Recently in Making Music Category

Yesterday, my friend, Ryan McMillian contributed his excellent piano skills to the recording on 8 of the 12 tunes. I was amazed that we got so much work done! Ryan has a very easy and relaxed style. There's a kind of patience or peace in his playing. He's also very solid; he nailed the part on the first or second take. I suspect that his church experience makes him very good at learning changes, form, vibe, etc on the fly. Ryan is the music director for Chesterfield Presbyterian, a graduate of Belmont in Nashville, and he's got a lot of experience for a young guy including having worked with Michael Card.

Jacob pulled out some cool vintage gear for Ryan to do his magic with. He mostly used a Mark II Rhodes piano and a dusty Wurlitzer that we had to pull the top off of in order to work out a scratchy volume knob. At the end of the session Jacob set up a Clavinet (think Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious") with a Wah Peddle for "Walk the Talk" which is now also referred to as "Rock the Wah".

I became quite giddy when we were working on "Greater Is He Who Is In Us" and Jacob dialed up a phaser effect on the Rhodes. As Homer would say, "Mmmmmm...Phaser Rhodes."

Don't have any idea what I'm talking about? Here's some videos to hep you get some idea of the different sounds these keyboards make:
Rhodes
Wurlitzer
Clavinet

Here's a nifty website for you guitar players out there.

My take on the video:

The singer/bass player was really into post punk new wave. Devo. The Cars.

Maybe the drummer and guitar player could relate. But they look like they came out of the Led Zeppelin school. You can tell that drummer would love to pump out some John Bonham beats on that orange Plexiglas kit.

They said to themselves, "Hey, let's do a fun one for the kids that is really relevant. Let's communicate the gospel in a way that speaks the language of the youth culture of today."

The keys player was the faithful pianist, and the singers were recruited from the choir to do the BGVs. Like most churches, we worship with folks who may not relate to our cutting edge music preferences, but they tolerate our creative experimentation by humbly saying to themselves, "Well, I don't get it, but bass player guy seems to know a lot about music and he likes it, so I guess I'm out of touch." These folks seemed to be presenting the song as they have always been encouraged to do with every song: with a smile and spirit of joy.

It makes me feel a warm sense of affection for the way church music is made by plain, awkward, geeky people who love the gospel so much that they get a little foolish trying to communicate it.

This past Friday, Jacob and I got together to finish up our work on Search Me and to get started on Jesus My Great High Priest. I have to confess that this session was a little dry in the creative department. I felt like both of us were out of ideas. We experimented with different stuff, but J.M.G.H.P. was not really inspiring us too much. At the end of the session, Jacob started to develop some cool ideas with an acoustic in an alternate tuning. We decided to wrap it up for the day and, Jacob would do the acoustic part before our next session. It was kind of a bummer, so this weekend, I've been playing around with the song some to get the creative juices flowing.

In the meantime, Sarah and I are consumed with house hunting fever. Let us know if you know of any cool houses up for sale.

Yesterday's session we started to get into a really good rhythm of forming ideas, getting them into the computer, and moving on to the net idea. We completed My Eyes Are On You and about 1/2 of Search Me. We set dates for 3 more sessions in September, so I am excited to be getting back in the saddle.

My Eyes Are On You
Jacob completed the bass line this past week before the session and added some backward guitar effects, so we dove in with some cool tremelo chord sweeps, then added my Albert King wanna-be lead licks. Then we cut the vocal part including backing vocal Ooos that were a lot of fun. Then we re-cut the rhythm guitar part to make it a more choppy pattern. I really like the results.

