Happy Mother’s Day, Mom
I’ll be calling a little bit later. Got a basket of flowers for you in the back of the pick-up. Have a great day!
Love,
Rick
Creative Chaos: Week 10
Creative Chaos this week is actually in the form of a question:
As a musician on your worship team, what kind of input do you give to the worship leader and/or rest of the worship team on a regular basis?
Or, if you’re a worship leader:
What kind of input do you need/request from the musicians on your worship team?
We have three different leaders at our church, and I’ve found that each leader wants or needs different levels of input at different times for different reasons. For example, tonight at rehearsal we were having a tough time getting through the introductions of a couple of songs, so the bass player and I threw out some ideas. We played around with it a bit on both songs, and came up with something that worked. That approach wouldn’t work with one of our other leaders, depending on the song. However, this other leader might need some input at different times that the other two wouldn’t need.
My goal as a worship musician is to fill in when and where I can, utilize my strengths, and know how to help the team for the overall worship experience.
How does your worship team handle input from individual members?
Worship Confessional: 5/4/2008
Growing pains! Some new songs for some of us today. Here’s the list:
- Father (Original chart by guitarist Dave Floria)
- You Do All Things Well (Chris Tomlin)
- Grace Like Rain (Todd Agnew/Chris Collins, reggae style on the verses, straight up on the chorus. Can you say regatta de blanc?)
- Desire (Jessica Ketola)
- Glory in the Highest (Tomlin, Carson, Redman, Reeves & Cash)
- Change Me on the Inside (Brian Doerkson)
- You Draw Me Closer (Somebody help me out on this one…)
It’s fun getting to know this team on both a musical and personal basis, but man, sometimes something just comes out of left field. Stylistically, we were having a tough time with the intro on the Doerkson tune, but we faked it well enough to get into the first verse ok. The rest of the set went pretty nicely, though. I love the crescendo on Glory In the Highest. I referred to Grace Like Rain as reggae style, but if we would have added a couple of horns, it would have been just this side of ska. Different, but it worked great. I laid out on the piano on the verses, but came in with some phat Bruce Hornsby-like chords on the choruses. Father is a great rocker that was written by one of our guitarists. If I can get permission, I’ll try to throw the lead sheet up some time. We finished up the set with You Draw Me Closer with just me and an acoustic guitar playing along at the end of communion.
Google Maps + Picasa Web Albums = Fun fun fun
I don’t know how long this feature has been available, but those nutty folks at Google have gone and done it again. I just found out tonight that you can upload your photos, pinpoint exactly where they were taken in Google Maps, and then view them together. Here are some photos I’ve tagged:
- Pictures at Hat Rock, Oregon last July
- Track meet on my son’s 16th birthday
- My youngest son winning the county spelling contest last year, and then
- Where he competed at the state level
- Father’s day, 2006
- Where my dad caught a coho salmon on the Columbia River, December of 2006
For the full effect, select on the “Satellite” view, and then scroll in as far as possible to see the precise location they were taken.
I had a lot of fun just finding these. This really adds a twist to the old photo album concept, doesn’t it?
Creative Chaos 9
Creative Chaos // 9 @ Ragamuffin Soul
As a worship team member, sometimes I’m just not in a ‘worshipful’ mood. Today’s Creative Chaos post deals with being musically creative in the midst of, well, life’s chaos. Let’s face it: Those platitudes we get at church sometimes just don’t cut it.
And that’s ok. Those platitudes are ideas and one-liners that people in the church have put forth. They’re not necessarily biblical. Listen to k-love some time, and you get the idea that Christianity is just a slap-happy, feel good place to be all of the time. Some churches I’ve been to even consider it wrong to show up on Sunday morning with anything but this attitude.
But read the Psalms some time. Basically, this book of the bible is a collection of music where the writers run the emotional gamut of the human experience. You name it, it’s in there: Joy, peace, contempt, hatred, despair, and a lot of other things in between. I don’t need to be emotionally “up” all the time in order to be in a worshipful place in my own heart. They have meds for that. What I do need to be is mindful of my own state of being, and be sure that I don’t negatively affect somebody with anything I might say or do. Show up, pray, play, let it just happen. In the end, I believe that God honors us working through whatever is hanging up in our lives, even if that means we don’t “feel” ready to get musically creative. And somewhere in there, I think we find the reality of what it means to be a Christian. That’s the place where healing and wholeness come together.
Road Trip Checklist
I’m traveling across the state to see Oldest Son compete in a track meet tomorrow. He’s 16 tomorrow, and I thought it would be cool to be down there for that. I’m leaving tonight after school to be with my wife who is in the area right now. Just a quick list of things to get ready:
- Oil change, check
- Fill-up ($77 worth–yes, I have to take the pick-up), check
- 512M iPod Shuffle filled with the latest podcasts from:
- Car Talk, check
- NPR News Summary, check
- NPR Story of the Day, check
- Practical Principals, check
- Most recent free Starbucks download, check
- Random selections from my music catalog to fill up the remaining space, check
- CD case, just in case the above isn’t enough, check
- Gum, check
- Car wash, but the neighborhood drive-through is down, so no check
- Overnight bag, check
- Digital camera fully charged with plenty of room on the disk for photos and vids of the meet, check
- Fully loaded Starbucks card that I received from an anonymous person this morning, check
- Fully charged laptop (I hope Ronald McDonald House has wi-fi), check
- Map to where I’m going, check
- Cell phone so my Twitter peeps can call me, check
Looks like I’m good to go. I’m using the Modify Timestamp feature in ScribeFire, and I’m setting it to auto-publish at 5pm PST. Let me know how it works.
links for 2008-04-29
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A log based on the upcoming book by Tass Abu Saada and Dean Merrill. Soon to be released by Tyndale Publishing House fall 2008.
