happy new year!

it's been a crazy few weeks. we visited family in florida for christmas so i was really busy the last few weeks before christmas making sure everything was taken care of for catalyst stuff while i was gone.

the liquid gig went great! everyone was very excited and complimentary about the show. it's always great playing with saintkarla and it was my second gig with surprise, surprise. speaking of, SS and i are planning on playing a gig on february 12 at liquid. a night of love songs. hope you can make it then.

christmas music at catalyst was a blast. we had a great time with all the arrangements and it seemed everyone was pretty stoked. we had around 120 come out for our concert so that was pretty awesome too!

well, we drove to florida (17hrs) and back and are now a little more relaxed and excited about the new year. i've got some songs i'm writing and ready to get with the guys and rock them out. pumped for this weekend and the next month of catalyst gatherings. it's gonna be so fun.

talk to you soon.

liquid gig on friday

i am super stoked about my gig on friday. i've been tweaking my set over the last 2 weeks and i think it's going to be so cool. i'm excited anyway. i'm pumped to play these songs with the heavier loops. lot of heavy drum loops going on through most of the songs to fill out the lack of band. i hope ya'll dig it like i do.

once the night is over, i'll post my ableton file for those of you interested. you can feel free to use them songs as you want. it's all christmas tunes.

i'll also be posting all our advent sets in a week or so. i know some of you guys have been asking for christmas loops and i have a few that i've created and some that i've tweaked and i'll include all the setlists with the continuous music sets so you can see how i set them up. it should be pretty helpful for those of you using ableton or loops in general to add some flavor to the standard christmas tunes that we all do.

till then...

advent is going great

wow. what a great couple of sundays we've had. i am totally pumped about the music we're doing leading up to Christmas. we' had a blast. a great couple of weeks with a couple more to go, including a Christmas concert on DEC 19!

i am trying a whole new way of using the tracks i've created/found. the last 2 weeks i just set up all the songs to go right into the next without stopping. the first week was a little rough going into the second song but this past week it worked great!!! plus we did my "carol of the bells" r3m1x which was a lot of fun to put together. WATCH IT HERE!

i've got my gig friday night at liquid lounge. it's gonna be so fun. i did the same thing. we've got 25 min of non-stop music. one song into the next. i can't wait! hope you can come on out. CLICK HERE to see the facebook event and say that you are coming. i'd love to see you.

a song i wrote, part 6

my second song today! so i had an idea a while back for this song, hope is here. i had a chorus started but then just left it cause i didn't have any thing else to go with it. tonight i was watching lie to me and i've always been intrigued by the theme song. i pulled out my guitar and wrote some more for this song.

meagan got home and we worked on it together and she helped bring a different voice to the table. we don't always right well together. we don't always see eye to eye but in the end, the song is usually better for it.

here's the lyrics:

VERSE 1
you who are thirsty come and
take a drink at the river's edge
you who are hungry you will
feast on the everlasting bread
seek the Lord and you will find Him
you will find Him
call on His name and walk beside Him
walk beside Him

CHORUS
hope is here we are not alone
God is near waiting all along
there's no fear for You are here
our Hope is here

VERSE 2
you who are lost in darkness
walk into His glorious light
when you are left defenseless
find your strength in His holy might
seek the Lord and you will find Him
you will find Him (find him, find him, find him...)

BRIDGE
we call to all whose lives are broken
hopeless and depraved
lift your voice to the Lord
His love is here to save
this is a song to everyone
who's ever felt alone
our God is here our God is near
he's been here all along

let us know what you think. thanks for reading.

a song i wrote, part 5

so we had our monthly pray rowlett lunch today and it was pretty cool. everyone was really pumped about the thanksgiving service which is cool because we lead worship there. it's an exciting thing to lead 400 people when you're used to leading around 100. it's just a different thing and a lot of fun to be able to do that every once in a while.

at the end we all went around the room for prayer and as one of our good friends started praying, i got a lyric idea and i started writing a song in my head (thinking of melody, then thinking of more lyrics). i had to stop by the building to grab some files from the computer and i thought i'd grab my guitar and write down some ideas.

it's still got a couple of lines that i'm trying to work out but here's what i have so far:

VERSE
at times i am broken
at times i am weak
at times i am hurting
at times my soul bleeds
but through it all
You hear my call

CHORUS
Your love never fails me
hurts or betrays me
Your love never leaves me on my own
Your love is what heals me
saves and sustains me
Your love is what carries me back home
Your love never fails

BRIDGE
Your love never fails
no matter the cost
no matter the pain
no matter the loss
You gave up your Son
You gave up your throne
You gave up your life
to bring us home

let me know what you think. thanks for reading.

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.

