Dry Ground

Earlier this evening I was reading a blog post from a friend and was moved by how insightful his writings were. This got me to think about my own blog and the lack of writing that I've been doing as of late. (Yes I've known, it's almost like I've been avoiding this blog for a while.) Why is that? I thought about it for a while, and discovered the answer I've known within myself for a while now. I am dry.
Writing just like anything else that has potential to inspire others, should come from an overflow from our daily walk. From those times where we have thoughts and wishes welling up within us that we just can't not share with others.
Tonight I realized once again, this has been a hard year and as much as I've tried to hold my head up and confirm that God is in control, it has been a challenge. Confirming this once again, just a few minutes ago I read my journal post from this year. For the first time ever in my life I began to journal my walk with Christ this year. Marking the highs and the lows, the joys and sorrows, (long guitar solos :) the times of assurance as well as utter confusion when trying to follow Christ.
Change of life, job, dealing with pneumonia, making new friends, dealing with pneumonia a second time, as well as the constant struggle to make ends meet and keep our heads above water all the while doing our best to live right and not be judgmental of others.
When I thought about just how dry I am, I saw a mental image much like the picture I've posted here. Growing up in the deserts of Arizona I'm no stranger to dry, cracked ground, and even if you took water and poured it onto that ground, although the water would instantly soak in, it would still show the scars of being dry. It takes time and regular amounts of water for those scars to disappear. So I'm OK now with the dry, if it's something that my family and I needed to go through. Why? I have no idea. But all I can do it trust that God knows what's happening in our life and will continue to guide us and direct us.
There's a song I grew up singing in my home church that has been going through my mind as of late, "He didn't bring us this far to leave us. He didn't teach us to swim to let us drown. He didn't put this hope in us, to move away. He didn't lift us up, to let us down."

Proverbs 16: 20 "It pays to take life seriously; things work out when you trust in God"

If you are reading this and you're dry too, let's pray for rain.

Technology And The Way Jesus Did It.

Sometimes I wonder if we really make this whole "church" thing to complicated. As you know I'm new to Valley Church and one of the things I'm responsible for is maintaining and creating the "loops" used during the Sunday Services. It's something that I really enjoy doing, but sometimes wonder why do we do it? It's actually quite the process. I create the loops, which aren't really loops but full blown sequences, in Logic Audio. I then bump the sequences down into 8 separate tracks and then load them into Ableton Live. From here they are routed out via an M-Audio interface through ADAT to our Yamaha automated sound console, where the "loops" can then be mixed as needed for our live settings. Easy enough?? When it works, but this week I had to go and screw it up.
Earlier this past week I sent out and email and of course it went out as sent from dburggraaf, the previous owner of the laptop I'm now using, and a couple of my friends gave me some crap for not having changed the owner of the laptop yet. So I proceeded to change the name of the computer and the home screen name to tyates. Which was great until I rebooted my MacBook Pro the next day to find an entirely new desktop and screenset. Then when I went to go open the software I use on a weekly basis it began asking for all of the serial numbers and wanted to authenticate all of the software again. Which is fine...if you know where all of that stuff is. Did I mention that I am new here!! So after a fun (not really) week of trying to get this all figured out, I thought I had it. Until I booted up this morning to realize that I hadn't re-figured out the ADAT thing. So for the first time since I've been here at Valley we went the entire morning with no loops, and you know who noticed...the band. Yeah that's it! Everyone else said the worship, "rocked, sounded great, inspiring." So I come back to my initial thought, do we make this harder than it needs to be?? Would Jesus use loops?

Tim

The Worship We Knew...

Ok, so I haven't written much on here lately and for that I apologize. I actually had a request to write more from my one apparent fan, so thanks Sean. I ran across this blog post, which you need to read, and I too miss those things. Worship in the 80's and 90's, brought us for the first time actually having something to sing other than those old familiar hymns written by people named Fanny. :) The ginormous color coded wind screens, the over-head projectors or even better lyric slides from multiple trays, tons of church drama (good and bad) and for me it wouldn't be church if you didn't play at least one Ron Kenoly song. Give this a read, enjoy and then let me know what you miss.

