Archive for the ‘Worship’ Category

Keyboards in Worship: Out of Your Element

Recently, I played at my church in a different service than I usually do. They have a different style than the one I am used to fitting into. And to top it off, they were playing a difficult song with an orchestra – something I’ve not done before as a keys player. Yikes! For me, [...]

Keyboards in Worship: What Do I Play?

This was the biggest question I had when I started playing, and I still ask this question. What in the world to I play?! I mean, I could play pads on everything, but that’d be boring! And I can’t play cool lead synth lines on everything. Somehow that’s not going to work for the response [...]

Keyboards in Worship: Virtual Instruments

Ok, here’s the deal. Lugging around keyboards stinks. It’s almost as bad as the drums. Stands for everything, and good keyboards with good weighted keys are heavy. Solution? Virtual instruments. Basically anything that can replicate a keyboarded instrument inside a computer. Anything from modeling analogue synthesizers to samplers with sound from vintage organs and electric [...]

Keyboard in Worship: My Setup

I’ve been looking around the internet for good references and/or blogs on keyboards in a modern worship music setting. I haven’t found much as of yet, so I wanted to share whatever knowledge I have on this blog. This will be ongoing as I learn and experiment. So I hope some of you find this [...]

Sometimes You Just Have to Do It

Sometimes the way forward is just that; forward. Sometimes the next thing you need to do is the thing that you should have been doing all along. Most times, we know where the next step is, we just don’t want to take it. We feel like we can’t, or aren’t allowed, or shouldn’t. We just [...]

Looking for Meaning in Music, Part II

In my previous post, I said that music is essentially a vehicle of meaning. Music communicates emotions, but can only communicate so many before something else is added. Adding Layers Adding words to a song makes it more specific. The sounds of music are like broad strokes on the canvas. Lyrics are the details. They [...]

The Place of Art in the Church Part II

The purpose of all art in the Church is to glorify God. When the Church creates art, it is expressing what the soul wants to say to God. It is our expression of what God has revealed to us to be Truth (as in absolute Truth). This can be in a worship song of adoration, [...]

The Nature of Tools: Thoughts on Worship

I just read a blog post yesterday that inspired me to say something about tools. I stumbled across this link on twitter in a search I have up in TweetDeck. So here goes. Is a tool inherently good or evil? How about a fork? Is it good? Bad? Seems a kind of silly question. Let [...]