How to Be a Successful Worship Band

After years of working with band players in various churches, participating in numerous worhsip services in various churches, hearing worship bands at conferences, and evaluating worship leaders and worship bands, I have begun to assemble a list that aspiring worship bands may find useful in order to be successful. There are some thoughts in this list for most members of the band, though I'm sure I could have given more thought to the Dobro player.

1. Pick keys that are too high for guys to sing, and too low for women to belt out.
2. Show off your chops by jumping the octave at a repeated phrase. Make sure no one else can possibly match you.
3. Shout out "Christianese" phrases between songs. They don't have to fit the context, they just have to sound good, amen?
4. Work hard at crafting all of your vowels so that you sound British or Australian.
5. Never sing any melody the same way twice, especially when teaching a new song to the church.
6. The only dynamic build you can ever use is repetitive eighth notes.
7. Make sure you rush those eighth notes.
8. Dynamics only exist in layers. "Quiet" is achieved mainly because only the acoustic guitar is finger picking at the moment.
9. If you're a keyboard player, try to duplicate the exact rhythms the guitar players are playing, in the exact same register.
10. If you're an electric guitar player, be sure to use all of your pedals at least once in a set, so as to disguise as much as possible the actual sound of your instrument.
11. Be sure that your stage volume is so hot that you cannot be effectively mixed in the house.
12. The form is ALWAYS V, V [add band], C, V, C, C, B, C, C, C, C [drums only], C, Tag.
13. Never change keys in the middle of a song.

Alright, I've got us off to a good start, there's more, let's add to this list!

I used to be pretty good

While rummaging through my iTunes library the other day I came across a performance of Rachmaninoff's Prelude #2 in D Major. This is a recording of Yours Truly, performing at my senior recital at Cedarville University in 1994.

It's not jazz. It will take some work to listen to. I think this is my favorite piece from my recital. There were two significant challenges in this prelude. First, both the melody and the counter melody existed in the right hand. The challenge was to play the melody clearly while letting the counter melody sing sweetly over it without overcoming it.

The other challenge was maintaining left hand eighth notes while playing the right hand triplet counter melody (about a third in). It's vintage Rachmaninoff, really. I think it's not a bad performance--probably the best one from my recital, and if you asked me, I could not play it for you today. I still enjoy listening to it though.

How has the internet affected the behaviour of music consumers?

My Answer to a Quora question found here.

I once heard someone describe the diminished perception of the value of music this way:

Once upon a time, people used to buy their music recorded on vinyl discs called "LPs" In this medium, you could of course play your music, but you could also almost SEE your music. The music was represented in little tiny grooves pressed into the platter. You could easily damage the music you loved by scratching it with the very device intended to let you enjoy it.

A few years later, the disc became smaller and shinier. The compact disc converted the visible grooves on the LP to invisible pits on a ceramic disc. The pits were read by an invisible beam of light. The disc may (or may not) have been more durable than the LP, and access to the tracks were nearly very fast, the artwork and inserts became smaller, and more information could be placed on these little discs than the larger LP counterparts.

Finally, we have progressed to a place where an individual song has been reduced to a file on a computer. Files have little value. We drag them from place to virtual place, move them from hard drive to hard drive, they can be accessed and played instantly, but they carry no artwork other than a simple icon (maybe) electronically associated with it. The file can have varying degrees of quality that the artist and producer has no control over, and can even be edited by a user with a free software.

So from one generation to the next we move from music that you can hold in your hand and see on the grooves of a disc to music that has very little intrinsic value of a computer file-- even the EXACT music that may have previously existed on an LP. Music from the internet has been reduced to an icon on your screen.

So in one way, the internet has affected the behavior of music consumers by subtly devaluing the product itself, in part because the medium on which it exists has changed so significantly.

This may be one reason why it is so hard to convince younger folks that when they transfer a file from one place to another, they are stealing--but that's a whole other discussion.

My Dream Job

Maybe when I "retire" I'll do this. I don't know, I guess you might say I already enjoy my dream job, but this would be even dreamer. It took this picture this summer at a Durham Bulls game. The house "organist" is just sitting out there in the open, doing his thing.

He gets to watch baseball every day, and make thousands of people listen to him while he plays the keyboard. I could do this.

Of course, I would take requests.

"Made Me Glad" Made ME glad.

I will not divulge my list in its entirety, but one of the songs in my "five star" list for a very long time has been Travis Cottrell's arrangement of Made Me Glad. Part of it is the song, part of it is the arrangement, part of it is just that it is fun to play.



