WorshipGuitarist

It seems like when most people think of the word “worship,” they immediately think of the music portion of the weekend church service. After all, don’t most churches use the term “Worship Service” to identify the Sunday morning thing? While I feel like music can certainly be used as an act of worship, I do not feel that they are one and the same.

We can worship God in things that we do every day. I am a teacher, and I believe that God is honored when I go to school and connect with those kids and give them a positive adult role model when they may not otherwise have one. I believe that I am a worshiper when I go home and play with my kids. We can worship God as we go about our daily lives, big or small.

What does this have to do with music? Well, music happens to be one of my absolute favorite things, so it just makes sense that I honor God with the gift that he has given me. However, if I’m in the congregation, I’m probably not singing because I am not a singer. [My sight singing professor in college told me that I have a voice like a door buzzer.] It’s not that God wouldn’t appreciate the (not-so) joyful noise, it’s just that I don’t want to offer God something that I am ashamed of.

As I wrote in a comment earlier today, someone recently told me that I am too focused on the quality of the music in our services. Although I’m sure that it was not intended, I took this as an insult. As a musician, shouldn’t I be focused on the quality of the music that I produce? Would it be okay for the pastor to get behind the pulpit (or whatever) and speak an unprepared, poorly organized sermon with scripture taken out of context?

I’m not trying to say that excellence should be our primary value, but we should always strive to give our best. Of course, my “best” might not be as good as Lincoln Brewster’s “best,” but that’s beside the point. The words “good enough” should not be in our vocabulary. Cain probably thought that his offering was good enough, but God clearly had a differing opinion.

This post may be little rambling, but hopefully it will spark some communication.

I just thought I’d chime in again about this pedal. It’s really a fantastic-sounding box. I normally use it as a medium gain overdrive, but last night at practice I decided to crank the gain and see what happens. I was really surprised by the great tone I got. I have my amp set so that it’s breaking up pretty good, so I was getting a great palm-muting rhythm tone. The lead tone was pretty sweet, too. I was getting this sick sustain with my Les Paul - you know, the kind that just blooms into feedback.

David Barber makes some great stuff. It’s all hand assembled and the build quality is totally top-notch. Best of all, his prices are very reasonable for the boutique effects pedal market (in the $100-150 range), especially if you’re willing to buy used. Remember: buy used and play for free.

I’m still trying to figure out the Small Fry. It sounds really good, but I’m not sure how to use these pedals together. The way that I’m using the LTD, it seems like there’s a lot of overlap. Hmm. Any other Barber users out there?

Barber Electronics

Our church was broken into last week and a money box containing several hundred dollars was stolen. Nothing else was taken, fortunately.

We have an alarm system, and the police were onsite within a couple of minutes, so the money box is all they had time to grab. However, there are a couple of amp heads behind the stage that are worth a heck of a lot more than whatever was in that money box. I also had my pedals up there. I’m really glad that whoever did this didn’t grab that stuff.

I really hate the idea of lugging that stuff back and forth twice a week.

I’m always looking for new music to listen to. It’s been a while since I’ve “fallen in love” with a new band. Over the last few years, I’ve discovered several bands (The Shins, Arcade Fire, MuteMath, Muse, Sufjan Stevens, Sigur Ros, Mogwai, The Decemberists, Kings of Leon, etc), but it’s been a while since I really discovered anything new.

I’ve been listening to a band called Built To Spill lately. They’re pretty cool, but I’m not head over heels or anything (yet). I’ve also been listening to Animal Collective, but they’re too “out there” for me to fully enjoy without engaging the avant garde / musique concrete portion of my brain.

Anyone have any ideas for me? You can check out my Last.fm profile to get an idea of what I’m into. Oh, and I’m especially not interested in worship music recommendations. I’m not trying to ruffle feathers or anything, but it’s my humble opinion that most “worship guys” produce music that is decidedly uncreative. I appreciate what guys like Tomlin, Crowder, Redman, Hillsong, etc are doing, but seriously, how many times can you use the same I-V-vi-IV progression on a CD? Anyway, that’s another subject for another post.

Holy crap, this show was amazing.

First of all, their drummer (Darren King) started out by duct-taping his headphones to his head. I thought it was kind of weird at first, but the reason became apparent very soon. He is easily the most intense drummer I have ever seen. The guy was soaked with sweat after the first song and he kept that intensity for the whole show.

At one point - I forget which song (it might have been Break the Same) he was literally hanging from the rafters. He grabbed a bass drum and handed it to some people in the audience. He then climbed on top of it (standing on the head!) and grabbed one of the rafters overhead. He climbed out over the crowd and then jumped back onto the stage.

Their bassist (Roy Mitchell-Cardenas) is no slouch, either. He played an upright bass on Stare at the Sun/Obsolete and he tore it up. If you’ve never played upright bass, let me tell you that it’s a completely different animal than a regular electric bass. That guy was pretty ridiculous.

I would have been perfectly content to watch these two guys play. However, there were two other guys on stage: Paul Meany (vocals/keys/keytar/theremin/guitar) and Greg Hill (guitar). Paul’s voice sounded great and his playing was excellent. The Rhodes sounded awesome in that context. He was pretty fearless on stage (doing handstands on the Rhodes and slamming his body into the keyboard, etc). It’s surprising that he hasn’t seriously injured himself.

The guitarist was probably the least interesting guy on stage. Don’t get me wrong, he played well - it’s just that he wasn’t as watchable as the other guys on stage. Also, he was going a little overboard with the ring modulator. If you don’t know what a ring modulator is, it’s basically a special effect that makes your guitar sound like crap (out of tune, ice pick highs, etc).

They played a new song, Clockwork, which Paul played guitar on. It was pretty cool. Anyway, they were very tight. I’m definitely glad I went - it was probably the best show I have ever seen. I’m kinda hesitant to go back and listen to the recording; there’s no way that it can hold up to the live show. They should really do a live CD/DVD or something.

I don’t know about you guys, but I get asked to do guitar solos pretty regularly. It’s usually at least two songs per service. I love playing solos, but there are a couple of issues that I have with the whole concept.

One problem that I have is that solos can tend to place the focus on the soloist, depending on what the soloist decides to play. The solo should always serve to take the song somewhere. I’m not a shredder or anything, but I can play kinda fast if I want to, and sometimes that just takes over. If the solo is phrased melodically, then there’s no problem. Unfortunately, many times the guitar solo only lasts about 8-16 measures, so I feel this need to cram as much in as much as possible. Usually, you can “say” so much more emotionally with a long, sustained bend than you can with a couple of measures of 32nd notes.

Another problem is that most P&W chord progressions are not fun to solo over. Seriously, G-C-D is such a lame progression to play over. I usually try to do some chord substitutions to spice things up a little. It’s almost always more fun to play the changes than just run pentatonic licks. Many times, I’ll choose to forgo the whole single-note solo thing and just come up with a chordal/interlude type thing, kinda like something from R.E.M. or Tom Petty.

How about you guys? Do you use solos? Do you have issues with Satriani, or worse yet, Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabes?