Tag: Music

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Why Productive/Creative?

You may have noticed my blog’s rebranding over the last few months. This obviously wasn’t an accident- so what made me choose the words “Productive” and “Creative” connected this way?

“Productive” means the ability to produce prolific output.
“Creative” means the ability to create something original.

“Productive/Creative” is the idea of creating something original, but with consistent, ongoing output. What’s the point of being creative if you can’t consistently produce things? And what’s the point of producing output if it’s just the same old stuff over and over?

Productive. Creative. Get it? Cool.

But how are they related?

Continue reading “Why Productive/Creative?”

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Minimalism In Music Gear

For the last week or so, I’ve been going through Five Watt World’s Youtube channel. And I have to say, Keith Williams is definitely on to something. Everything he’s said resonated with me.

In one video, he explains that “Minimalism” could just as easily be called “Just-Enoughism”. And that tends to reflect the attitude of true minimalists: don’t just get rid of everything (including things you need). But be intentional about it, carefully choose the things you want to keep and use, and let go of the rest.

For instance: I have two saxophones. Each one has two mouthpieces. But that gives me a lot of sounds I can work with: soft, full blast, and everything in between. Plus if I’m a performing musician, it pays to have a backup instrument.

Guitars are the same way. I have three: an acoustic, and 2 electrics. One electric guitar I kept because 1. it’s my first guitar, and 2. I had it rebuilt, and it actually plays really well now. My second guitar was a steal of a buy, and I bought it because (at the time) my main guitar needed a refret, plus it has a tremolo and single-coil pickups.

I only have one guitar amp, that I’ve had for 20+ years. It just works. It’s not the smallest, but it sounds great, is versatile, and hey… I already own it. It’s solid-state, so I can play it at whisper levels, or make your ears bleed, and it sounds just the same.

My guitar pedalboard setup is still evolving (This isn’t even my final form!!) but after watching some of Keith’s videos, it reminded me to stick to what I actually need. I don’t need gobs of wacky synth pedals, or tons of overdrives. Don’t even need an actual delay pedal, but I might pick one up if I find a deal on it.

In another video Keith Williams mentions artificial limitations on gear to stimulate creativity. So I’ve decided to constrain myself to only using what will fit on my homemade 17×12″ board. It fits inside of a hard case, and should hold everything I need. Continue reading “Minimalism In Music Gear”

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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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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?”

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Supporting Bad Theology

In the last year or two, God has opened my eyes to a LOT of false teaching that goes on in the church today. (By “church” I mean the Christian church in whole- not a specific denomination.)

Suddenly realizing that you’re surrounded by false self-proclaimed “prophets” is not something you take lightly. And it’s not light conversation to bring up over coffee.

But like it or not, there is a rash of bad (and straight-up false) teaching being propagated all around you at this very moment. At best, it’s misguided. At worst, it’s heresy. And what’s more, these churches/teachers/pastors/celebrities/leaders are spreading their influence of bad theology everywhere they can. In fact, that’s a major part of their modus operandi.

“So what’s the big deal?” you’re probably wondering. “Why does that matter to me? I don’t watch them, so I don’t listen to their theology.”

Well, in fact you probably do, without even realizing it. I know I was. Continue reading “Supporting Bad Theology”

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Three Things Every Believer Must Do

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ? What does it mean, what does it require? I spent some time this weekend contemplating on what I needed to do, at the very least, to say I’m actively living out my faith.

What are the basic tenets of Christian Faith? What is non-negotiable? Your mind may be swimming with ideas of charity, piety, prayers, who knows.

The first place we should be looking for an example of living out the Christian Faith is Christ Himself.

I’ve narrowed down the most crucial responsibilities of the Believer to these three things:

  1. Prayer
  2. Scripture
  3. Worship

Now, we’re supposed to act out our faith in deeds as well, but for building the foundation of our faith, these three are it. The “Building Blocks,” as it were. Continue reading “Three Things Every Believer Must Do”

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New Job: Freelancer

In a few weeks, I’ll be unemployed, and I will finally get the chance to go back to being self-employed. This is a big risk for me, of course, because there’s always the possibility that I’ll just not find enough work, and will have to go back working for a big company to pay the bills.