I'm still processing our time from Fusion Conference this last weekend. One of my personal highlights was playing "in the band" for Travis and his singers. If you've never heard Travis, he's more than a gifted singer, he's a great leader of worship. More than that, he's great a shepherding a group of worshipers into understanding more about God and declaring truth. He's a real encourager.

One of the other great things about having Travis here is that he brings some really great singers with him. They were all so gracious, putting up with long days, teaching a couple of sessions on vocal techniques, and singing in a Friday night concert and leading Sunday morning services. I think we just about wore them out.

One of his singers was Julie Goss. I've decided I'm a forever-fan. She can sing so passionately and warmly on songs like Revelation Song, but she can also open it up.

She creates the highlight for me in the midst of the weekend's highlight when she lets it rip on Made Me Glad, especially in the chorus return on the key change after the bridge. I couldn't get enough of that every time we played it, and fortunately we did it four or five times this weekend. We could have done it a few more times as far as I'm concerned!

We worked hard at being the best band we could for these talented singers. In some ways, they made it easy. In other ways, I felt at times like I was on the edge because I ceded musical control of my "domain." I normally know what to expect. How many times of this, how to end that, when to start the next thing. In this case, it was a lot more wait and see, or maybe more of "get-ready-to-loop-that" But it all worked out great.

Thanks once again to Travis and the gang (Seth, Nirva, Julie and Lici) for making Fusion weekend such an enjoyable and entertaining one! You guys are talented and humble servants!
Thanks to Alan for the photos!

Four Star Songs

I've been working outside a lot lately-staining our deck and replacing the warped and splintered steps and risers. While doing my work, I keep the ipod running, usually catching up on the podcasts I listen to: Buzz Out Loud, This Week in Tech, Mac Break Weekly, Mac Geek Gab, This American Life, among several others. Sometimes, I actually use my ipod to listen to music.

There's a slick tool in iTunes called "Smart playlists" and it lets you have iTunes automatically sort your songs in any number of ways and it can auto-update, so you don't have to actively manage it. One of the ways I've recently decided to use the smart playlists is by using the track rating system. You can give a song zero to five stars. I've created three play lists: A five star, four star, and three star list. Anything song not fitting into those categories doesn't deserve to be on a list. Especially not a smart playlist.

I have another playlist that contains only songs that don't have a rating. When I'm driving around town I'll shuffle songs from this list and add my rating as I go. When I sync the iPod up to iTunes, the folders automatically get updated. In my "unrated songs" smart folder, I have 4,264 unrated songs.

I've gone through about 300 songs so far and I'm already digging my four star playlist.

The five star play lists are all time favorites. Songs that I will probably never not like. There are only a couple songs in that list so far.

The four star play list contains songs that I'll always stop and listen to. I like them for reasons ranging from fun to sentimental, to technically enjoyable, to great performances, etc. Basically, my criteria for giving a song a four star rating is that when it randomly comes on I say "Oh yeah!"

So far I think I have 39 songs in my four star playlist. I'm being vulnerable here. Don't judge me.

• All About Glory For You - Mark Condon
• At Last - Etta James
• Autumn Leaves [Take 2] -Bill Evans
• Bye Bye Blackbird - Miles Davis
• Celebration - Kool and The Gang
• Dreamlover -Mariah Carey
• Everlasting Love - Stevie Wonder
• Feels Like Redemption - Michael English
• For The Honour - Parachute Band
• God Great God - Kurt Carr
• Gravity - Embrace
• Hear My Worship - Jaime Jamgochian
• Hosanna - Kirk Franklin
• Hot N Cold - Katy Perry
• How Can I Not Sing? - Lakeview Worship
• Hungry - Kara
• I Fall in Love Too Easily - Bill Evans
• I Give You Worship - Ashmont Hill
• I Live to Worship You - Ashmont Hill
• I Won't Be Afraid - Ashmont Hill
• The Last Jesus - Kirk Franklin
• The Love Of God - MercyMe
• A Love That Will Last - Renee Olstead
• Magnificent - Tulele Faletolu
• My Life, My Love, My All - Kirk Franklin
• Oh What Love - Cindy Morgan
• One Sweet Day - Mariah Carey
• The Reason - Hoobastank
• Run, Baby, Run - Sheryl Crow
• Song of Glory - Ashmont Hill
• Take My Breath Away - Berlin
• This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) - Natalie Cole
• Under The Influence - Anointed
• We All Bow Down - Kara
• What If - Jadon Lavik
• When I Fall In Love - Keith Jarrett
• Without You - Christina Aguilera
• You Are Good - Israel & New Breed
• You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine - Lou Rawls

Name that Tune(s)

Some may watch this and think the guy who created this has way too much time on his hands. Maybe, but I think it's genius.

