My good friend and bass enthusiast Dillon Partin found a really cool backing loop for Hosanna the other day. It comes from Our Rising Sound (Kyle Campos). He does loops for various worship songs, and they are all really high quality. You can get the Hosanna loop here for free.
Dillon and I went ahead and made a recording to the loop. You can see it here:
Dillon is on bass. I did the electric parts as well as the acoustic and vocal parts. Thanks, Kyle, for making such a great loop available for free! You can see this video and all my other videos in the Videos Section.
I was bored the other night, so I thought to myself, “Hey! I’ll just record an acoustic worship album”. I want to release something with the songs I’ve written so far this year – so just songs written in the last 6 months. I also did a cover of “Always” by Kristian Stanfill. There will be 8 songs total on the album.
So, I set up my stuff and got to work. I’m putting the finishing touches on this thing – I’m excited about how it sounds so far. It’s simple – just acoustic and vocals.
Here’s a preview:
… and another!
And a look at the cover:
I’m not sure what to call this thing, and I’m not sure if this will be the final cover. I spent all of about 30 minutes putting it together. What do you think? Like it?
Also – I recorded videos of all the songs, so I’m getting ready to do a YouTube dump. I’m not quite sure how to release this thing. I’ve got audio, video, and I’m thinking of doing some kind of digipack kind of thing with lyrics and the inspiration behind each song. Maybe chord charts, too.
I’m definitely going to put it up on NoiseTrade. What would you do? Got any creative ideas for me? Also – be sure to subscribe here or follow me on Twitter or Facebook so you’ll know when I release this thing.
Worthwhile Worship is pretty simple. You upload your worship song ($30 fee per song), and it gets reviewed by industry professionals. Here is a list of their reviewers. If your song is good enough, it may get published! That’s pretty awesome!
Every month, the fine folks from The Songwriter’s Cafe choose a song from the songwriting challenge and it gets submitted to Worthwhile Worship for free. I feel very honored that my song “Though I Walk Through The Valley” was chosen for March.
I finally got around to uploading the song to Worthwhile Worship, and it’s currently being reviewed.
Anybody have any experience with Worthwhile Worship? How did it go?
In our church, we are starting to see a lot of people who didn’t grow up going to church. This is a really cool thing! But, these people don’t know all our “church songs” by heart, so my pastor and I were kicking around the idea of recording a worship album of the most 15 used songs that we do and giving it away for free.
This kind of a project is really easier than it sounds. The worship band(s) know the songs by heart, so recording them will actually be pretty easy. Licensing isn’t all that expensive. For 15 songs and 100 sales (or giveaways), you’ll have to spend just over $300 using Limelight to handle the licensing. If you ask for a $3 donation for each CD giveaway, you’ve basically covered your costs.
I can see a few plusses for doing something like this:
People learn the songs. They get to play the CDs in their car or plug the music into their mp3 players and listen whenever they want.
People would take ownership of the songs. This would feel like something they are uniquely a part of. It’s the worship band at their church putting out an album of songs they get to sing along with.
The band gets better and playing the songs by recording them.
The minuses are the cost and the time involved. Those are minimal in my opinion. We are looking at doing the recording like a studio album rather than a live album. Our live recording setup isn’t quite fine-tuned yet.
What do you think? Something you’d do at your church? Done this before?
If you’ve ever uploaded anything to YouTube that happened to get more than a couple views, you know that people love to express their dislike in the comments. My most viewed video is a cover of “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” by John Mayer, and wow – I’ve heard about 300 times over how pitchy my vocals are.
Allow me to illustrate a recent conversation on one of my videos. The video is an original song of mine called “I Have A Plan For You”, and the words come from Jeremiah 29.
Before we go – a bit of a disclaimer. I don’t think it’s good for people to drag negativity and bickering out in public, and most of these types of conversations that happen in blogs/twitter/youtube/etc should happen in private. Having said that – this person made it a point to publicly say these things, so here we go…
I just finished watching this TED talk by Benjamin Zander about passion and music. He made two powerful statements that I believe are directly correlated to worship.
