songs immediately—because I couldn’t play anyone else’s! Even the simple church choruses; I didn’t have enough chords in my repertoire to be able to play them. So that’s when I started writing my own songs. [Later] I came back and interned at the same church and— long story short—that turned into a church of its own. Our little
20
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
ministry inside the church turned into a 700-person church by the time I was 20-years-old. I was a worship leader of a growing and thriving church of young adults within a couple of years. So, we planted; were mobile for five years... had a building for a couple years, [that was] where I met my wife. We had our first two kids while a part of that ministry, and had some encounters with the Lord that led us to plant a house of prayer with the focus of birthing a center of worship and prayer in the middle of our city. That was so important because that’s pretty much where every song was written...we’d do four to sixhour prayer meetings where we’d read the Word, pray the Word and sing the Word for hours, and hours, and hours every single day. That’s really where the bulk of the songwriting shifted for us. And that’s where we met Banning [Liebscher] and Kim [Walker-Smith] from Jesus Culture, out of Bethel in Redding. They came down to help us with a youth conference with like 150 kids... Banning immediately said, “Hey would you be on our record label that we’re starting?” I said no at first, because I really liked the House of
So, the third time I visited Redding, and Bethel Church, I was recording an album. It was kind of like really, really quick, how it all happened. Then immediately, by the time the album was released, we had invites from all over the place to go and play at churches, conferences, and events. But, we were still in the House of Prayer at that point, and I think that was key. Just being in the place of prayer and God’s presence for several years allowed us to really grow roots that couldn’t be moved even when we were on the road. Even when we were out playing at places, our root system was super deep so it didn’t matter whether it was a group of 50 or 5,000—it was irrelevant how many were there—because we were able to be devoted to His presence as the primary focus of what we were doing. That’s kind of the short story of how we ended up where we are now. And then [Beautiful Rider] is our first release apart from Jesus Culture. They were planting churches and busy with what they were doing, and we said, “We’re just going to go and record this album and see what happens.” They said, “We’re for you. We want to support you and help you release it as well.” So, they were really stoked. It’s all just friendship, y’know? There were never any contracts, it was all just friendship. AH: That’s awesome. And you were just thrown into the fire too, with worship. JH: Oh yeah. But that’s why I have such a passion for the local church. The model that I think is unhealthy for a lot of worship leaders is: record your CD, get on the road, leave the local church. But I’m like the opposite. We feel like telling worship leaders, “Don’t leave the local church. That’s where God has placed you, and He desires for you to stick around and really go deep there. Don’t just record an album to get your songs out there and travel the world. I want to encourage the local body through songs and the ministry to say “what you’re
doing is really, really important.” Yes—write. Yes—release your songs. But pour into those local expressions of the church, because at the end of the day, those are what 90 percent of the population is going to go to when they meet Jesus—they’re going to go find a local church. They need to find amazing pastors and amazing worship leaders who are really, really devoted to cities, and devoted to community in those places. AH: That’s really good, and it’s so needed. JH: Yeah, the ‘rock star’ mentality of worship is really not something that’s attractive to me. (Laughs) When God calls you [to that] and you can’t get out of it, that’s different then because you’re pursuing [God] in it. But if you’re trying to craft the ‘right’ worship songs so you can be #1 on CCLI... that’s not attractive to me, honestly. AH: So, your new record is, Beautiful Rider, and you’re going by not just Jake Hamilton, but “Jake Hamilton and The Sound.” Tell me about “The Sound.” JH: Since we recorded Marked By Heaven in 2008, really it’s been like a journey of us playing with so many different musicians, with so many varying backgrounds and so many different styles. So we decided, “what if we just had a really good rhythm section”—our drummer is Seth Thomas, and we have our bass player, Brian Campbell, who we’ve been playing with for like 5 years. Everybody else has been this everchanging keyboard, guitar...whatever. So, with these random people and friends that we’ve met along the way, we felt like it could be a collective that we could pull from, depending on where we’re going and what God’s saying. We just call it “The Sound”, but you never know who The Sound is, it’s just a collection of friends and family that plays together and worships together. It’s kind of our excuse to hang out and worship Jesus together! I really feel like if you have a great drummer and a great bass player, everything else will be easy; the rhythm section really lays the foundation for a great band. AH: Let’s talk about some of the songs on Beautiful Rider—I already have a few favorites by the way. JH: (Laughs) Perfect. AH: I’d have to say a big favorite right now is “Never Let Me Down,” and then “Save Me” and “Slow Down”... (I feel like I’m sensing a theme!) JH: (Laughs) C’mon... AH: All three of those songs, but especially “Slow Down” really hit me deeply. I so want to hear God’s voice, but I so need to slow down—look a squirrel! …Distractions, y’know?
JH: Totally... (Laughs) exactly! I meditate in Scripture in two main places— Matthew 5, in the Beatitudes, and then 1 Corinthians 13, the attributes of love. Whenever I read, “love is patient”... that’s really where that song came from. What I really feel like the Lord said to me when I was mediating on that Scripture was, “You can’t love in a hurry.” Love doesn’t happen in a hurry; love doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it doesn’t happen by accident, and you don’t fall into it. Love is something that takes time; it takes energy; it takes thought. And when we’re dealing with an eternal God, and eternal perspective...
want to do the great thing, but this other thing gets in the way...” I thought, “I need a song like that—save me from me!” [With these two songs] we decided we were not going to make them ‘small,’ like... “Oh God please save me.” No, I want a scream that’s from the top of my
God said to me, “If you want My presence, you have to be present. But if you’re thinking about five other things while you’re trying to spend time with Me, you’ll never have depth.” You might have little encounters, because He’s so full of grace and so loves us. But you won’t have intimacy because you’re too busy and in too much of a hurry. That’s why the first line [in the song] says, “I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders...” but it’s not even really there, the weight that I’m carrying around, in all honesty, is made up. [The Lord] really does carry the weight on His shoulders, but we try to adopt it, like: “No God, it’s Okay, I got it!” For us, that song, “Slow Down” became a mantra of the whole band. We realized, if we’re going to leave an inheritance of love and faith for our children and the next generation, we have to slow down our hearts. Not just our heads, but our hearts. That became key for us. The song “Save Me” was just me going after Romans 7 where Paul is saying, “I do the things I don’t want to do, and I
lungs because that’s how I feel. AH: That’s what I love about them, they’re so passionate... JH: Totally. It’s like Peter stepping out
WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM MAR/APR 2014
21
Jake Hamilton: by Aimee Herd
continued
on the water and he looks at the waves and starts drowning—so he cries out “Help!” Where are the people who are so desperate [for God] that they’re gonna just cry out “Help?!” The Cross was enough to cover my sins past, present, and future, but I need help right now in this moment because...I’m frustrated, I’m angry, I’m depressed—whatever I’m going through— it’s like, “come and help me!” We need to just scream out together how we desperately need God, and scream it at the top of our lungs. AH: It’s real life, and that’s maybe why the blues feel of “Never Let Me Down” works so well. JH: Come on! It’s one of my favorite songs right now to play live. People ask me, “What’s your band like?” I tell them, “Well, if Jack White and the Foo Fighters had a baby... and they played vertical worship music, that would be us.” (Laughs) “Never Let Me Down” is a great picture of that. It’s got the Jack White, laid back blues vibe, but it’s also super heavy. Toward the middle of the song I wanted to marry some of that foot-stomping and capture the sort of old porch blues; old church, one-mic-in-theroom sound. That’s why you hear the voices, we literally slammed a mic down in the middle of the room, and I actually used my little boy’s kidguitar—I put a mic at the end of the hallway and played that acoustic guitar. That’s why it sounds so cheap, because it actually is! (Laughs) We said, “Let’s just declare this. God is never leaving us, He’s never forsaking us...let’s just speak truth. He’s never, no matter what, no matter how up or down we feel, He’s never going to let us down.” You know, my relationship with the Lord is not always pretty—sometimes I get really frustrated with Him. I know He knows best, but sometimes I disagree. I think it’s okay to have that honesty. Throughout all the Psalms, no matter how raw [King] David gets, he always says, “But I know that You’re God, so how can I deny that You know better than me?” And that’s what the world needs to know—no matter what goes on in your day, or how this thing plays out—God is really, really good, and He has not left you and He won’t forsake you. AH: What was the song with the clapping riff in it? JH: That was “I Love Your Presence.” AH: Oh yeah...I love that, and it took me a little while to get that rhythm down. (Laughing) JH: It’s a great rhythm...it’s totally Franz Ferdinand, or Indie Party. We wanted it to have that fun vibe. And we had so
22
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
much fun in the studio. Usually there’s so much pressure doing a live album—but to be able to do this studio album, and have fun and rest—I think “I Love Your Presence” really represents that. We wanted to do this album with the most amount of rest and peace that we could. We decided the best way to do that was to record at a studio in Riverside, about 15-20 minutes from our homes. We recorded with a guy who won a couple Grammys for his work with Mars Volta and other bands like that. He has an amazing, old-school studio with all this rad, vintage gear... we decided to just go, rent the studio, hang out, enjoy the process, then go home and have dinner and be with our families—and just enjoy this thing. That’s really what it was like. We’ll be doing another two recordings this year that will be more of the “live” feel. But for this one, we decided to just crash this thing and think about every detail, but keep it raw enough so it doesn’t sound super polished. AH: Speaking of the dichotomy of raw vs. polished worship music... do you feel like Christian music these days is a little too polished...too perfect sounding? JH: In my opinion? ...Yeah. In my opinion, you can’t tell the world He loves imperfect people while all we show is perfect. I mean: our preaching is perfect, our lights are perfect, our sound is perfect...everything we do is perfect, perfect, perfect—and then we say, “But He loves the imperfect; come.” People are like, “What?! Your message doesn’t match what you’re showing to me. Everything’s perfect that sits in this nice little box, and I’m a filthy mess.” That’s why when we go play, I don’t plan a set list and I don’t plan what we’re preaching. Because I want to encounter it the same way the person sitting in that seat is going to encounter it. I want it to be just as much a surprise to me as it is to them. The way I plan ahead is I spend lots and lots of time with Jesus. That’s what we do and that’s our goal: to encounter the Holy Spirit, so that when we show up at a church or whatever venue we’re at—that’s what will come out. I went and led worship on the streets of India this year, where they kill people for preaching the Gospel. If you want to know if your worship is anointed, go lead worship with a bunch of people who hate you; if the Holy Spirit and the Presence of God shows up, that’s anointed. But if it’s just a perfect room, where everybody came to sing along anyway, that’s a hard place to kind of judge how well you’re
doing. AH: You realize of course that the concept of “no set list” will terrify some musicians or worship leaders... JH: (Laughs) Well obviously we rehearse, and obviously we work on songs and refine our playing, but we do it so far on the front end that by the time we get to the place where we’re supposed to lead others into God’s presence [we’re going there ourselves]. We’re teaching a generation of worship leaders how to lead people and not to lead into His presence. My job at the end of the day is to steward His presence, not to make sure you had a good experience. If I show up in a room knowing that I’m going to encounter Jesus when I get there, whether we play 10 songs or one... then when I go (into the presence of God), the whole room wants to go with me because they see that I’m going somewhere they’ve never been before. We should be telling worship leaders; go get your own oil and your own history with God (personal time spent in His presence)... and then who cares if you don’t play the right chord when you’re in front of people--that’s perfectionism, not excellence. Perfectionism says, “I don’t do anything until it’s perfect.” Excellence says. “If all I have is two chords, God’s gonna get it all.” We’re waiting to be perfect instead of excellent. The Bible doesn’t say that David was perfect, it says he was excellent. That’s huge to me. AH: How does the writing process work for you and the band? JH: We tried to do some co-writing. One of the songs was by Dana Russell from the Kansas City House of Prayer. She has a song called, “Behold! God Is Great.” We love the song, but I really had a bridge in mind for it... “the fear of the Lord, return to the Lamb and all Your people cry ‘holy, holy’”. So we added that to the end of her song, because we thought it was a really good fit. That’s the only song that has two co-writers. For most of the songwriting, I’ll spend tons of time hanging out in prayer every morning, and I just write. I try to write a chorus-a-day. I’m just stewarding and writing what’s in my heart. So the writing process really stems from us still being in prayer or worship ourselves. Then I’ll bring a chorus, or the rhythms, or whatever to Brian and Seth on bass and drums and we’ll sit together and just jam for a couple hours and see where it lands. We’ll work on it together, but most of it is just me by myself—in my little hole—just writing songs. At the end of the day, they’re the guys that make it cool. I mean, I play guitar okay but...