All the video clips below edited together in this video were taken from videos posted all over YouTube and sown, and looped together to create this little masterpiece.

Things are not what they seem

On Inauguration Day, Raleigh got about four inches (or more) or snow. This is not necessarily a critical piece of information, except it explains how I was able to stay home all day (because the church offices were closed) and watch the entire inauguration. My northern friends won't understand this, and believe me, it's taken me a while to overcome the urge to just go drive in the snow because "I know how." It's simply an issue of infrastructure. Little exists in Raleigh to treat the roads. Maybe the highways were treated, but that's about it, so it is considered unsafe to drive around town until the roads dry up. So due to the church offices being closed for MLK day, I benefited from a little snow to extend my vacation an extra day.

Anyway, it was great fun to sit together as a family around the TV and follow along with all the pomp and ceremony unfolding before us. One unexpected musical performance was an arrangement of Simple Gifts set by John Williams for some of the finest musicians in the world: Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill. The performance was exquisite, and so was the writing. It was so artistically refreshing and so nice that the American people were subjected to such fine art! (music snob alert). I was SO impressed by the musicianship in the 20 degree weather! Amazing. Perhaps the elegance of the performance was magnified by the whatever-that-was that proceeded it in Aretha Franklin.

A couple of days ago, a freind informed me that in fact, the performance we heard was not what was played while we watched. What we heard was previously recorded. This explains why these classical musicians were using in ear monitors. I wondered why they couldn't hear each other, sitting so closely. Turns out, they were playing along to themselves. They were bow-synching.

I was devastated.

Here's a CNN report of the Yo-Yo-Vanilli scandal.

Harry Connick Jr Concert

We had a great time with Neil and Kimsu at the new Durham Performing Arts Center Wednesday night, taking in a Harry Connick, Jr. holiday show.

It was more than just a holiday show, however, as Connick's two hour-straight performance turned in several classic New Orleans blues, such as Beale Street Blues and St James Infirmary.

As a special bonus, his good friend Branford Marsalis joined him on stage for a couple of tunes. Marsalis is not part of the tour, but since he lives in the Durham area, he was a welcomed and easy addition to a great show!


Here left to right are Connick at the piano, Lucien Barbarin on the trombone, Mark Braud on the trumpet, and Marsalis on the Soprano Sax.

Here are some random things I enjoyed about the concert:

1) the venue. The new "DPAC," as it's called is elegant and state of the art. It seats 2,800 (most or all of which were full) and sounds and looks outstanding.
2) the band. By this I mean the horn players, in addition to a couple of excellent soloists, the horn section was tight, confident, and in perfect sync. There were three trumpet players, three trombone players (including an excellent bass trombone player) and three saxes (tenor, alto/tenor, bari). This was scaled down from the normal big band of 4/4/5. I imagine Connick had to do some revoicing and rearranging to make all that work.
3) the rhythm section was outstanding as well. The bass player in particular was spot on with time and intonation. He and the drummer worked so well to create deep, deep pockets.
4) the intonation. Trumpets in octaves, the band harmonies, and balance were perfect.
5) great time. Everyone knew where the pulse was. Even when Connick intentionally played so far behind the beat on some of those blues tunes. It never slowed. Just a perfect feel.
6) great improvisational solos. No one played a bad solo. Connick's playing is so tasty. Somewhere between his former teacher, Ellis Marsalis and Thelonious Monk--he has a strong blues influence but also plays very percussively and angularly at times.
7) great singing. Connick knows his limits vocally and stays right in his comfort zone--keeping everyone listening in their comfort zone!
8) great entertainment. Part of what made the show so enjoyable was the fact that Connick is great at talking. Plenty of humor and improvisation which was a lot of fun.

If you ever have a chance to see Connick, do it. You won't regret it!

Finale Issues

When you use a piece of software for what feels like nearly every day for over 10 years, you feel like you've earned the right to gripe about it a little. Finale is the software program I have been using since 1994 or 1995 as a grad student at Kent State. The theory/comp teaching assistants had the duty of being in charge of the computer lab on a rotating basis. That was my first real exposure to Finale.

