update...

wow. this has been a great last week or so. we started our core values series, wide open. levi is killing it on the teachings. people have been commenting on how they needed to hear it. the music has been fun, we opened with "use somebody" this week. we'll be opening with it again this next sunday. it was so fun!

saturday night, we got to see one of our favorite teachers, rob bell. he was in town on his current tour, "drops like stars." it was all about suffering. not the why of suffering but the "what now?" of suffering. he brought out so many cool moments of what suffering does for us. i can't wait for the dvd so we can share it with others. it was a beautiful night.

sunday night, i led worship at our rowlett community thanksgiving service. brad and ryan played and we invited some good friends, steve luthye and samuel holder, to fill in on keys and electric. it was a blast!

then tuesday night, meagan and i went to see imogen heap. she's an artist from the uk and we love her music. it was great to see her live. she had a few guys that opened for her and then they came out and played as her band. back ted n-ted used ableton live to trigger his back tracks so i was excited about that. tim exile was crazy. he's invited these different programs and contraptions to manipulate and loop audio. you have to see it to understand it, but trust me, it was pretty insane what he did.

pumped about Christmas music. we have our band practice next monday night to go over all the new tunes. we'll be doing some new arrangements of classics that i'm very excited about. i finished up the graphics and designs yesterday for the advent series called "Christmas time is (almost) here." i think it'll have a cool look.

hope this finds you well and i'll talk to you again soon.

a great last week

had a great week last week. got a lot done. i'm pumped about our new series: wide open. it's about our core values love grow and serve. the graphics were fun to make and my buddy david made an awesome sermon bumper with it. we opened yesterdays service with 'all you need is love' by the beatles. it was a blast.

funny story about that: a couple months ago, the beatles rock band game came out, as well as the remastered beatles anthology. i told levi it would be cool to do some of their songs to kinda be current with the pop culture. I forgot about it. when we we were doing the dave ramsey series I found out that they did the original 'the best things in life are free. but you can leave them for the birds and bees. I need money (that's what I want)' I never realized that was them. I just thought it was the 80s version that's more popular. then we did the 'biggest losers' series and I found 'i'm a loser' by them and thought that's cool. then when I was planning for the core values I figured we had to do 'all you need is love'. it completes the trilogy. lol.

I digress. got to meet up with glackey for a writing session for some of the Christmas songs that I'm doing at the liquid lounge. he's gonna run the loops for me so we can have some freedom. It's gonna be a blast and it's on dec 11 at 8pm. we're gonna also do a catalyst Christmas concert on dec 19 at 7pm so if you can't come out to a rock club you can still hear all the songs.

meagan and I have really gotten pumped about tackling our debt which is school loans from north carolina. we've cut back our impulse spending tremendosly and I'm putting all the money I make on the design stuff on the loans and she's doing a couple after school clubs so we can bring in a few more bucks to get out of his debt. this is exciting thanks to dave ramsey's financial peace program. we're having a blast on sunday nights.

hope things are going well for you. wherever this finds you.

(ps- dont try to write a blog on your iPhone. It took me forever and this is the fifth edit. )

u2 concert pics

a few weeks ago, u2 was in concert. i had a blast and it was an amazing show. i got some great pics that i thought i'd share in one space, so here you go:

Christmas time is (almost) here

its hard to believe how fast this year is moving. pretty soon we will be living in the year 2010 and i will be 4 months away from turning 30. but before we get to kiss our loved one in public we have a little season called Christmas.

i love Christmas. it's a great reminder to us that the God the created all that is, stepped into the skin of that creation so that we could see him face to face and know him like never before. Christmas is awesome.

it also has some great music! my good buddies from saintkarla asked if i would want to play a Christmas gig with them and so i started thinking what songs i wanted to do, and i'm hoping to do some of them at catalyst too.

the first song that came to mind was "the Christmas song (chestnuts roasting on an open fire)" because that was a song that i grew up listening to every Christmas and it reminds me of my dad.

the next song that came to mind was it would be awesome to do a cool arrangement of "carol of the bells"...you know...'ding dong ding dong' 'hark how the bells, sweet silver bells, duh dudu duh" i thought it'd be super sweet to throw in a crazy loop and go to town on it.

the 3 rd song that came to mind was from the most famous Christmas cartoon ever, "a charlie brown Christmas." i messed around this weekend with a loop/track for it and i have to say, it's pretty fun. my buddy glackey is going to be helping me out too so it should be pretty rad when it's all said and done.

there's a few others that i have planned and i think it'll be a great night of music from all the bands. once i know dates and times, i'll let you know.

new 'from the inside out' intro

me and a few friends got to go to see hillsong united lead worship when they were on their recent tour. it was amazing! i've never seen, in that type of setting, a more unassuming group of humble musicians. they truly were an inspiration to how i should lead worship. love those guys.

they did a great number of songs that i new and some i didn't. so when they started one of the songs i was like, "this is a cool new tune." but it ended up being an older song, "from the inside out." here's a video of them playing it at the willow creek arts conference:



immediately i wanted to do the song that way at catalyst. we had it planned for october and so i got to work on it. found a reason file from John B. Hightshoe (check it out and his other amazing loops here), and then added the dirty keyboard intro throughout with a glitchy kick drum at the front for good measure :)

click here for the mp3 (137bpm).

you can download the ableton project file here.

upcoming series graphics

ok. so we just started our current teaching series, biggest losers. i was pretty pumped about the design i came up with. it actually was one i created last year but we decided not to do the series. i lost the original when my hard drive failed but i was able to recreate it. you can see it now at thebeakeronline.com

i wanted to get a head start on the next series' graphics because my buddy david is going to be creating some videos to use (bumper, loop, etc). i started today and got a basic idea. then after meagan and i got back from seeing "couples retreat" (really good by the way) i jumped on the ol' mac and worked a bit more on it and came up with a really sweet look (imho). kinda futuristic, sci-fi design. clean and edgy at the same time. can't wait to unveil it.

want a sneek peek? reply to me on twitter (@jlsprang) and i'll send you a link to view it :)

we are loved track

we're planning on doing "we are loved" in november. it's one of the new crowder*band tunes. i wanted to find a loop for it but nobody has created one yet. so i decided to take a stab at it. i think it turned out ok. the sounds aren't exact but it'll do till someone does a better one.

wrote it at 132 bpm in the key of G#m like the CD

We Are Loved

here are the chords: G#m, E (capo 4)

enjoy.