xgsjx

That's every week at my church. It's usually towards the end of the sermon that the worship pastor or a worship leader will send a WhatsApp saying "We'll do this song" & sometimes it's accompanied by a chord chart. 1/2 the time it's a song I've never heard before, so it's made up on the spot. Thankfully I only play about once a month.

Native Instruments are running a competition on Metapop to write score for a new instrument video, so I thought I'd give it a try. I never thought writing soundtrack score could be so much fun. That moment when you get the sound you want for something (like footsteps) is a good feeling. I don't expect to win, as there's some fantastic entries, but it's a good learning experience. If anyone else fancies trying it, they give you the video & a dialogue track. https://metapop.com/pages/promos/the-solos-native-instruments-ashlight?p=1&status=live&type=all I did this over the weekend...

Difference is, the secular stuff more often has interesting music. The thing is, Church has some good & interesting vocal melodies (okay, the lyrics can be a bit "church buzzword diarrhoea"), but most decent secular songs have far better musicianship. Look at Gospel music. Great musicianship and very singable songs.

Just got NI Glaze for £22. It's well worth it. Some gorgeous vocal pads in there. Sale is until 6 December.

Our church uses ChurchSuite too. It's a pretty good app. Hearing on here how most churches are similar to mine, I can understand why the vast majority of worship songs are musically very lame. No one gets a decent practice, so the simpler, the better. It saddens me how this poor music culture has created this. I've been playing instruments since as far back as I can remember & been in quite a few bands, but I've only been playing in a church band for a few years. I think church musicians & worship leaders should join some secular bands to learn how to organise.

Yup, the song pickers at church don't seem to take into account that it can be hard to get time to look at the songs if you already have a busy week. I got a 1/2 hour look at last Sunday's songs on the Thursday & another short look on Saturday before I went to bed.

Similar theme here regarding punctuality. We're supposed to arrive for 8:30, get set up, do sound check & run over the songs, then get off stage before 9:45. I know from experience 8:30 never happens, so turned up at 8:45. I was the only musician there until 9:10. Sound check was a train crash & then went into the first song. Rhythm guitar not coming through (it was there at sound check), then me & Keys 1 had in ear issues. So us 3 never played the first song. We jammed a wee bit of the other songs & then we were out of time. Oh, & closing song was still undecided. I found out just as we're going up after the sermon what song it was. But... The in ears sounded good & the bass playing was dope.

Just got around to watching this. They're spot on & I'd love to show my church this video, but how do you approach a worship pastor at a church with no rehearsals without it coming across as criticism (they seem to not take criticism too well, even if it's constructive)? We did a Songwriting workshop a couple of years ago with Matt Hooper. He suggested that the singers spend some money on lessons to make them better singers, he did it in a good & positive way too. The singers took offence at it & never bothered. They have "Team Night" on the last Thursday of the month (except December), where about 1/2 the creative team (at most) meet from 7:30-9:00. They'll use it to listen to a new song & then play it over twice as a band, usually in 2 different keys (neither being the original key). Each play through they'll try & switch musicians, but that's usually only a drummer & a bassist that changes, as like I say, there's only about 7-8 musicians that turn up (and about the same in singists). The majority of that evening has nothing to do with the song though. They spend about an hour or more doing some "fun game" or farting about, so U can understand why not many musicians turn up.

The Mrs hates singing when our church changes key, as it's for squeaky voices (all the worship leaders & the worship pastor are female). They seem to choose what they can sing rather than the congregation. I remember watching a worship video a while ago (IIRC, Chris Tomlin). He said that he writes songs so that the congregation can sing them & should only need changed by a semitone to suit the lead vocal. Our church still go with "capo on the 7th".

I don't mind changing key on bass, but I find songs sound totally different when they move them a 5th & usually not for the better. I might not bother playing synth bass in church. As much as I like playing, I just keep losing the will to be bothered.

A few weeks ago, Church asked me if I could splice Hymn of Joy with Adore Him, putting them bith in Bb & at the same tempo. So me & my Mrs recorded a version of Hymn of Joy in Bb at 70.5 bpm & I did the needful. So we're playing this song on Sunday & I'ts synth bass that's in it. So I've set up my keys with zones so I can play bells in parts & add an orchestral stab. This morning, the worship leader who's singing this sunday said "Let's add O come let us adore him into it, we can do it in E". So rather than all the other musicians relearining the song & me changing all my set up in the new key, I suggested doing the new addition in Eb, as that would work with the current arrangement. I don't mind changing key, but to do it late on like this is not fair on the new musicians that are playing this sunday.

My church put together recording sessions for online church. So a selection of musicians & singists would go in & record about 15 songs & they'd get used over a few month's worth of services. They still managed to send the list out less than a week before the recording & when the online church was played, they still managed to mess up some of the visual lyrics. 😂 We also did a spot of songwriting for the church, but it's turned out to be harder than it needs to be. Not the songwriting, but the "getting it played in church" stage. Out of about 12 folk, there's only 3 left that can be bothered, & at the rate it's going, it'll soon be 2 (I'm a very patient person, but this is taking the peepee).