Since then I've developed the love-hate relationship one develops when you learn to use a tool to help you create or enhance your art, but one who's quirks and idiosyncrasies can just drive you crazy sometimes. I've been lurking on the MakeMusic Notation forum, looking for answers to some of my issues, and finding none, or at least no satisfactory answers, I decided to create this post.

Post title: I will upgrade to 2009 when...

I have been using Finale since 1997. It was version 3.5 or something back then. It's gone from being a functional notation program with plenty of user deficiencies to a functional notation program with a much improved interface but with the addition of features and functions that most people will probably never use. Yes, it's nice to be able to define the bar thickness, but really--who actively goes in and edits that?

Alright, so here's the point of my post. There have been nagging deficiencies--things that seem like they should take fairly high priority to fix--that have been broken either since they were introduced or since I've been using the program and as far as I know have never worked properly or have never been addressed.

One caveat. I will admit that I may simply not know that there is, in fact, a solution to some of the issues I list below, and if there is an easy fix, please, please let me know! HOWEVER--I will say that I have no intent to shell out another $100 every year --or ever other year for new and likely obscure features that I will probably never use when more fundamental functions of the software has yet to be addressed.

*Articulation in multiple layers -- why is it that if I have a series of notes in layer one, and I add, say, staccato articulation to them, then go back and add another series of notes in layer two, the placement of the previously entered articulation gets all screwed up? The issue worsens if I need to add articulation to the notes of layer two as well. This should not be a hard problem to solve. Does Finale really think we oughta have accents and other articulation markings appearing in the middle of the staff, or on top of secondary notes? Why do I always have to move the articulation manually when this happens? This is dumb.

*Cancel and OK quit working -- some have suggested repairing permissions to keep the dialog boxes working properly. Really? This works only for a second, if at all. I have Finale on two computers. The problem persists on both of them, and it happens in no other app that I run. If I get a staff tool dialog box, for example, I make my selections, click ok, and it does nothing. It only works when I click at some black area of the dialog box. That is so dumb. Can we fix that please?

*Rhythmic notation - I am frustrated with the arbitrary nature of the rhythmic notation. It appears on the middle line of the staff with the stem going down whether you want it to or not. I would love to be able to flip the stem, and if necessary, move the location of the rhythmic notation so I can place notes in other layers if necessary that are non-rhythm notation notes.

*Enharmonic memory -- When you are in speedy entry and you put up an accidental in the key of C, say a G#, the enharmonic settings may be that Finale reads it as an Ab. OK, but in this case you need it to be a V/vi so you change it to G# by pressing 9 on the key pad, but then if you have another G# in the same measure, it still puts up an Ab. Duh. Really? I JUST told you this pitch is a G#. Even if my enharmonic spellings are set to favor flats, it really oughta look at that and say-Oh, he's working in sharps right now, not only will I assume that for THIS measure that's the orientation we need, but if there is a tie from the G# of the measure in question to the next measure, I'll make an appropriate note of that too. But NO.

*Placement of brackets with quarter note triplets-- can we get this right already? I mean come on, MakeMusic has been working so hard for so long to perfect the slurs, but they've completely forgotten about triplet brackets colliding with note stems or beams. Come on.

* Pickup measure help --When setting a pickup measure, why doesn't Finale auto-fill all other measures in the score with the corresponding pickup value with rests? If I have an eighth note pick up in one or two instruments, the opening measure in everyone else's part should not remain a whole rest, it should automatically be changed to the value of the pickup measure.

*Autosave -- This needs a lot of work. I have learned over the years that you never know when Finale is going to crash. It will crash, it is the nature of computers and software, and Finale is not notoriously stable. So Autosave is an important feature. It has baled me out (see untitled loop below). I currently have my Autosave set to fire every five minutes. Yes, five minutes. However, this leads to significant problems while operating in various functions of the program.
--Autosave sometimes crashes the document by putting you in a loop you can't get out of if you've freshly opened a document ("untitled") and haven't had a chance to "save as..." If your autosave kicks in and you have this untitled document open, you can't get to the box that lets you name it and save it. The only choice is to force quit. Completely unacceptable.
--Autosave needs to be kept in the background and keep it from interrupting whatever I'm doing. For example, when one becomes significantly proficient at speedy entry, you can be humming along, entering, entering, rest, note, rest, note, note [autosave] note, tie, note--dialog box--too many notes in the measure, etc. What? Oh, no I didn't --stupid autosave occurred as I made an entry that wasn't registered BECAUSE AUTOSAVE TOOK PRECEDENCE. FAIL.
--Autosave interrupts anything the user is doing: whatever menu you have pulled down, whatever speedy entry or lyrical entry you're attempting to make and totally takes you out of your flow. Again, the software should serve the user, not the other way around. Make autosave happen completely in the background and seamlessly, so I don't even know it's happening. I don't even need to see a dialog box flash up there for a second. Just do it.

