So, here it is – download away!

If you’ve already downloaded this (thank you!), please post a link to Twitter or Facebook and spread the word. And stay tuned for news about the new album.

• God Is Able – Hillsong [Bb]

During the service

• I Will Follow – Chris Tomlin [A]
• Hosanna – Hillsong/Brooke Fraser [D]
• Though I Walk Through The Valley – Brian Wahl [Bb]
• Always – Kristian Stanfill [Bb]

We introduced a couple brand new things this Sunday. One a side note – maybe it’s not a great idea to do two brand new things on one Sunday. Going slow is good. Anyway, here they are…

1. I played some electric guitar.

I’m not an electric player, but some songs just need two electric guitars. I play electric on “God is Able” (worked really well), and “I Will Follow” (didn’t work as well). I still need to tweak my tone and setup. I played a Gretsch hollowbody through a Vox AC15, and used a Fulltone OCD for overdrive.

2. We played with a loop

This is a big deal. Not really because of the loop itself, but because of the fact that you have to play to a click to pull this off. We’ve never really played to a click as a band before. You have to use in-ear monitoring (at least your drummer). This is so the band can hear the click but the audience can’t. Then you have to stay with the click . We didn’t stay with it, so we cut it off half-way through the song. Lesson learned: we need to practice with a click for a while before we do it on Sunday morning.

• Your Grace Is Enough – Chris Tomlin [A]

During service

• Holy Is The Lord – Chris Tomlin [A]
• Blessed Be Your Name – Matt Redman [A]
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) – Chris Tomlin [D]
• Unfailing Love – Brian Wahl [D] (after the message)

We had a stripped down band this week. Instrumentally, it was just me on acoustic and a bass and keyboard player. For Blessed Be Your Name, we did an arrangement where I started it with fingerstyle picking until the “You give and take away” section and we got bigger. It was cool to do a very familiar song in a different way.

You can get chord charts and find tutorials for these songs at Worship Tutorials.

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.

Back in 2008 I built a few guitars with my grandfather. He’s a retired carpenter with a great woodworking shop (and woodworking skills). We went with telecasters, as they are fairly easy to build (the bodies), and they are just plain cool.

Here are some spec’s:

• Body: Alder (we routed this from scratch out of a nice piece of alder that I picked out myself)
• Neck: Standard rosewood/maple neck from Warmoth. It’s the “boat” contour – nice and chunky. Probably one of the most comfortable necks I’ve ever played. I finished it with tung oil.
• Neck pickup: Seymour Duncan Vintage Mini Humbucker
• Bridge pickup: Seymour Duncan Little ’59 Humbucker
• Wiring: 5 way switch (4-way switch – lets you run both pickups in series)

Sound:

This thing sounds really big and full. Having two humbuckers in it kind of gives it a telecaster meets Les Paul feel. If you’ve heard any of the music I’ve recorded in the last few years with electric guitar, you’ve heard this thing.

Photos:

You can see the full rez photos here on Flickr.

For a long time now, most of the traffic to my site here has been to the tutorials section, where I put up video tutorials for popular worship songs as well as chord charts.

I’ve decided to give Worship Tutorials a proper home, so I built out a totally new site for it. The tutorials and charts are far more organized there – everything is easier to find.

If you’ve come here in the past looking for tutorials, be sure to subscribe to the new Worship Tutorials.

January 2012 Free Music Friday release

Get it for free for the month of January!

View past Free Music Friday releases here

Lyrics:

You are mine
And I am yours
I am yours

This will be
Forever more
Forever more

Nothing could ever take that away
I am here to stay

Seasons come and seasons go
There is winter, summer, spring and fall
There is one thing I’ll always know
That you love me, and I love you

If the rain should fall
And wash everything away
If the wind should blow
And blow everything away
I will stay
I will stay
I will stay
I will stay

I’ve been giving away all my music for free for a few years now. Here is a post explaining why, but in a nutshell, the reason is this: Exposure is worth more than a few album sales. Before I gave my music away, the term “a few album sales” was a gross exaggeration of how much music I was selling.

My plan all along has been to give everything away until I reached 2500 email subscribers (you can subscribe here). There are several reasons I chose this number, including:

• I read somewhere on a music marketing blog that this is a good number to shoot for. Can’t remember exactly where that was, though.
• It seems like a few thousand is enough to start to pick up some momentum.
• My mailing list provider (MailChimp, which is awesome) only allows 2000 subscribers in their free account, so it’s going to start costing me money (about $50 a month) to communicate with all you awesome email subscribers.

I figured the 2500 subscriber mark would take a long, long time. In less than a year, I’ve far surpassed 2500 subscribers. I’m pretty blown away by that, and I’d like to thank you all for downloading and listening to my music. If you’ve ever downloaded any of my music and left your email address, you’re on my mailing list, by the way.

So, we have come to the end of free music.

My basic rates are going to be as follows:

• $0.69 for individual downloads
• $2.99 for EPs (5 song albums)
• $4.99 for full-length albums
• $5.99 for full-length albums with 10+ songs

Basically, you’ll get a bit of a break for buying full albums. As you can see, this is still way less than iTunes, Amazon, etc.

Where you can buy it

You can currently still download everything for free at the Brian Wahl Music Store (powered by BandCamp, which is another awesome service). My music is also available on iTunes, Amazon, and most other online music stores.

What about Free Music Friday?

If you don’t know about Free Music Friday, click here. I’m still going to give some music away every month. It might be an entire album, or a single song. Sign up for the mailing list to make sure you get something free every month.

Finally, I want to thank you all again for all your support, and for listening to and downloading my music. Many of you have spread the word to your friends, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am.

Now go download more stuff while it’s still free

One last note

If you are an indie artist just getting started, I’d really encourage you to think about giving away your music for free in order to build a fan base. I’ve actually made way more money (in tips) giving away free music in the last year or so than I ever did selling albums. But the biggest thing you’ll gain is a little exposure.

This is going to be an acoustic album, similar in sound to the “You Have Rescued Me” album, which is an acoustic worship album.

The album will be available for free from NoiseTrade by this Friday. In fact, I just tracked all the songs today, so I’m putting this together in just two or three days.

Song list (not necessarily in this order):

• O Holy Night
• What Child Is This
• O Come O Come Emmanuel
• The First Noel
• Silent Night

Songs

Main worship set:

• You Are So Good To Me (G) – Third Day version (listen below)

• I Will Follow (A) – Chris Tomlin
• Breathe (A) – Chris Tomlin
• Unfailing Love (D) – Brian Wahl (that’s me! – listen below)

Message

After the message:

• Redemption (G) – Brian Wahl (yep – 2 originals today – listen below)

Band

• Acoustic guitar (rhythm)
• Electric guitar (lead)
• Keys
• Bass
• Backing vox (2)

People are starting to learn the originals that we’re doing and really sing them out. There are 3 originals that are in full rotation now. It’s funny – I’ve had a few conversations with people and they’ll mention those songs (usually in a positive way), but they have no idea that I wrote them. I don’t make it a point to announce that they’re my songs.