NEW N
Fix room acoustics. sis oom Analy Smaart® Roves PA systems pr ® im Wizard g your iPad ! usin
Powerful User Interface The Main Mix is always accessible; all parameters are available from the control surface (no bank switching).
Active Integration is the power of a true multi-core computer CPU inside each AI mixer. Blazing processing power and wireless communications are just two of AI’s many benefits. • 32 / 24 / 16 Class A XMAX™ Preamps with individual phantom power + 32 / 24 /16 balanced TRS line inputs • 48 x 34 / 40 x 26 / 32 x 18 FireWire 800 recording interface • Individual Digital Returns on every channel with full DSP processing: • Playback pre-recorded tracks during live performance or tracking • Virtual soundcheck the band before they arrive • Use your favorite plug-in as an insert • 4 Subgroups
Find & kill feedback fast.
on ectrograph Smaart® Spannel and bus. every ch
Superior DSP Power
2 Fat Channel settings for every channel and bus, 4 internal FX buses, Gate Key Input for every channel, Peak Hold, GEQ on every analog Aux Mix and Main mix.
Direct WiFi/LAN communication
NEW 24.4.2AI
USB WiFi LAN adapter and onboard Ethernet connection with supereasy configuration.
Fat Channel DAW integration Open a Capture 2.1 file in Studio One Artist DAW and you’ll discover that every mixer Fat Channel setting instantly appears in it’s own plug-in instance!
Advanced AI iPad, iPhone and laptop control.
AI, SL Remotenload) (free do® w I iPhone QMix A nload, w rol (free doAI for Mac nt co or it ve mon Li io ud St Virtual PC laptops. and
Record multi-track.
k with mouse clic in just oneCapture™ 2.1 new
Edit, enhance, produce.
2.6 One Artist® with Studio ature DAW full-fe
Expand your ministry.
ur church’s e rmons to yo Upload se bit® Facebook stor free Nim
StudioLive AI mixer exclusive: The industry’s most complete, totally integrated software suite!
workflow features, and Active Integration™ technology, a networked, tightly integrated mixer/ software ecosystem where every touch point in the system communicates to enhance each mixing task. Visit a PreSonus dealer today.
• 14 / 10 / 6 Analog Aux Mix Buses • 4 FX Buses: 2 reverb, 2 delay • Double Fat Channels with High Pass filter, Expander/Gate, Compressor, Limiter, 4-band Parametric EQ • Alt EQ & Dynamics button A/B’s two different Fat Channel settings • 31-Band Graphic EQ on each Aux and the Main bus with A/B (each with Smaart Spectrograph for fast feedback control • USB Device port supports USB wireless LAN adapter • Option Cards: S800 (included), Thunderbolt, Dante, AVB
NEW 32.4.2AI
©2013, PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc, All Rights Reserved. StudioLive, XMAX, Nimbit and Capture are trademarks or registered trademarks of PreSonus. Studio One is a registered trademark of PreSonus Software Ltd. Smaart is a registered trademark of Rational Acoustics.
ew StudioLive™ AI-series mixers are total hardware/software systems that provide the tools to optimize sanctuary acoustics, do a virtual soundcheck, record every channel and your entire mix with just one click, and mix your show using dual Fat Channel signal processing on every channel and bus. AI-series mixers retain the intuitive, analog-like mixing surface that made StudioLive famous, while adding even more processing power, enhanced
NEW 16.4.2AI
StudioLive™ AI mixers do even more!
XMAX™ Class A preamps on all channels
6 Mute Groups, 6 Quick Scene buttons
32.4.2AI only
Baton Rouge, USA • www.presonus.com
Jake Hamilton: by Aimee Herd
continued
I’m just good enough so everyone pays attention, but just bad enough so everyone in the room thinks that they can do it too. (Laughs) AH: Wow, a chorus-a-day, Jake... do you feel like you run out of fresh material after a while? JH: The angels around the Throne have been singing the same song forever... so I’m not really worried if the same lyric comes out, or theme. But, as I tell people, if you read John 3:16 every day for the rest of your life, you’d never get to the bottom of it, because it’s the Word of God and it’s living and active. If we taught our worship leaders and songwriters to spend time in God’s presence every day, they would never run out of things to say. We’re mostly concerned with what other people are going to hear, and God is concerned with the things no one hears. If we get that perspective it changes the game. AH: Jake, do you encounter people telling you that your music isn’t really worship because it’s too hard (rock)? JH: All the time. AH: What do you say to them? JH: What I tell them is that there’s no such thing as worship music. You won’t find it in the Bible. Worship music is not a style. We’ve created a style called “worship music” because it sells albums. If we were going to go by what the church said, we’d still be playing only organ and there would be no drums. Who made the record industry the dictator of what’s worship? In the Word of God, it’s pretty clear that Jesus came in a style that people could not recognize; He was carrying the sound of Heaven, that’s why it resonated with those who had ears to hear. When He came in a style that offended the religious spirit, they all wanted to kill Him. But the people with eyes to see and ears to hear, and who weren’t offended by the style in which He came, they received the Kingdom of Heaven and were welcomed in. We don’t get that. The style of worship music is going to be different 10 years from now. I know what sells records... if I wanted to sell records or “move more units” … I know how to do that. But I really can’t do this any other way [than the way I am]. Sometimes it feels like Jeremiah, like I’d like to just shut it up... but when I do, it feels like a fire in my bones. I have to scream out, “Save me” and scream out “Never Let Me Down” or something inside of me feels so fake. That’s why we don’t cover a lot of songs. Ninety percent of the songs we play are our own, and the only ones I’ll cover are those where I’ve felt the presence of God. That way, when I do play that song, I can lead with it from a place of personal encounter. AH: And what are your plans and vision
24
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
for the future?
AH: And when is that happening?
JH: Well, we’re starting something called “The Spark” this year. It will basically be an opportunity for people to come and ‘do life’ with us for two weeks. We’re calling it a two-week creative experiment. We’re inviting artists, musicians, singers, drummers, guitarists, bass players—whatever--we’re saying come, move into our city... come live with us for two weeks and we’ll use your songs, your art, your message, to put together a night of worship. We’ll pray together, eat meals together, get up and sing to the Lord together—we’ll do all the stuff that we normally do in our lives, we’re just going to invite 20-25 people to do it with us for seven days. Then the next seven days, we’re going to travel up the West Coast and hit five or six different churches doing nights of worship—basically it’s “come on tour with us.”
JH: The end of June, beginning of July.
AH: Oh wow, that’s really cool! JH: We’re calling it The Spark because the goal is, let’s question everything we believe about art and creativity, and then let’s go try some stuff in an environment where we have freedom to fail. A lot of worship leaders, because they’re doing stuff on Sunday mornings, don’t get the chance to try things that might just totally flop. And what we’re doing in those two weeks is saying, “Think so far outside of the box, and if it fails, who cares? Try stuff that you’d never try on a Sunday morning and let’s just see what happens.” But if it blows up with the power of God while we’re on the road together, then they have a new paradigm and a new way that they might lead when they go up on a Sunday, because they got to try it out in the context of worship and the local body; and in an environment that was safe for them to fail in.
AH: And what about gear, you’re a guitar player so I know you have more than one. JH: I have two Taylors that I love, both of which were given to me. The crazy part on my set up is pretty much all my guitars were given to me. It’s crazy. I’d have a dream about a guitar, and people would just show up. My dad bought me my first one. I have three electrics and two acoustics right now, and then another guitar that I call my “Frankenstein” guitar. I got it from a guy in Brazil. We traded guitars. It’s an acoustic guitar with a Humbucker that I love playing when we go into acoustic sets because it has two outputs in it, so I can do a loop of an acoustic guitar and play the electric over it. It’s so much fun. (Laughs) Then I have a Dave Grohl Custom Shop 335. So, the normal Gibson 335, only the S holes are diamond shape—it’s huge and gigantic. And then I have a Custom Shop 65 Firebird that is a reissue that they did. And the 335 and the Firebird are the same color, so that’s cool. And then I have a Strat that I Frankensteined as well. I put in some Creamery pickups from the UK, which are amazing. I’d recommend The Creamery for pickups to anybody. They do everything from P-90s for a Strat, to some hand-wound vintage stuff that I love. For my amp I rebuilt a 65 Fender Deluxe and put a Greenback in there because I like the warm tone. And then almost all my pedals are JHS Pedals. Josh and the whole crew from JHS Pedals are awesome. Visit Jake Hamilton’s official website: www.jakehamiltonmusic.com
SONGCHART
26
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
Worship Musician Ad - Music - 8-375 x 10-875.indd 1
2/24/2014 5:37 AM
Find the perfect worship song
Search
Your Ultimate Source For Worship Music PraiseCharts is the original, one-stop-shop for all your worship music needs. We have stood the test of time, overcome industry barriers, and transformed how music is delivered to the church: fresh, furiously fast, and rock solid! Chord Charts
Lead Sheets
Orchestrations
Audio Tracks
Simple, readable, clean. Our chord charts match our arrangements measure for measure. Quickly transpose into any key and head to practice knowing all your musicians are on the same page!