* Staff expression shortcuts -- When working in a score, there are plenty of times while using a staff expression tool I would like to use the shortcut of holding down an assigned key and clicking and adding something to most of the score, but not all the score. For example, maybe I want to add a rall. but I don't need it to appear on both piano staves or both vocal staves. But it needs to appear everywhere else. Is there no global way that I can still use that shortcut but specify staff exceptions? I know about groups, but that doesn't work with short cuts [that I know of].

*Staff group extraction -- the new extraction process is the opposite of user-friendly. I cannot figure out what single thing has benefited or what advantage has been gained over the previous approach. Can someone explain to me why I can't name a staff in a group and have the group show up in the extraction window? Really? Dumb.

*Document preferences -- Certain prefs oughta stick with the document. For example, if I last leave off inputing lyrics in "section 1", save the doc, open it on my other computer (or later on the same one), and continue entering lyrics, I don't want to discover that I've been entering in default "verse 1" for the past half hour. If I leave off in section 1, save the doc and open it in another context, or on another day, it oughta remember where I was.

In fact, the doc should open to the last place I was editing, with the tool I was using, not at the very beginning, or at least this ought to be an option.


OK--I can't be the only one. What other aspects of Finale need to be addressed that have long-standing difficulties. I think most would rather see these annoyances dealt with rather than new features added.

Rachmaninoff had big hands

Anyone who has ever attempted Rachy's Prelude in C# minor will appreciate this the most...

Radio that's "Safe for the Whole Family" Part I

While driving around town with @fiscalfitness the other day, we were inexplicably listening to one of the local Christian radio stations. A discussion ensued about various tag lines used by most contemporary Christian radio stations: "Safe for the whole family," "Positive, encouraging," "family friendly," etc., and why they aren't more overtly "Christian" in nature. Why not something like "furthering the gospel of Jesus," or "Magnifying Christ between Sundays," or "Proclaiming the good news of Jesus," etc.?

The assumption presented in the question is that these stations identify themselves as truly Christian. Maybe that isn't the case. It is easy to presume that they consider themselves such but don't want to say the name of Jesus too loudly. But before we jump on the blame-the-radio-stations band wagon, maybe we should consider the music they play. I did a very quick survey of this week's "Top 20 Christian songs" according to "20, The Countdown Magazine" and discovered some interesting things:

• Of the top 20 songs for the week ending June 30, 2008, four of them specifically mentioned Jesus or Christ. (Fee, Casting Crowns, Matt West, Natalie Grant)
  
• Six songs mentioned "God" or "Lord" or "Father" (Matt Maher, MercyMe, Tomlin, Robbie Seay Band, Tenth Avenue North, Jado Lavik)
• Six other sings held down the pronoun ministry, using You or Your in ways that could mean just about anyone (Third Day, Jeremy Camp, Building 429, Aaron Shust, Mark Harris, Decemberadio)
• Three songs were about things other than God or Jesus, or things clearly religious in nature (SC Chapman, Need to Breathe, Afters)

So what is the conclusion? Half of the top 20 songs for the week were not overtly about God. Sure, the artists will say they were, but they weren't overtly about God or Jesus. This proves nothing, other than the fact that the radio station tag lines are accurate after all. Their music is "positive and encouraging." They're not seeking to teach theology in their music. Is that ok? Sure, I'm very comfortable with "kingdom perspective" on activities of life outside of praise and worship music that some of these songs touch on. the problem does not appear to be what the radio stations say they're doing, not at all. The "problem," if there ever really was one, is the assumption "Christian" radio stations must play music that only talks about Jesus or God in order to be Christian. This is not the case, since the station programming doesn't even refer to itself as Christian. In essence, the issue is, there is no issue.

But...

I do, however, have a problem with some of the lyrics presented in some of the songs listed above. This little investigation has forced me to read carefully the lyrics of each song, and I have discovered some subtle "confusion" in some of the lyrics which I will delve into in Part II.

Saddleback Conference, Day 2

This busy day began with a general worship session, that began with none other than Psalty. If you don't know Psalty, you probably didn't grow up in the 80's. The time ended with a group and pastor from Destiny World Church in Atlanta. They had a lot of energy. I think that is an understatement.