Cheers. I do try to group instruments & have busses set up. I have sends for reverb, delay etc & then put all the drums to a drum bus to glue them all together, but I'll try playing about with the snare like you say, changing velocity & try a gated reverb on it too. I might be a bit shy with some of the panning. So I'll play about with that too. But to me, the overall sound isn't coherent like a released song is. It's working out how to get that sound.

NI are doing 50% off loads of things! https://www.native-instruments.com/en/catalog/cyber-season-2021/

@justgone1Had a listen to your 2 tracks. Although they're a different genre from what I'm doing, they sound very finished & release ready & a sound that I would be very happy with too. Here's my most current work. It still needs vocals & the Mrs will likely sing for me (I really cannot sing), but she's full of the cold, so it'll not be soon. My DAW is Logic Pro X. I have a NI Komplete Audio 6 interface, a pair of Kali LP6 monitors & Superlux HD668b headphones. It all runs on a 2015 iMac. The bass is me on my Ibby, but everything else is provided by either Native Instruments Komplete or Roli Equator 2. I've not paid much for any effects or processing tools. Logic has it's own built in FX, I bought the BX SSL4000G & everything else I got for free. NI Komplete has Guitar Rig as well as some other bundled fx, but I've only touched on them & hardly used them. Here's all that's used in this track... Organ swell - NI Soul Sessions: Ch EQ 192hx Hi Pass, BX SSL4000G, Lindell 7X-500 Compression Staccato pad - Equator 2: BX SSL4000G, Logic Chorus Arp - Equator 2: Ch EQ 192hx Hi Pass, BX SSL4000G, Produce RnB Amp LEQS (for it’s compressor) Arp Pluck - NI Massive: BX SSL4000G, Lindell 7X-500 Compression Bass - Ibanez SR1000e: Logic Bass Amp (Tweaked version of “70’s Solid” preset), BX SSL4000G, Ch EQ 47hz Hi Pass, a slight boost at 348 & 2320 hz, & small cuts at 210, 1k &1720K hz, Xfer OTT compression Synth bass - NI 25: BX SSL4000G Guitar - NI Sunburst Deluxe: Ch EQ 192hx Hi Pass, Logic Tremolo (Set to 1/4 notes), NI Guitar Rig (using the FG Auto Wah Clout preset), Logic Stereo spread, NI Flair (using the Wide guitar preset), BX SSL4000G Drums are mostly NI with the exception of the clap and the transient kick blip, both Logic. All the drums go to a buss with BX SSL4000G & Ozone 9 Elements. Main out: Linear EQ set to side & hi pass 130hz, Ozone 9 elements using the Harshness Reduction preset & slightly tweaked, BX Masterdesk Classic, Multimeter

For my church, “rehearsal” is the 15 mins before the service welcome music starts. They ask for people to arrive early so we can have a run through the set, but so far, I’ve been the only one to even arrive on time, let alone early.

Same here, it’s not DAW specific. I use Logic Pro X, but prior to that, it was Reaper & before that, Cubase. Always had the same issue… sounds like a bunch of midi files.

😲 Next you’ll be telling us you get band rehearsals too! 🤣

Which is why the lame hillsong & bethel songs are so popular. There’s nothing to actually learn. 😂

On that, last month I was chatting with a guitarist just before the service. He asked how I managed to play without any charts, so I said "I just learn what variation of 1, 4, 5, 6 the song parts are. His response.... "I've never learned to read tab". Oh dear.

It’s a funny thing. I do enjoy playing in church, it’s just the nonsense that accompanies it can be a bit off putting.

I really don’t get why though. & it seems to be a common theme across just about all churches.

I find if you know the key of the song, the progression is gonna be a variant of 1, 4, 5, 6. So something like G, C, Am, F. the problem I have with worship songs is how poorly written the music is, but I suppose it’s the product of the unorganised mess that most church worship teams seem to have. I know a couple of Christians who are great musicians, but refuse to play in the worship team because the worship leadership is disorganised. You get given the songs to learn about 2-3 days before the service, songs get changed right before service & the song at the end of service gets picked during the service.

A week ago on Sunday we held church in the town hall. Set list of 3 songs plus an item for communion. All was going well, but then the media team couldn’t get the words up for the congregation, so we replaced the 3 songs with 3 that the congregation might know the words to. No thought went into asking the band if they knew the songs, but we jammed them reasonably well. Thankfully, the communion item (Mercy) was unaffected.

The Mrs is really up for redoing the vocals. But she's full of the cold, so I've updated the version above & removed the other ones to avoid confusion on what my entry is. 🙂