Just need the melody? Our lead sheets provide all the essential details for your rhythm section and vocalists. The top songs have harmonies written out for Soprano, Alto and Tenor so you can nail that tight, sweet sound.
From Trumpet and Sax to Strings and Flutes, we’ve arranged the top songs as if recorded with a full orchestra. You can use a few parts to colour your sound, or raise up a full band of musicians who would otherwise be sitting in the pews.
Click Tracks keep your drummer in time and give colourful textures for the rest of your band. Rhythm Tracks fill the rhythm section when you have just the guitar, piano and vocals. Multi Tracks fill the holes in your band and create an amazing sound for your congregation.
Download “The Father’s Song” for free
www.praisecharts.com/father
WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM MAR/APR 2014
29
RECORD REVIEWS Rend Collective Experiment The Art of Celebration 1. Joy 2. Burn Like a Star 3. My Lighthouse 4. More Than Conquerors 5. All That I Am 6. Immeasurably More 7. Finally Free 8. Create In Me 9. Strength of My Heart 10. Simplicity 11. Boldly I Approach (The Art of Celebration) 12. My Lighthouse (Live) 13. Joy (Remix) Dove nominated Irish worship rockers, Rend Collective Experiment, have become known for their raw, rootsy, foot-stomping energetic brand of worship which has become infectious among audiences across the globe, and is helping to reshape the way we think about modern worship. Their latest release, The Art of Celebration continues this trend with 13 new tracks filled with joy and authenticity. “This record is an attempt to reflect something of the irrepressible laughter in the heart of God,” says Rend Collective bandleader Gareth Gilkeson. “It’s a call to the cynical to once again choose celebration over condemnation, and a reminder to the broken that ‘the joy of the Lord is our strength.’ This is certainly an album with joyful overtones in each and every track that will have you tapping your foot and singing along no matter how hard to try and avoid it. The album kicks off with the bouncy, acoustic-Irish jig, “Joy”, which tells how the joy of Jesus overcomes the trials of life. “My Lighthouse,” is a spirited, almost raucous tune that encourages us to celebrate God’s brightness in the midst of “troubled seas” because of what He did for us on the cross. Most of the album continues the trend of celebratory party worship, but there are a few tender moments as well when you need a breath to soak in all you have just
By Gerod Bass heard. “Finally Free” is a meditative, acoustic driven prayer thanking God for the grace and freedom that we receive despite our sinfulness, while “Simplicity” is a heart-felt vertical song of praise rich with mandolins and soaring background vocals. Rend Collective is a band that is breaking new ground when it comes to modern worship music. Their energy, solid theology, and artistic approach to worship is refreshing. This latest album is a triumph that everyone who worships in the church should take notice of. Kutless Glory 1. Revelation 2. In Jesus Name 3. You Alone 4. All To You 5. We Lift You Up 6. We Will Worship 7. Rest 8. Restore Me 9. God Rest My Soul 10. Always 11. Unto You 12. In The City
Some of the standout tracks include, “You Alone”, a hook-driven mid-tempo anthem that is very memorable with just enough rhythmic drive to give it some punch. The chorus here is the best and most singable on the album, as we hear about the salvation we have through Christ’s victory over death.
*Gerod’s Personal Picks in bold.
Overall impression Average church congregation could learn/participate on the first hear Lyrical creativity and integrity
Rend Collective Experiment The Art of Celebration Kutless Glory Int’l House of Prayer Endless Songs of Eternity Various Artists iWorship Now/Next 2014 Elevation Worship Only King Forever highest marks
30
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
My favorite song on the album is also the most vulnerable. “Restore Me” is a 5 minute selfless prayer of longing for restoration. The lyrics are straight from the heart as Jon sings out; “pull me out of darkness for Your glory, let the waves of mercy wash over me, holy, holy, holy, we wanna see the fullness of Your majesty, the beauty in the scars You’re wearing on me, Jesus please restore me…” There is no doubt that Glory is a true worship album, and although long-time Kutless fans may cringe at their new flavor, one thing is clear, Kutless isn’t afraid to make bold choices for the sake of the Gospel and I applaud them for listening to the Holy Spirit’s leading. This is a great worship album.
When it comes to music and bands, some people absolutely hate change. People, for the most part, want a band to sound the same way they did the day they first heard them. But sometimes change is good and may appeal to an entirely different audience than those that the band first attracted. Take the Portland based worship rock group Kutless for example who, for the last 4 years, have made a major departure from the alternative grunge rock group they were known for and have taken on a decidedly more radio friends pop-rock worship style.
Can be learned/adapted by a band of average skill
“In the City” is a scaled back acoustic tune inviting us to seek God’s blessings over our cities. I really appreciated the outside-the-box thinking by the Kutless guys in taking a risk and writing a worship song that lets God’s people pray for others through song. I also love the challenge at the end of the song that calls all believers to “do more than just sing”.
International House of Prayer Endless Songs of Eternity 1. I Can’t Wait Merchant Band 2. Psalm of Abraham - Audra Lynn 3. Coming Home Jonas Park 4. Hallelujah - Cory Asbury 5. City of the Great King - Pas Neos 6. Shine on Us - Cory Asbury 7. I Will See Your Glory - Tim Reimherr 8. Eternity - Misty Edwards 9. Glory Will Cover the Earth - Justin Rizzo 10. Longing for the Day - Julie Meyer 11. New Jerusalem (Live) - Matt Gilman 12. Rend (Live) - Misty Edwards The International House of Prayer in Kansas City has been doing non-stop, 24 hour a day worship and prayer for almost 14 years. Endless Songs of Eternity is the first of 3 worship anthologies that are being released by the church that highlight some of the best loved worship songs from the International House of Prayer. Each volume is centered around a specific theme, with Endless: Songs of Eternity focusing on the second coming of Jesus, the millennial kingdom, and eternity. With tracks from beloved IHOPKC worship leaders, Misty Edwards, Matt Gilman, Cory Asbury, Jon Thurlow, and many others, this album inspires listeners to cultivate an eternal perspective as they live their daily lives.
RECORD REVIEWS I really appreciated the more laid back atmosphere of this album when compared to previous CCM worship releases from the folks at Forerunner. There is a quiet tranquility in many of these songs that is only magnified by the lack of clapping and shouting from the crowd like other live worship albums, yet you can still tell it that this album was recorded live. A few of my favorites were songs like “City of the Great King” from Pas Neos, that explores what it might look like when we finally reach our final destination, Heaven. “Glory Will Cover the Earth” expounds on Habbakuk 2:14 as worship leader Justin Rizzo sings of how the earth will proclaim the majesty of our great Deliverer when heaven comes to earth and Jesus reigns on the earth. This song has a gorgeous piano and orchestral backdrop, making it one of the best on the album. “Shine on Us” was written from Revelation 19:7-8, “…his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.” Featuring Cory Asbury, “Shine on Us” speaks of our longing to become pure and white in preparation for one day seeing Jesus face to face. I really love the idea of what the folks at Forerunner music are doing by doing what are basically greatest hits albums but keeping them thematic. This album has a lot of nice intimate moments of worship that will work for personal and corporate worship. Keep an eye out for the other two volumes of the anthology because they promise to be just as good as this one. Various Artists iWorship Now/Next 2014 1. Great Are You Lord - All Sons & Daughters 2. Let It Be Known - Worship Central (featuring Tim Hughes) 3. You Are My Vision - Rend Collective 4. In Jesus’ Name - Darlene Zschech 5. The Anthem - Planetshakers 6. God’s Great Dance Floor Martin Smith 7. Limitless - Planetshakers 8. Holy Wedding Day - The City Harmonic 9. My Hope - Paul Baloche 10. Come Like The Dawn - One: A Worship Collective 11. Ascribe - New Life Worship (featuring Jon Egan) 12. Strong God - New Life Worship (featuring Jon Egan) 13. You Are The Fire - Dustin Smith 14. When the Stars Burn Down - People and Songs (featuring Jonathan Lee) 15. Jesus Reigns - New Life Worship
32
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
The words, “worship music” used to represent a few select styles in the church back in the early days of hymnals, organs, pianos, and acoustic guitars. But as churches around the world have expanded the way they encounter God through worship, so has the music they use to lift praises. Today, the worship genre includes just about every musical style under the sun including, reggae, techno, country, rock, and even rap. The diversity of style in worship is bigger than ever before, and Integrity music’s latest compilation CD, iworship Now/Next 2014, does an amazing job of showing us just how much variety the church around the world has when it comes to music in worship. This CD has something for everyone. If your appetite leans towards stadiumfilling servings of drums sounds and those big-infectious guitar hooks, then Planetshakers’ “The Anthem” is a delicious treat. New Life Worship’s “Jesus Reigns” is a crescendo building power pop exalting the resurrection of Jesus that is perfect for congregational worship. Rend Collective certainly has left their mark with their acoustic campfire styled version of “You Are My Vision,” a contemporary take of the church hymn “Be Thou My Vision”, and long time Delirious? frontman, Martin Smith, brings the house down with the over-the-top Brit dance track, “God’s Great Dance Floor”, which was first made famous by Chris Tomlin on his Burning Lights album last year. “When the Stars Burn Down” is one of the most memorable melodies on this album and will appeal to those who appreciate a more stripped down approach to their worship. With a tinge of country romanticism, this Riddle and Lee composition weaves in some gorgeous melodies with soft piano backing. Overall, this is a must have for all you worship leaders out there. This album is a great collection of some of the best-loved songs from the past years, as well as a few you might not have heard yet. Go pick it up. Elevation Worship Only King Forever 1. Only King Forever 2. Glory is Yours 3. I Will Look Up 4. Grace So Glorious 5. Grace So Glorious (Reprise) 6. The Love of Jesus 7. Last Word 8. Mighty Warrior 9. I Will Sing 10. Everlasting Father 11. Blessed Assurance 12. Great and Mighty King
13. Unto Your Name 14. Raised to Life Elevation Church, based in Charlotte, NC, is one of the fastest growing churches in America with over 12,000 in weekly attendance. Only King Forever is their third live worship release, and many of the songs contained within this project are already climbing up the CCM charts and are being sung in churches around the world. This release is filled with many memorable moments and glorious songs of vertical worship. The opener, “Only King Forever” is one of the better tracks on the album, and excitement in worship gets a new exclamation mark as the team sings of the total victory of Jesus as they sing: “You are the only King forever/Almighty God we lift You higher/You are the only King forever/ Forevermore You are victorious.” “Grace So Glorious”, a track written by Chris Brown, Israel Houghton, and Pastor Furtick, is based on Ephesians 1:5-8 and has one of the most memorable choruses you will ever sing. Hillsong matriarch Darlene Zschech lends her vocal leadership as she makes a guest appearance on “The Love of Jesus.” By the song’s bridge, the way Zschech can stir the congregation deeper and deeper into worship is just a testament of how deft she is as a worship veteran. “Raised to Life,” which is co-written by Matt Redman, is bound to be an Easter Sunday favorite across churches in the years to come. While “Last Word” is a sober reminder to us that despite all the devil’s schemes that try to discourage us from trusting Jesus, He himself is the last word. For those who love re-worked hymns, this album also contains a spirited update of the classic hymn “Blessed Assurance”. Although there is nothing overly groundbreaking about the style of this album, I will say that I really appreciated the passion with which this recording was delivered, and the guitar work throughout is sublime. There are some nice offerings in this collection. Check it out.