After our break at 10:30, we regrouped in the worship center for a worship concert with Nathan and Christy Nockels. They were great. It sounds like they have a lot going on as they are literally moving from Nashville to Atlanta this week.

The lunch break featured the usual live music around campus. First there was the Saddleback team doing some gospel tunes in a little amphitheater area, then there was the fusion jazz going on in another area. They weren't afraid to run that one loud, and Rick was prepared with ear plugs.

The rest of the afternoon were spent in workshops. The first one I attended was about improving your church's vocal team. Some of it was stuff I had heard before and things I think we practice pretty well, about being on time, being prepared as a leader to help your team be prepared, hedging and confronting pride issues, etc. The workshop ended with Tim Davis showing us how they do their vocal charts. He uses the Nashville number system. As you can see below, this system codifies parts and pitches, but does nothing for rhythms. He dictates the rhythm and then rehearses each part. The numbers represent the scale degrees. We spent some time learning this little tune.

Reasons he mentioned for using this method for their vocal teams: 1) many people can't read music, and those who can, can't read the rhythms anyway 2) he can make the chart quickly 3) he doesn't have to pound out the parts on the piano. In response to my question about transitioning people who are already used to reading notes and rhythms to this system, he responded by saying, in essence, if the team already knows how to read notes and rhythms, then don't move them, and oh, if you can find the charts with the rhythms and parts on it, then great. I think we'll be ok.

The next session I went to was a session on maximizing Ableton Live in your worship services. This was an esoteric workshop that was lightly attended, but helpful, even though it was sponsored by a vendor offering his performance tracks. The tracks they sell are actual studio tracks that are used on regular recordings (Israel, Baloche, Tomlin, etc), so you literally have the guitar, loop, pad, fxs, drum tracks, even backing vocal tracks that you can play (along with click) to fill in the spots you don't have. Pretty slick.

The last session I went to was pretty good, but it was too elementary for my experience. I am not an experienced B3 player, but I was hoping to learn more than what this class offered, which was stuff I already knew. It was nice, however, because it was set up as a lab and we all got to play along and watch what he was doing through his little camera projected on the wall.

The evening concert featured Jadon Lavik, who played and sang all of his songs with just his guitar--no band. He was excellent. Great writer and singer.

The Saddleback team presented an entire arts package, which was also excellent, centered around the American church's complacency regarding social injustices around the world, from human trafficking to AIDS in Africa. My favorite moment of the night was the Selah arrangement, which they did in the weekend services of I Bless Your Name.

After the concert, I went with my Chapel friends to the Cheesecake Factory for fun and, of course, cheescake.

Saddleback Conference, Day 1

The day did not hold a lot of events for us. We really took it easy today, after going to the gym of course! We went to Laguna Beach and ate lunch,

got our toes wet in the Pacific,

and tried to keep from getting knocked over by sudden waves at apparently high tide.

We found The Chapel gang at registration and went in for a concert, featuring Adam Watts, Meredith Andrews and Leeland. Meredith was great. Here is one of her songs.



After the concert, there was some great jazz out on the plaza held together by Tony Guerrero. Here is their performance of Blue Monk. The guitar solo is particularly good.



It's been another late day--meeting time begins at 8:30 and I'm still going to try to get a good leg workout in early in the morning!

Top 10 Musicians

Recently we held vocal auditions at church and one of the questions I glibly added to the questionnaire was something like "List your top ten favorite musical artists or groups (secular or Christian)."

We had a good time reading through the list and got responses that ranged from James Taylor to Reliant K to Aaron Copland. As I was driving home, I began to wonder how in the world I would answer that question. For sure the answer is an ever-evolving one, but for now, I have come up with ten names, in no particular order that I would consider among my favorites and the best musicians I've ever heard or studied. Here we go:

Bill Evans - [dead] It's hard to know where to start with Evans. I can listen to his stylings all day long. A true master of harmony and structure. One of my "most favorite" recordings of him is his this performance of "Here's that Rainy Day." Just about every beat has a passing harmony that is rich and intentional. His voicings are so efficient. Some day I hope I can play like he played. If you're into harmony, one of the most enlightening and revealing recordings is his appearance on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland. This, I believe was recorded just months before he died in 1980.

Oscar Peterson - [recently died] I was sad to hear that Oscar Peterson died recently. A truly amazing pianist, who I think lives completely on the opposite end of the spectrum from Bill Evans. As a pianist, he could swing hard. He was fluid and flashy. His technique was dazzling. One of my all-time favorite recordings is The Oscar Peterson Trio Encore at the Blue Note, and this is my favorite cut from that recording.