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.

songwriting

as many of you know, i'm in fusion [worship band] and we released our first ep titled...e.p. earlier this year. we're working toward releasing a full length album in 2011 with maybe a sample ep in 2010 (with songs from the full length album).

as i have been thinking and praying about what i'd like to put into this album lyrically, i just keep feeling this overwhelming push for it to be an album of hope. from the lyrics to the arrangements and instrumentation, just songs filled with hope and joy for people who are hurting and broken.

we are having our first jam/arrangement/writing session in october and we'll be hammering out some songs that are already somewhat finished so that we can get used to the process. in the mean time, i've been trying to come up with some new song ideas and lyrics. i have about 4-5 ideas recorded and i'm anxious to see how they come out in the end.

we've talked about trying to write/develop 20 songs and then put the best 12 on the ablum. so be praying for us as this is a great goal to try and tackle.

thanks for all your support.

first full day of dc*b

so i spent the day working with "church music," the new album from david crowder*band, playing the background. i am blown away! seriously. it's amazing. you can definitely sense the progression of dc*b music. in the past, a lot of the sequencing/loops/electronica had an overtly pop feel to it. on this album, they are all heavier, weightier, and all out rock. it reminds me of some killers or nine inch nails. probably not has guitar heavy as nin but it's definitely more rock than pop. i'm stocked. it's exciting to see a band that i love keep moving forward with their sound.

just so you know, the cd is 1.2 hrs according to itunes. and the music never stops, except for a sec between "all around me" and "how he loves." the rest of the album goes straight from one song to the next with sounds changing tempo, adding melody lines to the upcoming song in between and then the next track coming in. it's incredibly creative.

more to come, i'm sure.

new crowder*band album = awesome!

music for september

putting together the music for the next month and i'm pretty excited. this coming sunday we're doing "you found me" by the fray. we're also gonna try some U2 and Pink Floyd this month.

we're also going to do one of my favorite hillsong united songs, "till i see You." it's such a cool song and the lyrics are awesome. i've never played it before so i'm looking forward to it.

had a great day on sunday. we played a bunch of crowder stuff, and used the guitar hero controller that i used at camp last year. the kids and adults loved it. we had 139 folks. our highest sunday except for easter sunday. it's so great to see all the new faces.

i've said it a bunch but if anyone wants to check out what we do you can go to catrow.tv to watch live at 10:30am on sundays, or click "on demand" to watch any of our gatherings.

worship song of the week - how he loves (david crowder*band)

just a few months ago, i posted about this new song "how he loves" and we discussed it and the implications of its language. david crowder*band released it today as the first single from their forthcoming album 'church music' and i couldn't wait to get to my computer so i could purchase it.

it's a shorter arrangement, just over 4 min, of a song that takes kim walker 8 minutes and eddie kirkland 5:19. crowder jumps straight to the 2nd verse 4 measures earlier than kim, and jumps to the chorus instead of the 2nd pre-chorus, adding it after the bridge as a dynamic drop then build to the chorus again.

the rest of the arrangement is very similar to the originals, even utilizing the melody of the guitars and piano. it's a great key for dave. he's able to sing the lows and then jump to the highs half-way through the 2nd verse.

i really love the bgvs that he adds. i know from the youtube featurettes that the girls from eisley "dropped by" to sing on this song. there are also some male bgvs that i would assume he did himself, even though they don't have the same rasp that he normally has, so maybe it's someone else. for a second i thought it sounded like robbie seay. i'm sure that once i post this someone will be able to find out pretty quickly who it is.

he did change the "sloppy wet kiss" from the original bridge to "unforeseen kiss." still has the passion of but without the what-did-he-just-say?

this recording seems pretty conservative but very fitting for the more laid back song. i can't wait to hear the rest of the album. from what i saw on youtube there's a lot more rock to be heard from this church band.

*thx for the help guys. it is confirmed that this 4 min version is the radio edit and the album version is longer. probably more like the original.

loop rescue

as many of you know, i use a lot of drum loops and midi with my music, both for 'fusion' and for 'sprang.' i had all of my samples and finished songs (about 45) stored on an external hard drive. it's not even a year old and it had a 5-year warranty so i figure i'm good for a while. well, i was wrong.

a month ago, it went out. i tried to use a program to read the files, i let a friend of mine take a look at it and i finally took it to a place in rockwall. none of it worked, so i ended up having to send it off to get fixed in a clean room.

needless to say, i was pretty bummed that we weren't going to be able to use the loops. but then i remembered that i had shared some of my loops at bwacksforum.com. i was able to go on there and find pretty much all the loops that i've needed so far for sundays. we have our cd release party coming up july 10 and i hope that my drive comes back before then, but if it doesn't i've been able to get a majority of the loops thanks to the community at bwacks.

pretty awesome.

in the studio with fusion [worship band]

hey everyone,

hope you are having a great week. we had a great weekend in the studio. all the drums and bass tracks are finished and we have 1 song that electric is done, and another one that's almost done. so 3 more to go with electric. next weekend we'll tackle vocals and acoustic. hopefully (fingers crossed), we'll be able to get through all the vocals next weekend and then have one more day for background vox and guitars.

i recorded some short videos with my phone to post on youtube as we went along. here's the playlist:

how to play: rain down

dc*b in the studio