Category: Creativity

Writing, music, anything creative

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Finding Your Worship Voice

I’m talking about finding your musical voice, as an artist. And for me as a church musician, finding my voice to worship with the group I play with.

A lot of churches are emulating the most popular church groups right now, and it’s becoming more and more a case of not just playing their music, but sounding just like them as well.

To be honest, this is lazy of us. Of course we can just purchase a backing track and play along with it. But what about the musicians? We’re stuck learning someone else’s parts, and mimicing someone else’s sound.

The Church has embraced Worship Karaoke: even with the words on the screen.

Continue reading “Finding Your Worship Voice”
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Have Computers Ruined Music?

After watching Rick Beato’s video “How Computers Ruined Rock Music” I had to sit down and think about music, and how it impacts me. Beato obviously knows what he’s talking about, and is good at producing tracks. But does the idea that “rock music was ruined by computers” ring true?

Well, sort of.

If you expand the idea of “computers” to technology in general, then no, it hasn’t ruined rock music. Without some of the technology we have now, things like the Digitech Whammy wouldn’t exist (and neither would Rage Against The Machine’s iconic sound). There wouldn’t be John Mayer’s “Bigger Than My Body.” We wouldn’t have affordable synthesizers and amplifiers and effects. Technology has come up with some amazing tools for making music, which have greatly impacted rock-n-roll for the better.

But on the production side, I think Beato is very much correct: Perfection is the enemy of Good. He goes into great detail explaining why editing songs so that every part is perfectly on beat and in tune ruins the “feel” of the song. He’s absolutely right.

Music performance, as an art form, is being over-produced into oblivion by the Photoshop generation.

Continue reading “Have Computers Ruined Music?”
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Digitech Jamman Replacing Ableton Live

Music/guitar nerd alert.

I rebuilt my guitar pedalboard a while back, and one of the things I added was a DigiTech Jamman Solo XT pedal, with a homemade 3-button remote switch.

The DigiTech Jamman Solo is a solid little looping pedal- it records input and plays it back, like a looping tape recorder. There are plenty of looping pedals out there, but I picked the Jamman for a specific reason: it has a 32 GB micro-SD card you can store about 10 hours of .wav files on.

I saw someone was using one to play ambient backing pads for a church service, and it got me thinking. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching software (like Ableton Live) that can seamlessly play backing tracks on command, including the ability to move back and forth between sections in a song, and transitions.

I immediately thought “why couldn’t I do that with the Jamman?”

So I did a little experiment. Continue reading “Digitech Jamman Replacing Ableton Live”

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Adrenalinn III Review: Part 3

This is the third (of 3) installment on the Adrenalinn III effects pedal, by Roger Linn Designs. This will cover the drum machine and MIDI implementation on the pedal, and wrap it up with a summary. I hope you’ve enjoyed it so far!

The drum machine in this little box is, for all intents and purposes, pretty decent. It’s not as good as a full-blown drum sequencer, but the plus side is that it’s pretty easy to use, and can be controlled right there with your feet. If you want to run a small musical group without a drummer, this is a definite possibility.

It basically only plays 4 sounds (or variations of sounds) at a time. Bass, snare, hi-hat, and percussion (which can be a ride cymbal, shaker, triangle, cowbell, etc). This is enough to give you pretty basic beats. It also allows you to pass the drum sounds through the effects section of the pedal, so you can use reverb, delay, treble filter, and distortion on the drums. This is nice if you want to “tweak” the sound for that gritty “in the stairwell” drum feel, like on Led Zeppelin albums. The distortion also works pretty well with the TS808 sampler beats, as it gives it a lo-fi sound.

The sequencer lets you do 2 measures of 8th or 16th notes. It can also do 3/4 measures, and swing patterns. You program the beats on the main control panel of the pedal. It’s a bit klunky, but it does work.

When programming the beat, each sound has a volume set for each time it’s triggered (9 volume increments), which gives you some flexibility.

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The downside to having a drum machine in your pedal is that you really can’t run stereo out into stereo effects afterwards. The AdrenaLinn does have stereo outs, yes. You can split the guitar and drum sounds into the Left or Right channels, but that eliminates using any stereo effects *within* the pedal. 

Continue reading “Adrenalinn III Review: Part 3”

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New Directions

I feel like God is drawing me into wanting to do music ministry full time. I don’t know what that will look like yet.

I don’t know if that’s something I need to go back to school for, and I’m not really thrilled about that. It would be exciting, but at the same time… I don’t feel like I could do it with my current job.

I really like my current job, but I know it is not my life’s calling. I would much rather teach music and lead worship for a living. But how can I do that? I can’t just quit my job. Not yet, at least.

What would that (going back into music ministry) look like? How could I (understanding it’s not me) make that happen? Why is God showing me this? Why is God giving me a desire to make worship my career, after so many years of me saying “I will never do professional music ministry again”? Can I do that without sacrificing my heart? I want to be pure in motivation. I never want to make money worshipping. But I would love to be able to do that all the time.

Continue reading “New Directions”
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Write Or Wrong?

For the last few weeks and months, I’ve been pondering how to deal with my growing list of things to do. I’ve started thinking about what I can do long-term, and what that would impact in my daily life. And as I discussed previously, there’s no end of things to do, and everything I do takes away from something else.

But when I shift my focus long-term, things look a little different. Playing music (even part-time) doesn’t seem to be a reasonable thing for residual income. I probably still would do it because I enjoy it so much. But long-term income, probably not. That would require a lot of travel, working through weekends and missing church (and my family) a lot.

