Recording Project '08: Despair

Friday's meeting was fun and extremely helpful. I got a lot of really good info and the studio is an excellent option. I spent about an hour talking with their chief engineer. A couple tips he gave:
-expect to spend 10 hours (recording+mixing) in the studio per song
-hiring pros saves time and so it might end up costing less in the long run

I got some more leads from my friend, Paul, who is going to a church that just did a recording with another studio.

Last night, my wife and I sorted out our money. We hadn't worked out the budget since October, so November and the dreaded December spending was not worked out until last night. Of course, 99% percent of the time when you sit down and look at how much you spend it can be really discouraging. (Ignorance is bliss!) On top of that, I had made a mistake in my Excel doc that made me think I had a few hundred dollars more than I actually did in my recording project fund. D'oh! I gave me an awful sinking feeling.

One thing I learned from my Friday meeting was that I have only saved about a third of the funds that I will need just to cover the studio fees. Throw in the costs of paying musicians, post-production, design, manufacturing, and marketing and it is really overwhelming.

To add salt to my wound, this morning I watched a video on Worship Matters where Bob Kauflin is talking about there latest recording which comes out this Spring. As I listened to him share about his recording I was filled with a powerful sense of bitter envy. I thought, "Listen to him talk about recording like it was just the easiest thing, like one morning he just got up and decided to just go ahead and do a recording." I started feeling helpless and hopeless. I thought, "I will never be able to record my songs unless I just make crappy little home recordings on some nasty old four track tape recorder that no one will hear or care about." I'm a little bit disgusted at what my heart was telling me. I hope you are a little disgusted, too. That would be the appropriate response to sin.

Soon I felt convicted of my sin and I began to realize what foul thoughts I had indulged. Why should I despise Sovereign Grace Ministries for the fact that they have spend years and years pursuing a ministry of producing worship music that is contemporary and Reformed? In Rory Noland's "Heart Of The Artist" he lists envy as one of the sins that artists are most prone to commit. I certainly fell prey to my sin this morning.

A couple weeks ago, MTW missionary Mark Berry preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles 20. It is one of my favorite stories in the bible. It's about Jehoshaphat, who trusted the Lord to fight his battle when a great army was coming to attack their nation. I like it because there is a lot of music in the story. In the story, Jehoshaphat cries out to God saying, "We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you." I've been trying to incorporate Jehoshaphat's prayer into a song I've been working on recently that is inspired by Albert King's "I'll Sing the Blues For You".

When I came into work this morning, I start to play this song that I've been working on and I was struck by how appropriate the song was to my present situation. My envy came because I completely lost perspective of who God is, who He has made me to be, and what He's doing in me. I realized that I have no idea what to do about this recording. I have no idea how we'll come up with the money to produce it or what will come of it after it is done. Instead of putting my eyes on the Lord, I looked at the impossible circumstances, at my own selfish ambitions, at the success of someone else, at the choices I've made in the past that have made this process more difficult.

Lord, I don't know what to do...I've been looking in the wrong direction...help me to put my eyes on you.