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Ever since I finished my guitar I have been meaning to do a recording with it to see how it sounds recorded as well as to share with some people that have been interested to hear how it sounds. Well, this weekend I did just that. I recorded a Ray Lamontage songe called “Empty”. This is a great song off his 2nd major release called “till the sun turns black”. I recorded all the guitar parts with my home-made chambered body hybrid guitar. If you don’t know what i am talking about, it is a guitar that I built that allows me to acieve either acoustic sound or electric sound, or both. It has a D-Tar Wavelength pickup under the saddle for the acoustic portion, and a Mag pickup designed by Tom Anderson specifically to work with acoustic strings for the electric portion. It sounds quite nice.
For the Recording I plugged my guitar into my little mackie mixer and then into my Powerbook and recorded straight to “garage band”. I tracked the acoustic and the electric parts separately for editing purposes due to the fact that I don’t have a multi-channel interface for recording. The acoustic is just the “Wavelength” straight to disk with a little eq, and that’s it. The electric portion was run through my pedal board effects and then to my DR. Z Maz Jr 2X10, which was then mic’d and sent to the powerbook. I then recorded vocals on top of that using my Neumann TLM 103, and into the powerbook. So, nothing super fancy, but I do have decent gear, so that helps.
All in all I think it turned out pretty good for banging it out in an afternoon. I mainly just wanted to show what the guitar can do in terms of both electric and acoustic tones. In a real recording setting, I would play a regular acoustic and mic it, but this way actually turned out better than I thought and in the mix it sounds very acoustic, which it should, but often times recording an acoustic using a pickup sounds terrible. This is a hat tip to D-Tar for making a really nice pickup that is easy to install, sounds very natural, and yet is extremely feedback resistant.
So, do you want to hear it? Click on the link:
Enjoy, and please give me feedback on what you think. I am going to do another recording at some point. This next one will be more “electric” to give you a better feel as to what it can do in terms of electric tone.
I am constantly looking for new music to listen to, and realized that as of late, I have not been very successful in finding any new good music to use in corporate worship settings. If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.
Right now I am sitting in on a “lecture” at the C&MA Western Great Lakes District Conference. I gotta be honest; I am not a huge fan of these things. I don’t mind connecting with others in the denomination, and I don’t completely mind sitting and learning from the speaker, but it is the “business” part of it that I don’t like. And even more than that, the questions that others ask one another in order to compare themselves or their church with the others. It is not easy to describe to some of these pastors what we are doing in Hudson. It is not concrete enough for some. It is not logical to some. Thankfully there are those here in the denomination that get it and support us and stand up for us and fof what God is doing in Hudson.
After this session, I am going out with all the “worship arts” pastors for lunch. It will most likely be quite interesting to sit back and watch as they discuss and share with one another what they are doing in their church’s in regards to music. It will be even more interesting to try to explain to them that in our community, we worship in many ways outside of music and that lots of the songs we sing are not as happy-go-lucky as your typical evangelical “worship” song. Plus, it is just me and an acoustic guitar, so I can’t join in the conversations about the latest sound system and lighting systems that are being used. Don’t get me wrong, these things are not all bad, and in may be completely appropriate in this setting to get ideas and talk about what others are doing. The only thing I don’t like is when it becomes a contest to see who has the nicest stuff and who’s church claps the most during the “worship” time. I also don’t like how people like to look to the “Big boy on the block” and then go back and try to copy what they are doing as if there is a right and wrong way to lead a community of people to the throne of God. I think we need to asses our individual communities and then come up with ways to lead them in worship through song. It will most likely and probably should look very different depending on where you go.
I really hope that I am wrong in all this and I am blown away by the people I interact with and the love and support that they show one another. That would be awesome to see and experience. However, If I am honest, I am not going to be shocked if it doesn’t happen.
Ok, after being very negative this whole post, I do want to say that despite the things that I talk about here and have experienced in the past at things like these, I must say that overall I have had a wonderful experience with this district and denomination. On the whole, the people are truly striving to Follow God in all they do and are giving their all to the ministries they serve in. It may look different that the way that we are doing it in Hudson, but that’s good because they are being true to themselves and to their people, and thats what we are trying to do as well.
That’s enough ranting and raving for now. Please pray that I have a good attitude in all this despite the fact that it is easy for me to be overly cynical at gatherings like these. I really am thankful to be a part of this district and denomination, but just have to voice my opinion from time to time.