Gerod Bass is a ministry veteran who has been serving God’s people through worship and youth ministry for more than 20 years. Since 2009, he has been living his dream serving as the minister of worship and Jr. High at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Tacoma, Wa. Gerod is a singer, guitarist and recording artist who has a passion for impacting lives for the sake of the Gospel. You can find out more about Gerod, his ministry and his music, including his newest album release at his website, gerodbass.com.
Available Now! Featuring “In Jesus Name,” “In The City,” & “You Alone”
MARSSHILLLMUSIC “… worship music out of Mars Hill is one of the most imaginative and important shifts within the Christian music industry in years...” -CCM magazine
LISTENNTOONEWWSONGSSLIKE “REJOICE,” “MADEEALIVE,” “GODDISSGOOD” ANDDMORE!
DOWNLOADDCHORDS, WATCHHHOWWTO PPYYVIDEOS & GETTFREEEMUSIC
HTTP://SMARTURL.IT/MHRESOURCE
FOH ENGINEER
By Bill Gibson
Reverberation Effects Building a mix involves much more than simple balance adjustments. The mix engineer must create a convincing acoustical backdrop, either by recording sounds that included the perfect blend of close/direct and room sounds, or by effectively using the available parameters in a high-quality reverberation device. With that in mind, let’s look at several of the common reverb settings. Reverberation is a simulation of sound in an acoustical environment, such as a concert hall, gymnasium, or bedroom. No two rooms sound exactly alike. Sound bounces back from all the surfaces in a room to the listener or the microphone. These bounces are called reflections. The combination of the direct and reflected sound in a room creates a distinct tonal character for each acoustical environment. Each one of the reflections in a room is like a single delay from a digital delay. When it bounces around the room, we get the effect of regeneration. When we take a single short delay and regenerate it many times, we’re creating the basics of reverberation. Reverb must have many delays and regenerations working together in the proper balance, combining to create a smooth and appealing room sound. Envision thousands of delays bouncing (reflecting) off thousands of surfaces in a room and then back to you, the listener. That’s what’s happening in the reverberation of a concert hall or any acoustical environment. There are so many reflections happening in such a complex order that we can no longer distinguish individual echoes. Accurate and believable digital simulation is accomplished by producing enough delays and echoes to imitate the smooth sound of natural reverb in a room. The reason different reverb settings sound unique is because of the different combinations of delays and regenerations. The mathematic calculation and relations of the delays involved in a reverberation sound is called an algorithm.
34
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
A digital reverb is capable of imitating a lot of different acoustical environments, and can do so with amazing clarity and accuracy. The many different echoes and repeats produce a rich and full sound. Digital reverbs can also shape many special effects that would never occur acoustically. In fact, these sounds can be so much fun to listen to that it’s hard not to overuse reverb.
smooth, like the hall’s, but it has a few more mids and highs. Plate Reverb
Plates are the brightest sounding of the reverbs. These sounds imitate a physical plate reverb. A true plate is a large sheet of metal (about 4’ by 8’) suspended in a box and allowed to vibrate freely. A speaker attached to the plate itself induces sound onto the plate. Keep in mind that sound perception Two contact microphones are typically is not just two-dimensional: left and mounted on the plate at different right. Sound perception is at least three- locations to provide a stereo return. The dimensional, with the third dimension sound of a true plate reverb has lots of being depth (distance). Depth is created highs and is very clean and transparent. by the use of delays and reverb. If a Room Reverb sound (or a mix) has too much reverb, it loses the feeling of closeness, or A room setting imitates many different intimacy, and sounds like it’s at the far types of rooms that are typically smaller end of a gymnasium. Use enough effect than hall or chamber sounds. These to achieve the desired results, but don’t can range from a bedroom to a large overuse effects. conference room, or a small bathroom Most digital reverberation devices with lots of towels to a large bathroom offer several different sounds. These are with lots of tile. usually labeled with descriptive names Rooms with lots of soft surfaces have such as halls, plates, chambers, rooms, little high-frequency content in their and so on. reverberation. Rooms with lots of hard surfaces have lots of high-frequency Hall Reverb content in their reverberation. Hall indicates a concert hall sound. These are the smoothest and richest of Reverse Reverb the reverb settings, with complex, long Most modern reverbs include reverse delay times that blend together to form or inverse reverb. These are simply a smooth decay over time. Typical hall backward reverb. After the original algorithms have a decay time longer sound is heard, the reverb swells and than two seconds, although user- stops. It is turned around. These can adjustable controls allow for unnatural actually be fairly effective if used in the settings on hall sounds or any of the appropriate context. basic sounds. Gated Reverb Chamber Reverb Gated reverbs have a sound that is Chambers imitate the sound of an very intense for a period of time, and acoustical reverberation chamber, then closes off quickly. They offer a very sometimes called an echo chamber. big sound without overwhelming the Acoustical chambers are fairly large mix. rooms with hard surfaces. Music is played into the room through high- Though at one time this was a trendy, quality, large speakers, and then a popular sound, the technique has been microphone in the chamber is patched around for a long time. The original into a channel of the mixer as an effects gated reverb sound actually used a return. Chambers aren’t very common room mic, distant from the source, in now that technology is giving us great a large room patched through a gate. sounds without taking up so much real The trigger for the gate to open was set estate. The sound of a chamber is to the side chain, where a mic close to
Your ears are important.
Love them.
800.933.9899
www.alclair.com @alclair
Hand-crafted in-ear monitors
FOH ENGINEER cont.
the source was patched. This was common on snare drums at one time. There was a close mic on the snare patched to the mixer and also patched into the trigger input of the gate, so when the snare was hit, the gate opened and you could hear the large sound of the room microphone(s). When the snare wasn’t being hit, the room mics were off. Other Variations of Reverberation There are many permutations of the reverberation sounds. You might see bright halls, rich plates, dark plates, large rooms, small rooms, or bright phone booths, but they can all be traced back to the basic sounds of halls, chambers, plates, and rooms.
more of an up-front and close feel, then the reverb comes along shortly thereafter to fill in the holes and add richness. Diffusion controls the space between the reflections. A low diffusion is equated with a very grainy photograph. We might even hear individual repeats in the reverb. A high diffusion is equated with a very fine-grain photograph, and the sound provides a very smooth wash of reverb. Reverberation time, reverb time, and decay time all refer to the same thing. Traditionally, reverberation time is defined as the time it takes for the sound to decrease to one-millionth of its original sound pressure level. In other words, it’s the time it takes for the reverb to go away.
These sounds often have adjustable Decay time can typically be parameters. They let us shape the sounds to adjusted from about 1/10 of a second up to our music so that we can use the technology as about 99 seconds. We have ample control completely as possible to enhance the artistic over the reverberation time. vision. We need to consider these variables so The density control adjusts the that we can customize and shape the effects. initial short delay times. Low density is good Reverberation Effects Parameters for smooth sounds, such as strings or organs. The sound operator must be familiar enough High density works best on percussive sounds. with the available parameters in any effects device to be able to customize the effects during sound check or even during the performance.
Predelay is a time delay that happens before the reverb is heard. This can be a substantial time delay (up to a second or two) or just a few milliseconds. The track is heard clean (dry) first, so the listener gets
“Each song can be and should be sung in churches everywhere.” WORSHIP LEADER MAGAZINE
THE ART OF CELEBRATION AVA I L A B L E W O R L D W I D E
M A R C H 1 7 TH FEATURING THE HIT RADIO SINGLE
“MY LIGHTHOUSE”
36
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
For more from Bill Gibson check out www.billgibsonmusic.com. This month, Bill celebrates the release of The Bruce Swedien Recording Method by Bruce Swedien with Bill Gibson. Swedien is the iconic engineer who recorded all of Michael Jackson’s solo records (including Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, Invincible, and HIStory), Quincy Jones’ most successful recordings, and Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jennifer Lopez, and many more!
CMS Northeast features 2 EVENING CONCERTS open to the public 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) ::: $10 General Admission Ticket p/Night
MAY 1-3, 2014
FRIDAY, MAY 2
MARK SCHULTZ
The Chapel at Crosspoint, Buffalo, NY A conference featuring practical training for the entire band, tech crew, leaders, songwriters, & indie artists... other clinicians and artists for the conference include...