In comparison, writing fiction novels is something I could see myself doing long-term. It doesn’t require a lot of travel (though going to conventions could happen). It can be done whenever I want, however I want, and can eventually bring in residual income.

It would require a lot of work up front, however. If I made any money, I’d have to incorporate again (which I’ve done before) and it would mean filing taxes quarterly, keeping track of everything for deductions, and a lot of work that isn’t actually writing. Continue reading “Write Or Wrong?”

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The Drunk Monkey Mind

One of my daily struggles is trying to decide what creative pursuits I’ll spend my time on. And believe me when I say there’s no shortage of creative things the right side of my brain is telling me to do.

But just because I can do something doesn’t mean it’s necessary. In fact, more often than not, it takes time away from more important things I need to do.

Ultimately, this deals with my subconscious mind: what’s been called “The Drunk Monkey” mind. Most people’s subconscious mind operates in two modes: keeping you alive by avoiding danger, and keeping you alive by seeking out big game to hunt.

I heard a story about a young woman who was recently killed while standing around at a highway rest stop by a rogue flying 18-wheeler tire. Just standing there, and WHAM! Truck tire in the face. Dead. My subconscious- my “drunk monkey mind”- says “Great! Now every time you’re near a highway you have to look for flying tires.” It is desperately afraid of everything. This is the “avoiding danger” part of the monkey. It’s trying to keep me alive despite my best efforts to live. Continue reading “The Drunk Monkey Mind”

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Adrenalinn III Review: Part 2

This is a continuation of the Adrenalinn III pedal review, you can see the previous installment here. This time, we’re going to look at the pedal’s effects, i.e. delay, reverb, compression, and modulation. The reverb and delay are pretty basic, so we’ll spend most of our time looking at the spectacular modulation effects. If you’re a fan of John Mayer, you’ve probably heard this pedal’s modulation- it’s the pedal he uses on the songs Bigger Than My Body, Heartbreak Warfare, and I Don’t Trust Myself.

The way the pedal routes the signal internally can be changed to a certain extent: you can change the order of Amp, Mod, and Compressor in the chain. Delay and Reverb always come last (partly because you can also route the drum machine through delay/reverb). The compressor can be used pre-amp as a sort of clean boost, or after as a limiter.
Continue reading “Adrenalinn III Review: Part 2”

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Passing The Torch

Sometimes God speaks to you through really weird circumstances. And sometimes He just shows you something that was there all along, but you didn’t really notice.

Last night, I was watching the Pixar movie Cars 3. It was pretty funny, but it dealt with some interesting stuff (for a supposed “kid’s” movie). In it, Lightning McQueen begins losing races to a bunch of new up-and-coming racers who are tech-savvy, strong, and just plain faster than him. And of course, he mopes about it for a while, but then decides to try and beat them at their own game by training like them.

And as can be expected, it doesn’t work for McQueen. In his quest to find his “missing mojo” he runs across Doc Hudson’s old mentor, who informs him that as much as Doc loved racing, his biggest achievement and joy was training McQueen to carry on his legacy and passion for racing.

And as I sat there watching the credits roll, I was reminded of how true this is for anyone who’s getting older, and who feels their dream has eluded them. Like me.

Sometimes, like in King David’s life, God says (I’m paraphrasing) “You’ve served me well, and you’ve been faithful in starting construction of the Temple, but it is not your place to finish it. Your son will complete the Temple.” (This is in David’s speech in 1 Chronicles 28 before he appoints Solomon as the new King.)

I thought about all the years I’ve spent dedicating myself to music ministry, how much I love it, and how much passion I have for worship. How desperately I longed to be able to lead worship for a living. And despite this, God said to me “You may never get the chance to travel the world and play music for a living, but you can train up the next generation to do it.”

And truth be told, that means I have to love the act of God being worshiped more than I love to worship God on my own. I need to get over the idea that nobody else can meet that need. I have to want to see younger worship leaders grow- I can’t keep my knowledge and experience to myself. Continue reading “Passing The Torch”

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Pedalboard or Laptop?

This is what I’m currently using to play guitar in church. It looks kind of complicated, but there’s a method to the madness.

One of the goals I’ve had for this pedalboard since I started building it was to create a one-man-band busking/performance setup. And with this last piece, I’m very close.

I added a Digitech Jamman Solo XT- but not for looping. No, I still need a looper that can sync to MIDI clock, and there’s only a few on the market. I’ll probably end up getting a TC Ditto X4, or a Pigtronix Infinity for that. The Jamman is for running backing tracks. That’s right, I can load up the SD card in it with .wav files, and use it for background pads, full-blown tracks, or whatever. I can even run click tracks on one side if I have to run a full backing track.

Of course, minimalism is something I consider an art form. And this board isn’t very minimal. In fact, it’s getting pretty big. And it makes me wonder, “Should I replace it with a single thing?”

But the only things I can find that would do what this board does would be either a laptop, or something like a TC Helicon Voicelive 3 Extreme. Neither one is a cheap alternative.

If my goal is to lead music solo, then this board is moving in the right direction. But there’s still more it could do: I can add vocal effects, and a programmable MIDI controller, and a switcher, and a looper…

At this point, I have more money tied up in these pedals than I do in all my guitars and amp put together. But would it be simpler to just sell all of that and use a laptop? Could that even be a possibility? Continue reading “Pedalboard or Laptop?”