Prayer is an element that is regularly practiced in our Worship Gatherings for Sanctuary. Sometimes this takes the form of spontaneous prayer, or silence, but at least once every gathering we participate in a written prayer. These can be from scripture, or historical church prayers, or just a written prayer from another part of the body of Christ. This past week as i was preparing the worship Gathering elements, I was reading and praying and ran across this prayer by Thomas Merton and we prayed it together on Sunday. Although I fumbled through the words, I think the prayer is quite profound, yet really simple. I think it is something that everyone would resonate with at certain times in life. I thought I would share it here for those that are interested in it.
Prayer of Thomas Merton
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me
Nor do I really know myself,
And the fact that I think I am following your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does in fact please you.
And I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this,
You will lead me by the right road
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though,
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
And you will never leave me to face my struggles alone.
Amen
One of the downsides of owning a house (especially an old one) is dealing with things that go wrong from time to time. We are in the midst of one of those moments. We have ourselves a small leak that is dripping down the ceiling/wall of our “office” room. It is coming from the bathroom above, but that’s all I know. There are 2 things that are good about it though, and that is that it is not very bad and doesn’t seem to be causing any damage (yet) and the other thing that is good is that when we bought the house, we were given a 1 year home warranty that should cover any repairs that need to be done. I just hope it can get fixed before it turns into a worse problem.
well, a lot has happened since the last time I posted about the house. We are done with the kitchen, living room, and “office”. In the process of all of that we took a wall out took off a bunch of wallpaper, put in crown molding, re-did all the flooring, new cabinets, counter tops, and appliances, plus all new trim and finish it off with a lot of paint. The latest project has been to put new flooring (brazillian walnut) in the hallway upstairs as well as put in new treads and risers in the stairway, and finish it all off with some trim. I am almost done with that. I just have to paint the risers, and put the trim in the hallway (which i don’t have yet). Then once that is done, I am going to call a friend of mine (Chad) to put carpet in both bedrooms upstairs. Then I have to finish them off with new trim. I am not sure when I will get to it, but after that is done we will be taking a while off to pay off what we have done so far. Whenever that gets done we will start of putting a bathroom in on the main level and finish off the “mud room/back entry” and laundry room. Once that is done, then we will start remodeling the bathroom upstairs. Then the whole inside will be done, and we figure out exterior things. Man there is a lot to do when you buy a 100 year old house. All in good time.
I thought I would post some pictures of what we have done. So here are some pics of some of the rooms before and after. Also, if you want to see more pics of the house before, during, and after the projects, just click on the link in the sidebar.
Kitchen before:
Kitchen now:
Dining room before:
Dining room now:
Living Room before:
Living room now:
“office” before:
“office” now:
Here is a picture of the empty tomb that you can download, print and color yourself for easter. Ok, seriously though…Easter is upon us. It seemed to creep up faster than ever this year. This is one of those days in which we celebrate an event that is quite possibly the most important historical event ever and one of the most important events in christianity. The resurection of Jesus is what it all is about. It is what we hang our faith and hope on. It is what allows us to be forgiven and made righteous before God. And in the end it is what allows us to be in community with God for eternity. What an amazing thing that Christ died, and then raised from the dead to conquer death and allow those who follow him to be made clean again in His eyes. I don’t know that i will ever fully grasp how amazing and important it is. I am sure no matter how hard I try, I will always in some way take it for granted. My goal this year is to simply dwell on this event and allow it to cause celebration in my soul.
Have a happy easter.
I couldn’t believe it yesterday when I looked out my window and saw it snowing! I mean, it was only a couple of weeks ago and it hit 81 degrees and now it is snowing again. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, but i would rather have it in the winter. I was hoping that it would be sunny and warm this week after 3 or 4 straight days of rain and clouds, and instead it snowed and is back in the upper 20’s and 30’s. what can you do?
On a brighter note, Jenna and I decided since the weather was so lovely, to go see a movie. We went to the falls theatre and saw “blades of glory”. What a glorious movie indeed. I laughed a lot, and I am sure that it’s the kind of movie that gets funnier and funnier the more you see it and quote it. Will Ferrell did not disappoint. Jon Heder was quite amazing as well. If you liked Anchor man, Talladega nights….you will like this movie. Plus you can’t beat the $3 admission at the falls theater along with the cheap concessions.
Jenna and I went to our friends Mark and Kay’s wedding this weekend. It was great time to see people and most importantly celebrate with Mark and Kay on their big day. It was a lot of fun and I wish them the best. It’s crazy to think of how many weddings I have been in and how many of my friends are now married and several of them with kids. It all makes me feel a little older. Oh- well.
wilco
cold war kids
andrew bird