The Neverclaim, Blues Counsel, Brenton Brown & the Worship Republic, Zoro, Adam Nitti, Dave Cleveland, Jerry Gillis and more...
with
PHIL KEAGGY
and Songwriters
in the Round
LESLIE SATCHER, DON POYTHRESS, IAN ESKELIN, BRENTON BROWN & BENJI COWART
SATURDAY, MAY 3
MATT MAHER
BENJI & JENNA COWART and CEILI RAIN
with
BUY TICKETS - www.ChristianMusicianSummit.com REGISTER presented by
ENJOY CMS CONFERENCES YEAR ROUND!
features 2 EVENING CONCERTS open to the public Get Access to ALLCMS LiveNortheast Streaming of CMS Conferences 7:00pm75(doors at 6:30) OnDemand, ::: $10 General Admission Ticket p/Night And Watch Over Workshops
with more being added throughoutFRIDAY, the year from MAY 1-3, 2014 MAY 2 each event and our archives... SATURDAY, MAY 3 TOM BROOKS MARK SCHULTZ MEREDITH ANDREWS BOB BENNETT
The Chapel at Crosspoint, Buffalo, NY DAVID CROWDER STU G
PHIL KEAGGY
MATT MAHER
SUBSCRIBE BENJI & JENNA TODAY! COWART CEILI RAIN
MANDISA A conference featuring practical training with CHRISTY & NATHAN with for the entire band, tech NOCKELS crew, leaders,ALL SONS & DAUGHTERS TOM HEMBY and Songwriters in the Round BRENTON BROWN NORM STOCKTON JIM DANEKER songwriters, & indie artists... GREGG BISSONETTE DANIEL ORNELLAS MURRAY LESLIE SATCHER, DONSCOTTY POYTHRESS, www.CMSstream.com STEVE TAYLOR BEN SHOWALTER RON BLOCK and other clinicians and artists for the conference include... IAN ESKELIN, BRENTON BROWN & BENJI COWART only $14.99 per month JASON INGRAM TIM CARSON and more... The Neverclaim, Blues Counsel, Brenton Brown $150 for 1 year ($30 savings) &IAN the Worship Republic, Zoro, Adam Nitti, CINDYBUY ESKELIN MORGAN TICKETS Dave Cleveland, Jerry Gillis and more...
improving skill
- www.ChristianMusicianSummit.com
::
inspiring talent
presented by
WORSHIP TEAM TRAINING
By Branon Dempsey
Lend Me Your Ear Most singers work very hard on their voice, only to find out when they get in front of a mic, everything goes out the window. True or False? It depends on the singer’s confidence and vocal ability. Fear is the #1 killer of good vocal singing, so lend me your ear to help boost your confidence. “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.” – Mark 4.23-24 Not everyone likes to hear the sound of his or her own voice, but be careful to not judge yourself or someone else. When you approach the microphone, you should already have in mind a sound-picture of your voice. Just as you keep your voice sounding natural and relaxed while you warm up, your voice should not change when singing the song from stage. I’ve seen many singers approach the mic and all the dynamics and textures change because either they feel they have to force it, or they shy away from it. How can we learn to overcome this fear? I’ve spent many years disliking the sound of my voice. However, instead
of me nitpicking over the way I sound, I began to study how to fix it – by recording my own voice. Look at it this way; a recording serves as a mirror of what is really heard. This is just another tool to curtail, shape, and explore your sound. It takes a lot of hard work, but the payoff is huge. You will notice that as you get comfortable hearing and exploring your voice, confidence will also increase as you develop a solid core of courage. At this point, you will be able to focus more on improving your voice because you are no longer intimidated by your voice. Remember, a good voice begins before the microphone. When you begin to understand the sound of your voice better, you can develop more control and power to use it for good. Hearing and singing on good pitch is never to be undervalued. You may not realize, but singing Sunday after Sunday does not improve your voice. It may keep you active, but it doesn’t mean your tone or ear is improving. It means that without good listening skills, you can be repeating the same missed notes and pitches. Developing your ear works the same way as developing your voice. I love to play golf. Yes, I know it’s not singing, however there is one similarity – work ethic. When you practice on the range, you are there to work on mechanics. Golf athletes practice over and over on their swing, body movement, head position, and countless other mechanics. However, once you play 18 holes, it feels like everything you worked on goes out the window. What you learned becomes an afterthought. Singing and hearing is very much the same. The solution is to work on one step at a time and keep it consistent throughout the game. It’s how to begin to apply what you learned in your practice time. Begin by recording your rehearsals as a whole. Listen back and you will be surprised. But listen through the nitpicks and focus on the areas to improve. Listen for the amount of
38
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
breath the singers take to hold pitch (or how to take less!). Identify the pitch. Is it is on the note, or way out? Next, stop listening to the recording and try singing the phrase in tune with a piano. Go back to the tape. Listen again and compare. Be prepared to learn a lot, but don’t get overwhelmed – practice involves hard work, and you are doing it! As a result, your voice will grow, along with your awareness and confidence. Once you get comfortable working with your voice in the moments of worship, several things will begin to take place. You will find yourself thinking less about the mechanics, and the quality of your voice will begin to shine through - one note at a time. Remember, a good voice begins before the microphone. When you start to understand the sound of your voice better, you can have a lot of power over it and use it for good. In the end, as you lead worship in confidence with great tone and with a better ear, you are able to focus more on the Lord and leading people in worship, and spend less time worrying about the mistakes in a worship service.
Branon Dempsey is the CEO/ Founder and Training Director of Worship Team Training® a ministry providing live workshops and online resources for local worship ministries. Branon holds an M.Div in Worship and BM in Music Composition/Performance and is an instructor with Christian Musician Summit, a writer for Worship Musician Magazine, Shure Notes as well as other worship publications. Branon and is a Training Partner with Yamaha Corporation of America | Worship Resources and part of the Expert Panel for Shure Microphones. Worship Team Training® is sponsored by Creator Leadership Network, Christian Musician / Worship Musician Magazine / Christian Musician Summit, as well as by Line 6, D’Addario, Proclaim Church Presentation Software, iSing Worship and endorsed by Promark Drumsticks and Jim Hewett Guitars. Visit: www. WorshipTeamTraining.com Copyright 2014 Branon Dempsey | Worship Team Training® | Administered by For His Music. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.worshipteamtraining.com
OWN
BEYOND GOOD ENOUGH Own the future today finalemusic.com
THE
FUTURE
You always seek perfection in your music. Why settle for less in your music notation? Finale 2014 is the antidote to “Good Enough.” Whether you’re using an older version of Finale, a competitor’s software, or a pencil, Finale 2014 offers the ability to efficiently create and perfect any music you can imagine, without compromise. For a limited time, users of Encore, Notion, Overture, Score and Sibelius can own Finale, too, for just $139. Learn more at finalemusic.com/beyond.
GUITAR GRAB BAG
By Doug Doppler
Play It Like You Mean It Play It Like You Mean It In the busyness of life it’s easy to experience a bit of a disconnect between making it through a song, versus playing our parts with total conviction. If you make an analogy with the blues, it’s as much how you play versus what you play. Noting that busyness is something we are all learning to cope with, let’s break this feel thing down for further discussion. Right Hand Dynamics One thing that seems to get overlooked is the affect that right hand dynamics has on our playing. When most people listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn they hear the emotion
pouring through his fingertips. While we know that it’s not just what Stevie played so much as how he played, distilling that revelation into our own playing can be a bit of a challenge. I encourage you to pick up your guitar and try playing your favorite blues lick a few times. Most players tend to play the same licks over and over with the same right hand velocity and wonder why their playing tends to sound flat. Now try playing that same lick successively going from super soft to super loud each time, listening for how the strings respond to each of the different attacks. One of the great things about the guitar is that when you play at different velocities the tonal character of the instrument shifts along with the volume. When people mention that someone speaks through their instrument, I believe a key part of this refers to the ability to use the dynamic range of the instrument just as we use our voices to emphasize mood, feel, and emotion. Compositional Peaks and Valleys If you feel that your playing has fallen a bit flat, try playing some of your favorite songs while using the dynamic range of the instrument to help emphasize the peaks and valleys in the composition. Keep in mind that the reason classical music ebbs and flows as it does is the fact that the score clearly marks the dynamic range for each section of the composition. If you’re looking for someone to tether your dynamic range to, watch the drummer’s hands for visual cues on how they are playing each section and take some notes. Even better, walk through the chart with them to find out why they are playing the sections as they are, as well as where they are taking the cues from. The great thing about drummers is that they tend to hear and see everything that is literally going on in front of them. In the same fashion I encourage players to watch the drummer for dynamic cues, noting that many drummers craft dynamics by watching the body language of the worship leader. Translating Dynamic Cues
40
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
Taking another page from the SRV playbook, if you listen to Stevie you tend to notice that, like Jimi Hendrix, he tended to play things differently from night to night. While I’m not suggesting a dynamic free-for-all from service to service, translating dynamic cues from those around us into how we play can make a huge difference, individually and as a team. The key to doing this successfully is a clear understanding of who’s in charge of setting dynamics, be it the worship leader, drummer, or music director if you have one. The more we get used to following the leader’s dynamic cues, the more intuitive this process becomes, even with rotating band members. Make It Easy While I’m a firm believer in playing “signature” parts as close to the original recording as possible, there are times that playing more simplistic parts make it easier to be more dynamic. As a general rule I’d rather hear a player use open position chords with greater dynamic range and accuracy than play a more sophisticated part without feel – how about you? Communication While this article has talked a lot about using our eyes to watch those around us, I would be remiss in not suggesting you talk with the key leaders on your team about what their vision for dynamics is. The more we know about what our leaders are thinking when it comes to dynamics, the better we can respond to that. God Bless ~ Doug
Doug Doppler is passionate about God, worship, and worship musicians. In addition to his work coaching individuals and teams, Doug is also the author of “The Worship Guitar Book” which will be available in May 2013 via Hal Leonard.
