Not An Exit

Haha…saw this in a post office while I was back in Ohio. I had a good laugh. I wish I could have been there to see the people who tried to exit through the solid glass wall.

Behind the Board – Lesson #1 – Being Teachable

A big shift has occurred in my mixing lately. The past year has been a huge challenge for me as I’ve felt like I’ve been running into a brick wall…I’d be running Front of House for a weekend at New Life Church (my home church, for those of you who don’t know), and I’d have what I believed to be a great mix.

Turns out our senior pastor has an extremely critical ear. Inevitably, he’d walk back to the board on Saturday night with a series of recommendations for my mix. Honestly, there are times when those critiques would be downright deflating. I’d tweak the mix, absolutely convinced that my mix was being compromised as I complied to his requests.

Well, weeks passed, and I realized something interesting…turns out, 98% of the time, he had valid points. Somehow, our church has been blessed with a senior pastor that is so attentive to detail…and over time, I realized that by heeding to these suggestions, my mixes became more mature and refined.

Now, I know that you may not have a pastor that knows a lot about running FOH. But I have found that, while most pastors have a hard time articulating what they don’t particularly like about a mix, they do have valid perceptions.

For instance, I’ve heard many FOH Engineers complain that their pastor doesn’t like cymbals. This was the case at NLC. After some discussion with him, I realized that this wasn’t completely accurate. It wasn’t that he hated cymbals, it was that oftentimes, when the cymbals were prominent in the mix, a whole slew of harsh frequencies accompanied them. The root cause was not the cymbals themselves, but rather the lack of aggressive EQ-ing to smooth out the overheads, and to get them to sit in their proper place in the mix.

It is a very elementary idea, but I beg you, take time to understand the requests and desires of your leadership. Don’t dismiss their critique because they lack the technical language that many of us FOH Engineers speak. Most of the time, the critique has validity to it, whether or not they are able to zero in on the root of the cause. It comes down to understanding your audience — you will never be successful if you don’t make the conscious attempt to understand what your audience/leadership wants to hear.

It takes patience, and it takes a conscious effort. But, I promise that if you take the time and effort to understand the underlying perceptions that accompany the critique, and humble yourself to be teachable…your mixes will drastically improve.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Feel free to comment!

Hillsong – Your Name High Synth Loop

Alright…figured I’d keep them coming.

Here is the synth loop for Hillsong’s “Your Name High”. It is in the key of A, and follows closely to the synth lead played on This is Our God.

This loop runs at 141 BPM, and runs through the majority of the song.

Enjoy!

Hillsong – Your Name High Loop

Hillsong United – Love Enough Loop

Alright…here’s another synth lead loop. This is for Hillsong United’s “Love Enough”. It is in the key of C, and runs at 155 BPM.

In order for it to sit in the mix well, you’ll have to give it a nice dose of reverb. Due to the fact that the loop starts on the “1-and”, I didn’t put the reverb on it because of the way it would bleed into the beginning of the loop…so you’ll have to add it yourself!

Have fun!

Hillsong United – Love Enough Loop

Freedom is Here Synth Loop

Hey guys. We’ve been doing “Freedom is Here” by Hillsong United lately. So, I made the little square-synth lead that plays through the majority of the song.

Figured I would share it with you guys!

It is in .wav format and runs at 121 BPM.

Freedom is Here Loop

Times are a’changin

For me, there are some things that seem to stay the same. I’ll always love music. I’ll always love Jesus. Everything in between, however, seems to change on a very regular basis.

A couple of years ago, I binged on programming…making loops, sequences, etc. I still do that, but it has found its proper place (it is mererly one tool available for writing and arranging).

Then, I got really interested in front of house as well as the studio environment…It is not uncommon for me to spend hours upon hour on forums reading about mics, systems, techniques, concepts, etc. I love it. I spend countless hours thinking about it and talking about it.

And then there’s guitar…I’ve played for 8 years or so. It is one of those things that I always go back to. When FOH wears me out, I just want to play guitar. After spending hours on programming loops/sequences, I just want to play guitar. It is just easier. Less pressure…when you run FOH, it is like the world is on your shoulders. Don’t get me wrong, I love it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is…I’m probably going to start talking about a lot of really nerdy stuff. Us musicians (and FOH guys) are really just nerds in disguise.

Just warning ya.

Lovesick.

In the beautiful (and sometimes awkward…) story found in Song of Solomon, there is a line where the lover cries out in desperation, asking anyone who sees His beloved to tell her that He is lovesick for her. In this metaphorical story, we find our Father God expressing His love to us in such an honest and a raw way…in almost a humbling way…that He has invested so much of His heart into a lover that is so often unfaithful and (frankly) disappointing, that He is literally sick with love when she is absent.

I believe that I am called to try my best to reciprocate the love that He has for me…and when I look at myself, I don’t see a person who is lovesick for Jesus…Rather, I am constantly at war with one who is lovesick for the things of the world.

Crippled by my love for material things…for status…oftentimes lovesick for a relationship that I hope to have with a significant other in the future.

I am so bothered by the fact that my lovesickness for God is most of the times less than my lovesickness for relationships…relationships that are only a dim spark in comparison to the great love that is found in the arms of the Author of Love.