Rob Mathes - [very much alive!] I've had the privileged of meeting Rob. When you hear the phrase "consummate musician," picture Rob. He's a marvelous guitarist, pianist, singer, song writer, orchestrator, performer, arranger. He has done and continues to do it all. He has arranged music for "The Three Tenors" productions, the "Kennedy Center Honors" music for the last few years, and I believe he's also the current music director for Vanessa Williams. You've heard his string arrangements on Christian and popular recordings. I love that he is not a Christian musician, but a musician who happens to be a Christian, rubbing shoulders with a lot of people. This and this are two of my favorites from him.

Gustav Mahler - [dead] If you've ever taken the time to sit and listen to one of Mahler's expansive symphonies, you'll understand why he's on my list. I live his orchestral color. I love how he stretches harmonic expectations (non-harmonic tones one expects to hear resolve a certain way are prolonged unexpectedly until the harmonic context around them changes and in turn the context ends up resolving). Mahler lived from 1860-1911. He conducted the NY Philharmonic for a time and (unrelated) was obsessed with death. Mostly his own death. After completing his 9th symphony, he was really worried that "fate" would deal him the same blow it dealt Beethoven, his German predecessor of the previous 100 years, who died after completing his ninth symphony. He wanted to avoid his end desperately (so the story goes) so he began working on his 10th symphony. He died, however, well before he ever completed it. Still, he composed enough of a slow movement to give us a glimpse of where, had he lived, he might have taken tonality. You may find what appears to be a complete 10th symphony, but it was expanded upon by others based on his thematic sketches. Probably my favorite Mahler, which I find so beautiful and haunting, is the slow movement from his fifth symphony. Listen to it when you can do nothing else but sit and take it all in.

Darcie Roberts - [alive] Who? Yeah, I know. This may be unwise of me, but I was smitten by this girl's live recording for a radio show of Moon River. I first met her (figuratively) when Jason took us to see "Thoroughly Modern Millie." She was Millie. Great voice, great sound, great artistry. I downloaded the mp3 of her singing this song from her web site several years ago, but it is no longer available. If you ever get a chance to hear her, don't pass it up.

Stevie Wonder - [alive!] What a great writer, singer, and player! I love his music. So soulful and a blast to play. Several of his songs have migrated into the jazz standards book, and no doubt many more will be played as "American Standards" for generations to come. Some of my favorites: "Ribbon in the Sky" "You Are The Sunshine of My Life" "For Once in my Life" "Isn't She Lovely"

Roger Bennett - [dead] When I was a kid, like 11 and 12 (and a little older) I completely wore out a cassette of the Cathedral Quartet. "The Cathedrals: Live in Atlanta." I think it's out of print now. Roger was a really good pianist. To be honest, I never really listened to him much outside of this album. It was very recently, however that I realized that he influenced me far more than I knew. I hear myself imitating his fills and licks quite frequently. When I flip into "Southern Gospel" mode or even "Black Gospel" mode, some of the things I play are inadvertently what I imagine a good pianist would play. And those ideas are rooted in my memories of the piano parts from that album.

Johannes Brahms - [dead] I love Brahms' works. His music often is a convergence of metric confusion and grace, harmonic complexity and melodic simplicity, and always a mastery of orchestral balance. Two of my favorite from him are his second piano concerto in Bb and his piano trios. This one in particular resonates with me for some reason, No 1, Op 8 in B. I really like the voicing and the melodic material.

Miles Davis - [dead] Miles could say more with just a few notes than most players would try to say in an entire chorus. His music was always evolving and I like him because he never kept doing the same thing, even though many wanted him stay locked in to the 1950's era style. He kept pushing the envelope. Another thing to like about Miles is how many people he directly influenced by moving people in an out of his groups. Bill Evans, Canonball Aderly, Herbie Hancock (who should also be on this list!), Chic Corea, even Jimi Hendrix! Listen to this great recording with John Coltrane of Cole Porter's "Love for Sale." Now listen to a cut from one of his last albums, "Amandala." This is moving closer to what we would probably think of as "smooth jazz."