Virtual Rehearsal Every Musician’s Dream “ It is very important for us to be able to record a rehearsal and listen back to it. It allows us to know if we are playing too much or if we are not staying up with somebody else in the band. The integrated V-Mixing System which includes console, snakes, personal mixing with multi-channel recording and playback allows us to be better musician’s.“ - Sonny Lallerstedt Worship Leader Sanctuary Church
Learn More about Virtual Rehearsal
Watch the video: www.rolandsystemsgroup.com/sanctuary
Sanctuary’s V-Mixing System Configuration M480-EXPRPM5 58x26 Digital Mixing System with 48-Channel Playback/ Recording & Personal Mixing* * M-480 V-Mixer, S-4000S-3208 Digital Snake, S-1608 Digital Snake, R-1000 48-Channel Recorder/Player, M-48 Personal Mixer (x5), S-4000D Splitter & Distributor
800.380.2580
See more videos and user stories at: www.V-MixingSystem.com
THE BAND
By Tom Lane
Music On Purpose It’s never been easier and more affordable to make a Demo, EP, or CD. But it has also never been harder to find a place for your music to go. Simply having recorded music in our hands doesn’t mean that it will make to the masses. And just because we write songs we feel express God’s heart doesn’t mean churches everywhere will sing them, or because we are amazingly talented that we’ll make our living from it. Making music is still a mystery! Most of us don’t want to bury our talents. In fact, we are usually driven to do something with them, and I think it’s a natural instinct to want to share them. For many decades the normal way to do that has been to “make a record” or “make a CD,” and you can easily spend a fortune in the process. But it’s a little like having a really great web site that no one knows exists . . .what’s the point? My point here is only that it helps to have one. Why do you make music? It’s more than okay if it’s just for the Lord, you, and a few. But for many it’s an inward burning desire that flows like a volcano without rhyme or reason; they don’t necessarily know why, but they will do it no matter what, and they’d love for others to hear it if at all possible. It’s not always an easy and clear path to follow either, which means being in a constant state of trying to figure out what to do
with The Thing we do.
praying about doing a project that would help non-profits, giving away her music to help causes. And how having that idea has motivated her to write specific songs and plan how best to record them. That’s doing something on purpose. God has been giving out great ideas throughout history that have been proven to work, and usually in spectacular ways—beyond logic even. He still desires to reveal things to us that will help us more than we know. If ever there was a day that God breathed vision and ideas were needed, it’s today!
It has helped me to break it down a bit. Though gifts and talents are often used interchangeably, they are two different things with separate functions. We are given talents to steward, and gifts to serve and equip others. A first step in stewarding talent is developing and investing it so it can grow, and many have spent a lifetime doing that. On the other hand, knowing how we’re gifted spiritually helps us truly discover where we fit naturally, which in turn guides and steers us with a more clear and pointed focus. If you’ve never asked God to reveal to you how you’re gifted, you We must first know that God is proud really should! It will explain a lot about of His kids and loves us as we are, why you think, do, and feel the way you whether we ever do anything significant do about a lot of things. or not. Then we have to trust that as we Though we may simply create to are diligent and faithful to invest our create, or just because we love it, there’s talents wisely, He is able to make them more to it than that. Our lives are not our grow exponentially. When we settle this own to live solely for ourselves. We do in our hearts, we can create with more have a choice, but by design God made freedom and purpose. us for His purpose. The great news is He does have a plan, and while it’s a journey of discovery—it’s not nebulous and empty! He actually does everything on purpose.
Without vision we ultimately aim at nothing! I’m not saying that we must have a grandiose scheme, just that it helps to be focused on something outside your own creative dream. One of my friends was telling me how she’s
Let’s not live just to be creative, as those who do often live alone and lonely. We were born for more: to worship and give honor to God with our whole lives. Seeking His kingdom first is about devoting and consecrating our entire being to Him, including our talents and gifts. If we follow Jesus’ lead, we’ll have plenty to focus on and our creativity will matter more where it counts, and is needed.
Nashville, TN is home for Tom Lane though he is involved in ministry and music around the world. As a singer, songwriter and guitar player, Tom has been teamed with many worship leaders and artists. He continues to record his own work, lead worship, and writes regularly for various worship publications worldwide.
“Matt is a very musical songwriter, producer, mixer and a very good friend of mine. I love hearing his work as he is one of the best in the business. I always look forward to working and making great music with Matt.” ~ Gregg Bissonette (LA session drummer and member of Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band) 42
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
SIMPLE ENOUGH FOR
DEEP ENOUGH FOR
VOLUNTEERS PROFESSIONALS
Livemix was designed to be simple enough for volunteers to use, but deep enough to give professionals all the tools they need for mix perfection.
With features like 24 channels, effects on every channel, custom channel naming, built-in stereo ambient microphones, color touchscreen and MirrorMix remote mixing, Livemix is the personal monitoring system that helps musicians give their very best in every performance.
• 24 channels with effects • Two personal mixes per control surface • Touchscreen with mix overview • Always available ME group and master volume • Built-in Stereo ambient mics • MirrorMix™ remote mixing • Hands free control available
PERSONAL MONITORING SYSTEMS, MODULAR PEDALBOARDS & ACCESSORIES
Fits your needs now, and into the future... SIMPLE TO CONNECT Slide two units together, and twist the built-in locking thumbscrews to connect. Done. CLUTTER FREE ROUTING Route instrument and power cables underneath and use built-in anchors to attach zip ties for clean routing. CREATE YOUR OWN LAYOUT Connect Stompblox in a configuration that fits your style. Singer/songwriter, worship leader, or lead guitarist... it’s your style, shape it how you want.
CUSTOM BAG Each Stompblox comes with a high quality bag that fits a single unit. When using two connected units, two bags zip together. Voila! The first modular pedalboard bag.
CAMERA
By Craig Kelly
Ready, Setup, Go Are you a camera operator at your church? Maybe you are a volunteer who works once a month as part of a large team, or perhaps you are just one cameraperson. Do you strive for perfection in your volunteer work? No matter how much you are involved in the services, how much do you warm up, or practice? Do you have a set of drills you use to practice? If you are asking what there is to practice – let’s go through a checklist that most pros would go through before they start their preshow routine;
or more points. That ability to stay in focus throughout the complete path is called tracking – and you should know where that tracking fails so you can compensate for that flaw. • Back focus – Back focus is the relationship between the last element of glass in the lens to the chips (or tubes if your camera has them) If the back focus slips or is out of adjustment, it will mean that your lens will not track, or stay in focus, when it is zoomed out all the way. Most professional lenses allow a camera operator or technician to adjust that. Some systems only allow for an electronic adjustment at the camera itself. No matter what though, as a camera operator, you should be the first to notice and get help or report it to your lead.
and you will be just as sorry. • Balance – the front or back balance can always (almost) be adjusted for perfect balance. It should be set up so that when you let go of your control handle it is perfectly balanced where it should be. NOTE: some operators prefer a slight forward over-balance to help them stay alert. • Handles should be set for comfort over a long period and for ease of operation. Don’t go home sore because you had to contort your arm and wrist and had a death grip on the camera to keep your framing.
• How are the lens zooming • Lastly – All of your pan and tilt capabilities? Does the lens have control should be in your left side/ a jumpy start, or do you need to focus control. Your right side should practice so that the beginning and be free to move, make adjustments, end of your zoom is imperceptible? flip switches, etc. without ever If the zoom is a servo, or electronic moving the shot. zoom, does it work well at all points? • How’s the focus on the camera you After you get all of the technical details • Viewfinder – set up the screen so it’s as comfortable to look at as possible are using? Auto focus should only taken care of, now it’s time to set up for an extended amount of time. be used for someone that doesn’t understand how to use manual focus. your gear for operation: • One last thing – because I was Almost every lens has problems • Pan head - Make sure that the pan thinking of it: NEVER let your subject focusing throughout the complete and tilt locks are off and then set your walk out of the frame unless your zoom path, which means that at friction, or drag, perfectly for the director tells you to. some point with zooming in or out, type of shooting you will be doing. there will be a problem with the lens Too loose and you will struggle to Now go practice. being able to keep in focus at one keep your shot in control. Too tight Questions? Write me at zoomit.cam@ craigjkelly.com. Join us too at the free LinkedIn group called “TV Camera Operators” to hear other TV tips from members from around the world.
Craig Kelly is a veteran Freelance, TV camera operator/DP for over 25 years. He writes these articles to be included in his blog found at www. craigjkelly.com. Often the subject matter comes from the 3,000 + global membership in the LinkedIn group he started for new camera operators and volunteer operators called TV Camera Operators. Kelly is also the International/North America Representative to the Guild of Television Cameraman as well as advisory board member for 2 colleges and 2 high schools in the greater Seattle area. In addition, he writes for Worship Musician Magazine and conducts workshops for new and volunteer camera operators. Kelly welcomes comments here or via email at zoomit.cam@craigjkelly.com
44
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
what can
RECORDED OR STREAMING VIDEO Do for Your Church? Introducing the proV3 System. Specifically designed for houses of worship to display any Windows®-based presentation software while simultaneously capturing live video for recording and web streaming. • Record and live stream in HD or SD format • Easily burn DVDs for distribution or archiving
• Keep traveling members and shut-ins connected • Effectively reach a wider audience online
www.GoFishMedia.net
1-877-458-6367
what can
LIVE VIDEO
Do for Your Church?
Introducing the ProKey HD LE System, designed to provide text over live video during your service. • Use IMAG to engage people sitting in the back of the room
• Recording and live streaming
• No post-editing necessary
• Supports HD or SD format
www.GoFishMedia.net
1-877-458-6367
MINISTRY + ARTISTRY = PROFITABILITY? CREATING YOUR MAP™ By Scott A. Shuford
Facebook Changed Policy – Allows Users to Create Contests Directly Up until recently, Facebook required pages to run contests through some kind of third party app. This had caused some page owners to shy away from the concept of having to use yet another app to run a contest for their fans or Facebook friends, and Facebook users to have turned away from contests because they would have to allow access to yet another app.
reach, since your future updates will appear in the newstream of your new fan. -You can also create a giveaway where users enter by commenting on or liking a post on your page. Utilizing this feature means you can promote a particular photo or posting, and therefore increase its ranking and/or reach as well. Your post will be seen by more people.
-You can also create a giveaway that has users message your page. This will not work on a personal page, but does on fan pages. You can tell the difference between these two types of pages based upon those that With changes made by Facebook, have the ability to be “liked’. Pages that can administrators of pages can now use be liked can utlize this option. This is the Facebook itself to run a contest without least marketing-friendly option, since users’ having to utilize a third party app. messages will not be public, but it does offer What does this mean to faith-based ease to Facebook friends/fans. marketers? This change directly helps ministry and company brands who are Scott has taught on marketing and seeking to use social media to increase their social media at CMS Seattle. He has audience and build both awareness and led classes for us at NAMM, as well as teaching on marketing to the Christian interaction. Here are some of the ways you can use benefit from this change: -As a Worship or Christian music artist, you can now create giveaways and have users enter the contest simply by liking your page. Increasing your likes increases your
Marketing Tips Archive
46
PUBLISHED BY YOUR FRIENDS AT WORSHIP MUSICIAN! AND CHRISTIAN MUSICIAN MAGAZINES!
