This blog examines, reviews and discusses how worship is being lived out in culture and in the church. We tackle everything from songwriting techniques in corporate worship, to interviewing worship leaders and pastors, to reviewing the last big rock concert.
This arrangement is identical to the album release as far as song arrangement goes. The instrumentation is a bit different on the intro where I used a rhodes, the string melody on the chorus out is a bit different and theĀ verse breakdown after the chorus has some additional ambient instrumentation. If anyone is interested in using it and would like a version without the guitars then I can post that as well or you can download the reason(rns) file which doesn’t have any guitars. In my band I didn’t want to lose the distorted rhythm guitar by playing these leads so it made sense for me to put the lead on the track.
This is late, late Saturday night when what I thought would take me 3hrs to program is taking me 6hrs+. I hadn’t even started on guitar work yet, so I spared you the real mess. The problem when recording late at night is you settle for garbage. You get tired and settle, I hate that.
I want to make available to anyone interested the Reason backtracks and loops that I’m writing and using in my band. Your feedback is welcome and you are free to download and use in any way that benefits your church. I’ve included the mp3 as a playable link (RSS readers need to click through) on the post and the download link will download the higher quality aif. I’ve also included the Reason 4 file so you can modify in whatever way you please. Obviously my arrangement is tailored to my bands needs and probably won’t match yours exactly.
We performed this during last week’s set and there may be space for a few more things in the outro, but overall I like the space in this arrangement and gives a lot of room for guitars.
A few weeks ago I broke up my band and reformed with a different configuration, that entire experience is worthy of at least a few blog posts(stay tuned). The new band is myself on guitar, keys and Ableton duty, Josh on bass, Jonathan on drums and Kendra on vocals. I spend most of my week now programming loops and accompaniment on Reason and Ableton Live. This Sunday was our first set and the band did amazingly well. I was so encouraged by every aspect, instrumentation, congregational participation…it was awesome, God was at work.
Our music is certainly not traditional, pop, contemporary worship sounding so I was very nervous how this next step was going to be received. It was a big step forward for the band and the church. My fears have been laid to rest and I got a good nights sleep last night, which often isn’t the case Sunday nights. This set list is part of Fred McKinnon’s Sunday Set List:
Rain Down - Delirious
I Am A Temple - John Mark McMillan
Gloria - Tim Smith (Mars Hill) arrangement
Our God Reigns - Delirious
Who You Are - Desperation Band
I Am A Temple was the only song that did not have any loop with it. I liked the raw rocky drums, electric, bass for that tune, it’s as it was meant to be.
For anyone who was at LCC this past Sunday how did you think the worship music went?