1. Everybody loves classical music, they just don’t know it yet.
Let me rephrase – “Everybody loves worship, they just don’t know it yet.
2. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.
He then goes on to say this…
“If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: Who am I being that my player’s eyes are not shining?”
What does this have to do with worship?
Two things:
Everybody loves worship. Literally, we were made to worship God. We just don’t all know it yet.
It’s our job as worship leaders to bring people into worship.
I think as worship leaders, we’ve all looked out into a congregation before and seen people who appear to be bored, or at least not into what’s going on. Maybe they’re truly worshipping, but maybe they’ve had a bad day/week/year/life, and they just don’t feel like engaging As Benjamin says, “their eyes aren’t shining”. So, I’m asking the question
Who am I being that their eyes aren’t shining?
Are my eyes shining? Am I worshipping? Are the members of my band or team worshipping?
I believe that to lead, we have to first do.
I’ve embedded the video below -it’s about 20 minutes, and it will inspire you.
I attended the LIFT Worship Collective back in February in Atlanta. The conference was led by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, and Louie Giglio. Check out these photos I took of Chris Tomlin leading worship:
Put songs in keys your congregation can easily sing.
Put songs in keys that you can sing.
Put songs in keys that are easy to play on your instrument.
Give your band charts in the open key (not the key that requires a capo).
Facilitate smoother transitions.
I use Planning Center to transpose not only chord charts but mp3s as well, and it couldn’t be easier. You don’t need any knowledge of theory to do this.
Planning Center is web-based software that does all kinds of awesome things, but this webcast focusses only on the transposing feature. it’s also free to use (they have paid plans as well).
I posted on twitter once that Matt Redman is the Lynrd Skynrd of worship music, and that Blessed Be Your Name = Free Bird, and You Never Let Go = Sweet Home Alabama. Now that’s a strange comparison for sure!
Blessed Be Your Name has been particularly special to me over the years. I’ve always been drawn to it. Maybe it’s because it’s in the key of B, and I can really let loose and belt out the chorus. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the first songs I learned on guitar – I feel like I “grew up” on it. There are a few key characteristics of the song, though, that I’d like to highlight.
1. Content
When you sing this song, you proclaim to God that you are going to praise Him regarless of your own circumstance. Each verse does this.
Blessed be your name // In the land that is plentiful // Where your streams of abundance flow // Blessed be your name
And literally the next phrase states:
Blessed be your name // When I’m found in the desert place // Though I walk through the wilderness // Blessed be your name
The second verse does the same thing. Then in the huge bridge (Matt Redman writes awesome bridges), we sing:
You give and take away // My heart will choose to say // Blessed be your name
Awesome. In my opinion, it is rare for a song to communicate such profound (and realistic) truths about our relationship with God like this one does.
2. Emotion
First of all (and something I love), the kick hits on all four beats during the mellower verses. It builds tension. Secondly, the pitch of the vocals goes up as you approach the chorus – more tension.
When you hit the chorus, it’s kind of like you’ve completed the slow climb to the top of the roller coaster and you’re starting to fly down the track. The energy of this song is really cool.
3. People know this song
You can pull this song out anywhere, and people will sing it without lyric sheets or words on the screen. John Acuff even suggested that you sing it when other Christians try to awkwardly convert you in a Barnes and Noble. He claimed that if they didn’t know some Matt Redman, you’d better walk away. Ha!
Bottom line is that if you do this song on Sunday morning, people are going to sing it out.
Because I love this song so much, I recorded a video of it:
Thank you Matt and Beth Redman for writing such an awesome song for the church to sing God’s praises.
A few weeks ago I attended the LIFT Worship Leader Collective (conference) in Atlanta, hosted by Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, and Louie Giglio (Passion City Church). It was a really great experience, and it was a small crowd of about 1000. I got lucky enough to sit really close, so I snapped a few photos. I’ll post up some more about the conference soon.
Here’s another:
You can see the rest of the photos I took here on Flickr.