Leadership Alliance. Scott is the Chief Engagement Officer at FrontGate, the largest Internet and events network reaching the Christian audience (www.FrontGateMedia.com) and the largest in-reach to Christian Music fans. Get more marketing and social media tips at FrontGate’s blog.
Exclusively for Christian marketers seeking to promote projects to the Christian audience. If you want to be the first to know about tips and trends in marketing your music, tune into the…Marketing Tips Archive in the FrontGateMedia.com blog.
place Our blog is the only ion! to get this informat
COLLECTIBLE GUITAR MAGAZINE’S PASSION IS ALL THINGS GUITAR - VINTAGE TO NEW, THEN AND NOW.
Go to the blog now www.FrontGateMedia.com/blog Also follow Scott at… Twitter: @ScottShuford Facebook.com/FrontGateMedia
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
subscribe CollectibleGuitar.com
TIPS FOR TIGHT TEAMS - Cont. from page 18
EDITOR’S CORNER - Cont. from page 7
Wear it well...
THE ONE-MAN-BAND REUNION TOUR OK, it’s time for you to mount your own oneman-band reunion tour. “But,” you ask, “how can we call it a ‘reunion’ when there’s only one person on the stage?” Easy: diversity, and variety. Applying these will keep the entire “worship-audience” engaged and interested. The reunion isn’t a reunion of people; it’s the unifying of elements that come together in the exercise of variation! We apply these to synergistically create a solo-led worship experience. All the while, we’re encouraging those we lead to stay focused, not on ourselves, but on the ONE we’ve committed our hearts to glorify forever!
expected as our presenters taught worship leaders, worship team members, and sound techs practical principles. We know good fruit will come from these efforts. Last on our list of ministry plans was the Sunday morning Musicians Chapel on the 4th floor of the Hilton Hotel. This is our second year of doing this. We offer a short, 30- minute service before the attendees have to get to their booths for the last day of the show. Brian Felix led us in worship on guitar and then music veteran Tommy Coomes gave an illuminating message for believers who are creative types. We filled up the room with 60 or so folks and the Lord gave it a really sweet vibe. People hung around some afterwards and you could tell it was a welcomed encouragement before they tackled their day.
Remember: if you find yourself alone on a stage, it’s not an emergency. Jesus is always there, encouraging us, and whispering, “Don’t be afraid. You can be the band!”
I am so grateful to the Lord that we can play a small part of what I believe the Lord is doing during the NAMM Show. If any of this interests you… please consider coming to Anaheim next January 22nd-25th in 2015. There is a registration and qualifying process and a cost of $25.00 each but it is, in my humble opinion, well worth the effort!
Got it together, Sandy Sandy Hoffman serves the worship community at Christ Church Santa Fe, NM and beyond. Find out more about his “Tips for Tight Teams” online at: www.WorshipWorks.com
MusiciansThreads.com
Oh, did I mention the Anaheim Convention center is across the street from Disneyland? In His Grace, Bruce, Judy & Winston
IT’S THE 3 MAG SPECIAL Improving Musicianship | Inspiring Talent
Museum Treasure
1901 Martin 00-27
Vince Gill Preserve, Play, Repeat MATT MAHER’S
Product Review
Melodic Collage of Life
SCott Stapp ROCK BOTTOM
~ FEATURES ~
Duncan Africa Selah (OM) Artisan Series Acoustic/Electric Guitar
The Gibson ArT Deco series
Guitar Review
survivinG A MiD-Life GuiTAr crisis... The sAnTA cruz MeThoD
Product Review
RMI Acouswitch IQ DI
Yamaha HS7 Studio Monitors Rocktron Patchmate loop 8 floor
~ REVIEWS ~ 65AMps “LonDon” AMp visuAL sounD vs-Xo peDAL
TC Electronic BG250-112 Combo Bass Amp
Record Reviews Vineyard UK Antioch Live Casey Darnell The Neverclaim Hillsong
JAN/FEB 2014 Volume 12, Issue 1 01
0
74470 58440
7
US $5.95 Can $6.95
WM-JanFeb-14.indd 1
JAnuAry/februAry 2014
JAN/FEB 2014 Volume 19, Issue 1 01 $5.95 US $6.95 Canada
“The Three Snare Drums” by Carl Albrecht
l
Vashon Guitar
Product Reviews
10 wAys To AvoiD The wrATh of your siGnificAnT oTher AfTer buyinG AnoTher GuiTAr!
“My Martin Guitar Story” by Don Poythress 1/10/14 10:06 AM
ONLY $49 voL 1 :: issue 1
CG-JanFeb14.indd 1
Get ALL 3 Magazines for
.95
0
74470 95962
5
US $5.95 Can $6.95
Selective Hearing Rick Elias l five Iron frenzy l Stu G l Julie lee l Waterdeep MAKING A GREAT SOUNDING RECORD by Matt Kees
l
ARE YOU AN INflUENCER? by Indie Mechanices
1/10/14 10:07 AM
Canadian residents $69.95
for an Entire Year!
Subscribe Today... CHRISTIANMUSICIAN.COM/MAGAZINES 48
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
CYMBALS. PERFECTED.
What do you get when you combine modern worship drummers with classic Turkish master cymbalsmiths? Heartbeat cymbals! These are the cymbal of choice for many churches, including North Point Community in Atlanta, Central Christian in Las Vegas and Hillsong in London. Hand made cymbals that sound as amazing as they look. Special church pricing. Endorsers wanted! ARTISTS Simon Kobler Jeremy Bush Christian Paschall Mike Smith Al Sergel Marcos Bremer Joshua Stein Daniel Hadaway
w/Hillsong United w/The Digital Age w/David Crowder w/Leeland w/Jason Upton w/ En espiritu y en verdad w/Rapture Ruckus w/All Sons & Daughters
Heartbeat-Percussion @HBpercussion
www.heartbeatpercussion.com
866.988.1277 info@heartbeatpercussion.com
PERCUSSION
By Mark Shelton
Setup Strategy What might it be like to play percussion in heaven? Will we be able to concoct an ideal configuration of instruments and really get it right the first time? Could it be that in the celestial city there will be no cymbal stands? No mounting hardware? Imagine never having to wrestle with those methods of positioning instruments after we are inside the pearly gates! Imagine woodblocks and cowbells floating in midair at the desired height. Designing and assembling your percussion setup would be much easier. In the meantime, here’s some advice on organizing your setup within the confines of Earth.
Latin Percussion lives in my mallet As you begin to assemble the setup, case. This little gadget fastens onto keep the instruments close to each a drum rim and gives you another other for economy of motion when option for installing “peg-mountable” playing. Remember that efficient percussion. instrument positioning is both horizontal and vertical. Tone and technique can • A trap table provides a central be compromised by drums that are location for sticks, mallets, and handpositioned at the wrong height. (and held instruments such as tambourines, can lead to fatigue and injury). shakers, and cabasa (and you can park your coffee mug on it). Don’t fear being a bit unconventional. While a saxophonist cannot rearrange • The best laid schemes of a percussionist the keys on his horn to make a lick go awry when it becomes apparent easier to finger, a percussionist can alter that the magnificent layout that worked the “traditional” placement of things so well in the practice room cannot be within a setup to reduce some technical shoehorned into the allotted smidgen challenges. of stage. An electronic percussion Visual Aspect There might have to be some compromise between ergonomics and cosmetics. Remember that people hear with their ears AND eyes. People can be distracted and frustrated when they cannot see the instrument that is producing that captivating sound.
Ergonomics A multi-percussion setup should be ergonomically (work-friendly) designed After you assemble the so that you can meet the technical and ergonomic setup, take a few musical requirements without wasted moments to have a look from the audience perspective and motion and energy. make the necessary tweaks to When dealing with a large number of enhance the aesthetic elements. instruments, consider starting the design Raising a stand an inch or on paper before shuffling a bunch of tilting that rack forward a dab drums back and forth. Work from a list of probably will not encumber the needed instruments and draw a rough your technique, but it might be sketch of the setup. If you are reading just the change that brings the music from an orchestrated chart, you can percussive optics into the view get ideas about which instruments should of the curious congregant. be adjacent. Some placement decisions Gear are easy. For example, since I am righthanded, I generally place my trap table on Access to a variety of clamps, boom my right so that I can pick up tambourines cymbal stands, and instrument mounting racks can make a big difference in and shakers with my dominant hand. turning your setup design into ergonomic Study your drawing and imagine making reality. the necessary playing motions. You can even use a bit of “air drumming” as you • Devices such as the Everything Rack (TM) from Latin Percussion, imagine the logistical demands. Continue or Gibraltar’s Percussion Bar (TM) to tweak your sketch until it seems provide a convenient method for ergonomically sound. grouping blocks and bells into a efficient array.
instrument such as the Roland Handsonic (TM) with its hundreds of digital samples allows you to play those tubular bells and timpani parts when the “real deal” will just not fit into your sliver of space.
A multi-percussion setup should be designed so that the musician can comfortably perform with the appropriate tone and rhythmic accuracy that facilitates musical expression. If musical expression is hindered by the placement of instruments, consider making some changes. Once the layout is in place and you are feeling comfortable (from both ergonomic and visual standpoints), snap a cell phone photo so that you can re-create the setup in the future.