I grew up on late 80s and 90s worship music. My father was a worship leader and later pastor at a Vineyard which was cutting edge worship music in those decades. I remember those years fondly and here's what I miss:

1. Wind instruments - There are a lot of flute and saxophone players out of work in ministry. I mean there has to be a line around the block for those guys collecting worship band unemployment checks. I really do miss those soft flute intros and funky white boy sax solos that just took the songs to a whole new power pop level. I think it was every worship pastor's holy dream to get Kenny G saved. Can you imagine how powerfully the spirit would have moved? Unfathomable.
2. Streamers and Banners - At its peak churches were removing rows of chairs just to make room for this tornado of twirling silk. They should have been surrounded in caution tape cause they were dangerous. Those wooden dowels were like holy swords waiting to impale you or gouge your eye out in accordance with scripture. I dunno about you guys, but you give me a banner team and a hard core sax solo and that's heaven on earth. I never could get a beat on the males who joined the banner wavers though...that always gave me cause for concern.
3. Transparencies - Who can forget the giant glowing box sometimes strategically placed smack in the middle of the stage for the backup singers to operate. I honestly miss the feel and even smell of those transparencies, shuffling through the accordion folder to find the songs and get them all lined up. Was there ever a professional way of handling these? I certainly am familiar with the bad way, the blank transparency with dry-erase handwritten words and the operator who seems to always make the slide appear upside down no matter how many times you try to explain mirrors to them.
4. Percussion - Rain sticks, triangles, cowbell, congas...what isn't appropriate for a worship song? Even the rocks will cry out, and Lord knows we tried to see what beating a rock with different sized sticks would sound like. The big churches share in culpability for this pandemic, but the smaller churches took it to a new level. I mean really, who isn't qualified to play percussion? As long as you have a heartbeat and 2 hands you can beat things with, you should be on stage right?
5. Constant 3 part Harmonies - Picture with me if you will, vocal arrangements as a mixing board with sliders for each singer. Usually you'd think of these sliders moving up and down as the song progresses through the arrangement, layering nicely in parts, muted in others. Well back in the day this picture was more of a giant switch. Vocals are either all on or all off. Hey those words on the transparency aren't for looking at, if you got a mic and there are words up, sang those things sister! Oh and you know your part, it's the same harmony you do on every song, it's easier that way and we also took the liberty of color coding the windscreens so you know which mic is yours.

Copyright 2008 Kyle Campos @ Our Rising Sound

Obama Boy

Seeing Obama try to explain the lipstick gaff the other day reminded me of a scene from Tommy Boy. So I hope you enjoy Obama Boy.

MSNBC has "LEFT" The Building.

Ok, so the past two nights I thought I would watch "the other side" of the news to see how they handled their coverage of the Republican convention, as well as their pre and post commentary. A few observations:

Observation Number 1
When did Keith Olbermann become the freakin' grammar and quote cop of the tv media. Last night he corrected J. Lieberman, not face to face of course, but later of his misuse of a George Washington quote, as well as "in the act of fairness" made sure that Barack Obama's words were used in the right context. Tonight he's correcting the delagates on the use of the word "pundit" and not "pundint." Thanks Keith for the continued education.

Observation Number 2
As a fellow videographer, the shot you set up and capture means everything. If a picture shows a thousand words, then how many words make up 29.97 frames per second. From previous work that I've done, a great way to show that your words are staged or not really from the heart is to actually show the teleprompter as a speaker is talking. This reminds the audience that they are just acting, and not really speaking from the heart. Twice tonight during Sarah Palin's speech MSNBC showed a back shot fully showing her reading a teleprompter. I suppose to remind the audience that she was "reading" her speech, one that was written for her. Now I didn't watch the DNC convention on MSNBC, but I would almost bet some serious bucks that they didn't use the teleprompter shot with Barack Obama. Tell me if I'm wrong though.

Observation Number 3
Andrea Mitchell just cracks me up. Last night she was just stunned that J. Lieberman spoke out against Obama. Stunned! She knew he was obviously going to support McCain, he was speaking at the RNC convention, but it was like she was just shocked that anyone would dare to actually speak against Barack Obama. Then tonight she just looked pissed when interviewing Rudy G., who knocked it out of the park with his keynote speech, and asked him if he "had any pause going after him [Obama] this hard and belittleing him the way you did?" Rudy's response, "No." Love it!

Ok, so there goes my first "political" blog entry.

Tim

Getting Old!

Ok, so I am now officially old. Last night I had my first rehearsal with the band at Valley Church. I may not have been the oldest guy there, but I'm getting close. Most of the rhythm players are probably in their early twenties. Anyway at one point while rehearsing "Only A God Like You" by Tommy Walker, during the instrumental break after the second chorus, I asked the keyboard player if he could give me some Bruce Hornsby action over the top. He just looked at me with a blank look and said "I have no idea what you're saying to me?" I then had to explain who Bruce Hornsby is, so finally I'm like, "you know...(singing) 'That's just the way it is. Some things will never change." When the electric guitar player, another twenty something, says..."Oh! You mean Tupac! I didn't know Bruce Hornsby did it too?"

If you're curious I had to dig it up and found it here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBAZfgMK5TQ)

Yeesh!

The old man.

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