Van Cliburn - [alive] It was 1987 and I turned 15. My dad got me my very own CD player. And four CDs to go along with it. One of these CDs which was unknown to me at the time, was the classic recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in Bb minor, and Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto in C minor, both performed by Van Cliburn. Cliburn, it turns out was a bit of a celebrity in the 50's. He went to the Soviet Union as a kid--maybe 20 years old or so, to compete in the first ever Tchaikovsky competition. This of course was during the cold war and the competition, though international, was designed to show the cultural superiority of Russian music. The problem was that Cliburn was too good. He won it and was given a ticker tape parade in NYC upon his return, the only time this has happened for a classical musician. This was the first of many purchases of Cliburn's recordings for me. He is influential to me because not only do I think of his performances when I think of a work, but I know many works because of his performances. I listened a LOT to those concerti, Brahms (above), Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Listz, etc. It's a good thing you can't wear CDs out from playing them over and over because I surely would have have had to replace LPs or cassettes of these recordings by now. When I was 17 or 18, I got to hear him play some of these works with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center. That was very memorable. He played several encores of Chopin Polonaises.

So those are my top 10, what are yours?

Sheila and Abe

It's funny how YouTube intuitively links videos from one to the next. I guess it's based on the tagging system. Well, I had posted a video of Tommy Walker doing "To God Be The Glory" for the benefit of our team here and after reading a comment someone had left there, I noticed a link was made to this Abe Laboriel and Friends video below.

This video was made this past summer at the Saddleback worship conference. Not only was I there, but the person who shot this video had have been sitting almost next to me as this was the exact perspective I had on that little mini-concert. Sheila E, who some of you may remember from the 80's, is now following Christ and is playing at the drums. You can see her come down and grab her father out of the crowd to come up and play some of the Latin instruments with her. It's ashame the audio isn't better. We miss all the goodness and deep pockets of Abraham on the bass. It was fun though a little crazy.

Here's a picture I took of Sheila playing her trademark white-with-butterflies latin percussion.

An esoteric funny

While checking the web on compatibility issues between Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and Finale, I stumbled upon this post from a user on a Finale message board that made me laugh out loud:

I got Leopard today too. It was a gift from my son because his pit bull ate my 10.4 system discs. The dog runs fine on 10.4.

Like Bart, I will install it on a non-essential Mac and check it out.

Bill

Seeking a theology of NT music.

I thought it would be interesting to repost a portion of comments I made on a church music blog/discussion board concerning the analysis of a contemporary piece of music. It was late as I typed this initially, but for some reason I was able to crystallize my yet unanswered questions into concise form.

First, the OT idea of doing something skillfully related to music always has to do with performance. The musicians were skillful in the way they played or sang. Never [to my knowledge] is there a mention of the songs played or sung being written skillfully. Yeah, it may be splitting hairs, but isn't it interesting that the text goes out of its way sometimes to describe the skill of the musicians while saying very little about the music itself?

Second, and this may have been thoroughly covered elsewhere in previous discussions, so I apologize for bring it up, but how do we derive a New Testament theology of musical practice from Old Testament descriptions where the New Testament is curiously silent? What are we to conclude about the absolute qualifications of music and musicians from the Jewish/Chosen setting of the Old Testament to the Church/Gentile setting of the comparatively silent (on music) setting of the New Testament?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Ex-Korn Guitarist Writes About Choosing Jesus Over Sex, Drugs, and R&R

I don't know much about Korn, but now I have a new interest. Click on "read more" below to read this interesting article that is actually a review of a book written by Brian Welch. A couple of excerpts from the article:

"Save Me From Myself" is a primer on the miserable rock star existence he led before he turned to Jesus, seemingly out of the blue, in 2005...The decision to seek God followed an email from a concerned friend. The Bible verse contained in the email made Welch recall a memory from childhood about how moved he'd been when he tried to talk to Jesus. His transformation wasn't instant -- Welch brooded over it and kept snorting meth even as he called to the Lord for help -- but it has been permanent so far.

and

One refreshing piece of Welch's tale is that he doesn't claim life became perfect when he was saved. He has still drifted, trying to determine his path as he sought spiritual mentors, donated to charity, sued his band over money before making peace with them, battled another crippling depression and had a crisis of faith. He will also perk ears with his belief that "All of the man-made religion crap in this world has to die . . . All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches." That message might convince the rebel crowd that he's not a holy roller out to shove doctrines down their throat.

Things that interest me about these quotes: 1) The turning point seemed to originate from a concerned friend. 2) Never underestimate the power of scripture! I wonder what the verse was--maybe his book says. 3) Could your/my church have ever reached a guy like this?

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312 keys vs 88 keys

The future of music is here. What a crazy idea! I'm gonna be obsolete.