Here’s hoping that this process will be • Conserve space and reduce the easier in heaven. number of stands by using a cymbal stacker or mounting cymbals “bell-to- An active freelance musician, Mark bell” with a felt washer in between. Shelton’s percussion work can be • The Hamilton Concert Snare Drum Stand can accommodate drum sizes up to 18 inches! A floor tom can be placed in the basket and brought up to proper playing height for a standing player. • The
50
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
Percussion
Claw
(TM)
from
heard on The Daystar Network’s television program Marcus & Joni, and on the Gateway Worship recordings God Be Praised and Great Great God. An active blogger, Mark writes regularly at Percussion For Worship (www.percussionforworship. blogspot.com). Check out Mark’s percussion tutorials at www. youtube.com/marksheltonmusic ©2014 Mark Shelton Productions
The Lowest Prices Across the Board
D’Addario Strings
Guitar, Bass, Mando, Banjo, Ukulele
Planet Waves Accessories
cables, Connectors, Capos, tuners, Straps, Picks & more
EVANS DRUM HEADS
+ E-Rings, Dampers, Keys, bags, Practice pads & more
ProMark DRumsticks
+ Drumstick Alternatives (hot rods) & PureSound Snare wires
Plus... Riggio Custom Guitars Living Tone Custom built Amps JHS effect pEdals
I LIKE THE PRICE AND SELECTION... WHO NEEDS AN ENDORSEMENT WHEN YOU CAN GET PRICES LIKE THESE WITH GREAT SERVICE! ~ DAVE CLEVELAND
Worship Arts Technology Summit
Music - Audio -Lighting - Media Early bird and group discounts are available, so bring the whole team. This two day comprehensive hands-on training event is unlike any you will ever attend. Our world class teaching staff includes:
Carl Albrecht - Ed Kerr - Michael Hodge - Tom Lane Camron Ware Aaron Williamson - Sean McCurley Lee Fields - Scott Ragsdale and more... See website for details
Traverse City MI Ridgecrest NC San Antonio TX
Jun 28-29 Sept 19-20 Fall
www.gotowats.com
PRODUCT REVIEW By Carl Albrecht
Heartbeat Cymbals from Turkey via Canada As a drummer/artist I was looking for something fresh, yet classic, when exploring cymbals. I’ve been playing different cymbal company product lines as the opportunity arose - Mostly at events where back line (rental gear) was being used. So I had the chance to hear a lot of options for cymbals and drums too. When the guys from Heartbeat allowed me to try some of their cymbals at the Christian Musician Summit in Seattle, I was very interested in giving them a bit of a road test. They also wanted an honest review for Worship Musician Magazine. So after several months of playing Heartbeat Cymbals in various settings here’s my personal review. Noel Walker, the founder and CEO of Heartbeat Distributors was kind enough to send me the set up you see pictured here. I described what I wanted to hear, and he nailed it. I did see and hear a good variety of cymbal designs Noel had at the conference, but for the review and my personal taste I really wanted something classic sounding with a bit of a twist. That is exactly what I got.
new sounds in the Heartbeat Cymbal lines. This is a very bold and noble cause. Even as they work in the worldwide marketplace to offer an excellent product for everyone, he is specifically targeting the needs in modern worship settings. I look forward to brainstorming ideas with Noel and his team in the future. Not that we can’t use any sound we can think of to create music to bless the Lord… I just think it’s interesting and a blessing to have a manufacturer’s vision focused on making instruments to worship God. This was also part of King David’s work for the temple musicians. They made instruments.
In this first setup Noel sent me I’ve found some classic old world sounds, with an edge to them, that make them feel modern and fresh. Fantastic! I don’t think it’s a coincidence the series I’m most drawn to is the Classic series that Heartbeat offers, but the other models also have a great match or complement to what the Classics do, while maintaining their own unique character. Some other things I’m finding with these cymbals is that I can use any of them as a ride or a crash. They have amazing control, and only “explode” as I dig in to them. And the bell of each cymbal has unique pitch and character. This is allowing me to have a huge palette of tones for pattern playing, smooth balanced crashes, or just raw bashing explosions. AND this is the first time I’ve used 15” hi-hats that I really like. These hats also have great bell and crash capabilities that expand my musical options. I’m finding that playing a basic **The line up in the photo from LEFT to set up of the ride, hats, and two crashes gives RIGHT: Classic Regular 15” Hi-hats; Classic 19” Medium Crash; Custom 20” Light Ride; me the expression of what normally takes Classic 22” Medium Ride; Classic 18” Thin several more cymbals to accomplish. That’s Crash; and a Custom Rock 20” Medium Crash. something I did not plan on. Having used them in several concert settings, Finding an old cymbal-smith in Turkey was and now on studio projects, I was able to a brilliant idea. Good job, Noel! Using the give Heartbeat Cymbals a big “thumbs up.” experience and skill of this ancient master and his team, he (Noel) described what he was I contacted Noel recently and gave him the looking for in cymbals. I know that Noel, and word that I’m all in. I was definitely impressed now this drummer, is very pleased with the beyond the point of just doing a review for the results. Another interesting vision that Noel magazine. I’m playing them for everything: shared with me is that he really wants to serve sessions or tours. If you’re looking for something churches, worship drummers, and Christian fresh in your cymbal world, check out Heartbeat musicians around the world by developing fresh Cymbals.
The basic set up: All Classic series: 15” Regular Hi-Hats, a 19” Medium Crash, a 22” Medium Ride, an 18” Medium Thin Crash.
In concert with Paul Baloche The pricing on these cymbals is comparable to other top line cymbals, but Noel offers special discounts to churches and Christian drum artists. There is no middleman. You buy from Heartbeat distributors directly. Contact Noel directly for information. info@heartbeatpercussion.com Check out their web for more info: http://heartbeatdistributors.com/products/ heartbeat-percussion/classic-cymbals Besides me, here are some the drummers that have recently signed on: Joey Parish (Shane and Shane): Classic hats, Classic and Studio crashes, Studio ride Nicole Hickman (Holly Starr): Custom hats, Studio crashes, Epic ride Daniel Hadaway (All Sons and Daughters): All Classic series
WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM MAR/APR 2014
53
A FEW MOMENTS WITH…
The Musician’s Doc: Timothy Jameson
Honoring God with our Bodies 1 Cor. 6:19b-20 (NIV) states, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” Although the Apostle Paul was instructing the church in Corinth not to fall into sexual sin, I would like to expand on the topic to explain how we can honor God with our bodies as musicians. The Greek word used for “honor” is doxazo, which can also mean glorify, adore, worship, impart with dignity, excellence, or majesty. How can we “doxazo” our bodies to serve the Lord in music ministry or in the culture? Here is the top seven list: 1) Sharpen and care for your mind. In Romans 12:2, Paul instructs us to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Be careful of what you allow to enter your mind, because it will express itself in your thoughts and actions. What images are you looking at? What books are you reading? What films, TV shows, and videos are you watching? Are they God honoring, or are they creating toxicity in your mind? Every day must be focused on living a righteous life, to honor the Lord with our minds. Keep a “PMA” – a positive mental attitude at all times.
processed foods and anything that is manufactured by man. Eat nutritious organic foods that nourish your body – food created through the earth and through God’s animals. You cannot create a temple to the Lord with a diet filled with junk foods and chemicals. Nourish your body with lots of filtered water, eat salads every day (without tons of dressing – sorry), eat red meats sparingly, increase your fish intake, have lots of fruit every day. This honors the Lord as it drives a body towards wellness.
you sleep, your body is working hard to heal itself? So if you are not sleeping well due to work pressures, anxieties, financial pressure, or just overworking, etc., then you are cheating yourself from the healing that your body craves. Now, everyone has a different need for sleep. Some do well with just six hours, and some need up to eight. (On the other hand – desiring sleep for extended periods of time every day isn’t healthy either.) Don’t mess with healthy sleep habits. Your body is depending upon you to give it adequate rest for optimum 4) Exercise three to five times per week. healing. By the way, if anxieties are Your bodies are meant to MOVE, not to causing lost sleep, then seek counsel to be stagnant. Believe it or not, the Lord help you. Don’t be an island of one. did not create our bodies to sit in front 7) Have a vibrant prayer life focused of computer screens all day. That is one on the goodness of our Great God. of the most harmful activities we can do Seek spiritual discipline, reading and to our bodies. Our muscular, skeletal, digesting the Word daily, improving lymphatic, and circulatory systems your walk with the Lord, and becoming need daily movement, and preferably more humble every day of your life. movement that increases our heart rates Drop to your knees more in admiration and works our muscular systems. Don’t of Christ, the author and finisher of our make the excuse of “being in full time faith. Humility is a great way to honor ministry with no time.” MAKE TIME. If our Lord. you don’t, your years will be less healthy There you go. If you can fulfill each of and prone to more disease. these criteria every week, you are a step
5) Enhance the function of your nervous system. Your nervous system is the master system that determines the health of your organs, glands, muscles, and all cells. Did you realize you can enhance the function of your nervous system? How, you ask? It’s called regular wellness-oriented chiropractic care. My patients who want to enhance health and function are recommended to see me every two to four weeks for optimum well-being. It has nothing to do with whether your back hurts. Most of my patients on wellness care have no symptoms at all –they just want to be proactive and enhance their nervous system function to be at the top of their game. That’s why pro football and 3) Feed your body healthy food. baseball players utilize chiropractic – it Yes, that’s a loaded subject as to gives them a competitive edge. If they what constitutes “healthy food.” Here use it, why don’t you? are some general guidelines. Avoid 6) Sleep – Did you realize that when 2) Be careful of the condition of your heart. Life is tough, there’s no doubt about it. We are faced with trials and tribulations constantly. Yet we can understand inner joy even during trials if we truly realize that Christ Jesus died for us, loves us, and carries us through. Do not let life’s trials create an unclean heart of dissatisfaction, anger, hostility, pride, self-loathing, and inner sadness. Yes, we all go through valleys, and if you’re in one, then seek the help of friends, counselors, and mentors to carry you through. Don’t stay there and go inward and into destruction. “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5
54
MAR/APR 2014 WORSHIPMUSICIANMAGAZINE.COM
ahead of everyone in seeking a wellness lifestyle that honors and glorifies the Lord. Enjoy the journey! Dr. Tim Jameson
Dr. Tim Jameson’s purpose is healing through music and through his hands. He is in his 25th year as a chiropractor, and is in his eighth year leading worship at Christ’s Community Church in Hayward, CA. He is the author of two books, Repetitive Strain Injuries, and Reach For the Top: The Musician’s Guide to Health, Wealth, and Success. His chiropractic office is located in Castro Valley, CA. You can find him at www.jamesonchiro. com and musicianshealth.com. email: drtimjameson@gmail.com.
Read more about what myMix can do for your ministry. scan this code for more info
personal monitor mixer
Upgrade your ministry’s sound to first class with myMix! Find out why many tech directors have chosen myMix to support their music ministry. “For many years I was used to our in-ear- monitoring system but I always felt like I was driving in a car with one window open. ...until I heard myMix”.
“Listen to it! Nothing else comes close to myMix.”
Brian Vaughan
Seth Jeffery
pastor of worship and music Grace Church, Eden Prairie, MN
Technical Integrator New Life Church, Little Rock, AR (8 Campuses)
visit www.mymixaudio.com/how for more info
www.mymixaudio.com ©2014 MOVEK, LLC
Martin SP Lifespan™ strings treated with Cleartone™ protective technology repel dirt, oil and sweat for long life. No flaking, no peeling. Just the rich, natural tone you expect from Martin Guitar.
martinguitar.com/strings