Search Me
It's really hard to commit to ideas on this song because it is so dear to me, I don't want to mess it up. We started out by turning on the track, grabbing guitars, playing ideas, and then picking out what we liked. After I cut the bass part, we ended up doing this rotary speaker sound on the verses that we're going to double with a 12 string next time. I added some chunky electric chords over the whole tune in the John Mayer vein. Then we doubled some of the electric stuff with this tiny old guitar from the 50s that Jacob had that sounds kind of like a mandolin or a ukulele. I know you're thinking that we're crazy, but it sounds really cool. It's getting this very Beatles vibe. Next time we'll do the 12 string stuff, do the vocals, and then put in on the shelf until the keyboards day.

I will follow Skip's lead and publish a preview of what will be covered in my guitar clinic at the Urban Worship Symposium.

Part One: Friday Night
Know your place - guitar player's role in the band
Pick your groove - Lead, Strumming, Motown, Chunky, Disco, or Riff.
Dr. Strangechords or how I learned to stop worrying and love the chart

Part Two: Sunday afternoon
Surprisingly Common Chords- 2, 9, 11, 7(#9), 7(b9), m7(b5), and dim7
Major and Minor Blues Scales featuring some cool Major Blues Licks
African Guitar Basics

Bonus for attending
Two Etudes: Anointing Fall On Me and Amazing Grace

Later this month, maybe I'll do the same clinic for our guitar players in St Louis. There's a lot of material in this clinic; maybe one day, I'll write a gospel guitar method book. Mel Bay is based out of St Louis...I'll just go knock on their door.

I was asked a few questions about songwriting in an email this week that got me typing uncontrollably. So I posted my response here because I thought it might interest some of you also.

The email came from my friend, Nicole James, who will be in Tennessee with us for the Urban Worship Symposium at New City Fellowship. Here's an excerpt from her email:

"I was wondering if it were possible to have a session or "lecture" or something on song-writing at the symposium. You guys probably have everything set already. I just find myself regretting not seeking you and others out more on that topic while in STL. Also, do you have any recommendations on learning more about the song-writing process? Books, people, etc? How did you learn? School, dad, trial-and-error?"

Here's the main tools that I use for songwriting:
-a journal to keep fragments of ideas
-a recorder of some kind. (my recorder of choice these days is my iPod that I use a little microphone attachment with, but for years it was a hand-held tape recorder.)
-Finale notation software

I will usually start with a lyric fragment or a fragment of chord changes, then I will sing melodies to the fragments to see what I like. If something strikes me I will grab the recorder and get it on tape. Otherwise I forget about it. Sometimes that fragment gets me motivated to finish the song right then, other times, it sits for a while until I listen back to my collection of song bits and then it catches my interest again.

I use Finale in the last stage of composition to work out the precise melody, to establish a form and to revise my lyrics. Writing out the notes will sometimes make me change the lyrics to better fit the melody or to change the melody to support the lyrics better. Sometimes writing it out makes me see visually how boring the melody is, and I will change it up to have a better contour. You can download a free version of Finale called "NotePad" on their website.

Another method of composition that I sometimes use is to start with a concept or a goal like "I want to write a song for our youth group that will address the need for absolute truth found in God's word." or "I want to compose a song based on this Sunday's sermon text that has an uptempo feel." I usually go straight to Finale in those cases. That's a little more difficult, but it can be a good exercise.

After you write a song, sing it a lot in private to decide whether you like it or not. Next, share it with your husband who will tell you that it is a gold-record masterpiece (that will give you a confidence boost). Next, share it with a trusted critic who will give you honest feedback like, "the verses need to develop the idea more" or "you need to find the hook in the chorus." Finally, share it with an audience to see how it plays in performance. Not every song will immediately connect with the audience; some of the songs you write will be a little more complex and require multiple performances before they sink in.

The best advice that my dad ever gave me was that for every 30 songs that you write, you might get one keeper. This should not discourage you; it should give you motivation to write often and without self-censorship. If you think that every song that you write is going to be "one for the ages" then you will become paralyzed with unrealistic goals. It takes a lot of stirring up your creativity before you get in a good head-space to respond to the muse, so think of yourself like a painter who does pencil sketches of a landscape over and over before she even gets out the paints.