I do not want to go back to work for someone else. This means I’m going to have to do my best to scrape up work on my own, for various things.

What kind of “Living Outside The Box” guy would I be if I didn’t though, right?

I’m offering my services as a freelancer in several areas:

  • Book/general copy editing (Have edited/formatted my own book, and a few for others)
  • Article writing (I write here, and several other blogs on a regular basis)
  • Music lessons (I majored in theory, instrumental performance, etc. in college)
  • Background music for Youtube videos and podcasts (Have several satisfied customers already)
  • Computer tech work (20 years experience, and HP certified)

Plus I’m going to work on finishing more novels and music projects for my own income. I may even branch out into other areas as time permits. I’m flexible, and in about 3 weeks, I’ll be able to start adding jobs to my schedule.

If you’re interested in my work, let me know! Drop me an email here or use my new contact form.

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Homemade MIDI Filter

One of the goals I wanted to do with my guitar stage setup was to be able to control everything the Adrenalinn3 pedal does with two different MIDI foot controllers. This is interesting at least, challenging at best. You can’t just combine the output of two pedals, because the Linn doesn’t know which pedal the commands came from, and even if it did, it doesn’t know what to do with them.

I looked into off-the-shelf pieces to do this, and there were a few that were close, but none of them could do what I needed without custom ROM hacking. I wasn’t really interested in that (for time constraints) so I looked into something simpler, easier, and definitely cheaper.

Enter the humble Arduino. This amazing little piece of technology takes a cheap microprocessor and packages it into a board the size of a credit card, with a voltage regulator, and input/output pins. The tools to program them are free and (mostly) easy to use, and they even make DIY add-on kits that let you expand what the board is capable of. Continue reading “Homemade MIDI Filter”

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Wanted: Swiss Army MIDI Workstation

One of the goals of my guitar setup is to be able to use it in 3 different configurations:

  1. Hardware only
  2. Hardware/software
  3. Software only

Ideally I’d like to be able to exactly the same things with each, but hardware costs money! A lot of money. For instance: a hardware looper that syncs with MIDI clock starts around $400. That’s more than what I paid for my whole laptop! It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that dollar for dollar, software is the way to go.

But I’ll never completely eliminate hardware, and I don’t think I should. It’s not that I don’t think software is reliable: my laptop runs effects for hours without a hiccup. But you still need hardware for interfacing things together. Controllers, pedals, mixers, etc.

So I guess the question is, what’s an acceptable mix of hardware and software? If I say hardware only, I know exactly what I’d need to buy, and it wouldn’t be cheap.

For effects, i.e. amplifier models, delays, etc. I’ve got it covered in hardware. That’s easy, and I can control everything without a laptop. Everything syncs to the MIDI clock (delays, drum machine, etc.) and everything works. I’d still like to be able to use the Master Control to select drumbeats and the ART pedal to control effect presets… but because of the way the Linn handles that, it will require another piece of hardware to insert Bank Change signals so the MC will only switch drumbeats. Not ideal, but doable.

In order to control the Adrenalinn’s drum and effect presets with two separate MIDI controllers, it requires injecting “bank change” messages into one of them to change the A3’s preset mode. This isn’t very complicated, except that there’s currently no piece of hardware that will do that. However, for about $30, I can build a hardware MIDI filter out of an Arduino Uno board, and it looks something like this: (This is the actual MIDI board I will be using with my Arduino) Continue reading “Wanted: Swiss Army MIDI Workstation”

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Molten Voltage MIDI Pedal

My guitar pedalboard is finally finished! Got a Molten Voltage MIDI pedal to switch presets on my rack unit and also give me tap-tempo MIDI clock for my delay effects. Check it out.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50EkIid7LpQ”]