Lord…I want to be lovesick for You and You alone. I want to be content in this world…but never content in my relationship with You…

The Lord Will Fight For You

Exodus 14:14 – The Lord will fight you, and you have only to be silent.

Over the past month, the Lord has brought about a strange freedom in my life.  I say strange because I feel like I just stumbled into it. In all of my years of trying to grab hold of true freedom (from sin, specifically), I always ended up very close to where I started.  When faced with the disparity between who I was and who I wanted to be, my first reaction has always been to focus on the sins that seem to always get in the way of my relationship with God.

So I’d fight and fight…modify my behavior, my attitudes, my environment.  What followed was maybe several months of “freedom” from my sin.  Eventually, I’d find myself back where I started.

A couple of months ago, I was having a real problem with overcommitment.  A close friend approached me and expressed concern saying, “I don’t think you realize how close you are to burnout…you are in a dangerous place right now”.  I was always doing and never resting.  I realized that I had left no time to just rest in God…to rest in his joy and peace and to listen to Him as he tries to speak to my distracted heart.

As soon as I started finding the time to spend in the Word and just focusing on God, it is like He so graciously flipped a switch (don’t even get me started on what He has been teaching me regarding the importance of “keeping the sabbath holy”).  My sins and struggles took the backburner and were replaced by a simple peace.  All of a sudden, I found that I was no longer struggling to keep myself out of sin…

Exodus 14:14 – The Lord will fight you, and you have only to be silent.

I’ve spent my life trying to fight my struggles by myself.  Behavior modification, self-help…whatever.  It was all rubbish.  The Lord has so graciously handed us a freedom…He is waiting for us to take that freedom and just rest in Him.

The goal of the Christian life isn’t to fight your sins until the day you die.  Jesus, the King of Kings, died for our freedom.  What a slap in the face to assume that His sacrifice cannot, by itself, conquer the petty sins in our lives.

I have always fought my sins, thinking eliminating sin was a prerequisite to experiencing God.  If I get my sins out of the way, I can finally start growing in my relationship with Him.  The Lord is teaching me that it is quite the opposite…

Fight to experience Him.  Make space in your life/schedule to rest in Him, to fall in love with Him.  Rest in Him and He will fight your battles for you.

Ephesians 2:8-9 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Avoiding Adolescence

So, I was listening to a sermon by Mark Driscoll the other day.  The sermon was on John the Baptist.  In Luke 7:28, Jesus claimed that John was the greatest man to ever live.  Well, I figured that if Jesus said that, I better be paying a little more attention to this guy.

Driscoll’s sermon impacted me in quite a profound way.  I could write pages on what the Lord taught me through his message, but I figured it would be best to focus on one point at a time.

Driscoll was outlining the keys to John’s greatness.  The last “key” that he identified was that he “avoided adolescence”.

John spent the first 25 years of his life preparing (“growing and becoming strong in the Spirit”) for his ministry.

Lets contrast this with the first 25 years of the American man: well, we’ve got this thing called “adolescence”.  It is actually a relatively new idea in history.  It is this time in life between childhood and manhood when a guy can just be an idiot.  He can spend the majority of his time playing video games, watching TV, going to the movies, buying his way into debt.  He can spend 8 years getting his undergrad only to move back into his mom’s house after he graduates.  Then we’ve got a 20-something-year-old “man” who has no distinguishable differences from a child.  Our society is really good at turn out guys who are childish consumers, defined by what they consume, not by what they create (and furthermore, cultivate).

Now, put this into the church context.  If there is one thing that the Church is lacking, it is young men who are courageous and full of vision.  Most of the young men in the American Church are cowards and complainers; they are really good at criticizing the efforts/vision/passion of other people but have none of their own.

The reality is, I see many of these tendencies in my life.  The laziness, the lack of vision, the dependance.  I am so critical, but I’m rarely going for it and actually creating anything of significance on my own volition.  I wait for the vision of others, and don’t pray enough for God to give me my own, unique vision.  Furthermore, when I do create, I rarely ever follow through and cultivate what the Lord is doing through me and those around me.

We need our young men to stand up in firm leadership, opposing our culture’s alluring message of a carefree adolescence.  We simply don’t have the time for it.  We’ve got a generation to lead, an entire world that is crying out under the weight of depravity and injustice, and such a heavy restoration cannot be carried in the hands of a lazy adolescent.

Hello Again.

Well, I took a break from blogging.  A long break.

Why?  Like many others, I got a little jaded by it.  I originally started blogging out of a passion to assist churches with music, loops, sequencing, etc.  Then, it got out of hand.  It became a burden.  You see, I loved making loops, sequences, etc…but in all honesty, many people started leeching off of my work.  It lost its innocence and the line between generosity and “being taken advantage of” became more and more blurred.  So, I guess I just decided to disappear.  All of this coincided with a cross-country move (hello, Arkansas!).

I decided that maybe it is time to start blogging again.  I don’t really know what it will be about, but I’ve felt the need for a creative and expressive outlet.  It will likely be very different, as it should be; my life has changed drastically in the past year and a half…more about that later, I’m sure.  This doesn’t mean that I am no longer interested in assisting the church and worship community…it is quite the contrary.  I think it is just going to take a different form.

I’m excited to start this up again…and excited to get re-acquainted with the blog-world.