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Playing in Church.


Sardonicus

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p.s. if anyone feels like praying for a nervous bass player on Sunday please do 😁.

I'm depping in the most musically accomplished band, and we have a potential new minister visiting the church and preaching. 

My target is to keep it simple and not embarrass anyone!

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32 minutes ago, Richard R said:

Yep! I'm Running  just over 66/33 and have no idea what the preaching series is about! 

Then you will need to stop some things to make it sustainable. :) 
 

any you read the ruthless elimination of hurry by John mark comer? I can recomend

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35 minutes ago, Richard R said:

p.s. if anyone feels like praying for a nervous bass player on Sunday please do 😁.

I'm depping in the most musically accomplished band, and we have a potential new minister visiting the church and preaching. 

My target is to keep it simple and not embarrass anyone!

You will be fine

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Lord Jesus Christ, I lift up @Richard R to You and to ask You give him confidence on Sunday, to allow him a flawless performance and to fill his fingers with a groove so holy that even Lazarus himself would rise up to strut his stuff, and as we ponder on the miracle that is the empty tomb, we know that You will be here for us always, thank You, Risen King, Amen 

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2 hours ago, Richard R said:

p.s. if anyone feels like praying for a nervous bass player on Sunday please do 😁.

I'm depping in the most musically accomplished band, and we have a potential new minister visiting the church and preaching. 

My target is to keep it simple and not embarrass anyone!

Will do - and remember, it's unlikely any mistakes will be noticed by the band, and *really* unlikely they will be noticed by the congregation. A bit like improv jazz...

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29 minutes ago, Sardonicus said:

Lord Jesus Christ, I lift up @Richard R to You and to ask You give him confidence on Sunday, to allow him a flawless performance and to fill his fingers with a groove so holy that even Lazarus himself would rise up to strut his stuff, and as we ponder on the miracle that is the empty tomb, we know that You will be here for us always, thank You, Risen King, Amen 

Now THAT'S a worship bass prayer!

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5 hours ago, Sardonicus said:

It's great to see that stupidity hasn't disappeared from my church, this Sunday was supposed to be my week off but I was asked by the other guitarist if I could play guitar because "he only wants to sing".  I alternate between guitar/backing vocals, guitar/lead vocals, bass/lead vocals and bass/lead vocals and I just suck it up and do what's required, no prima-donna antics from me I'll have you know.

 

I am unable to attend tomorrow night's rehearsal as I had already made plans that I can't cancel (it was supposed to be my week off after all), and bearing this in mind, the other person decided to leave it until 2am Thursday morning to announce the songs and has said that he wants to do a medley of different sections from 5 different songs....3 of which I have never heard before.  The bloke's a wa**ker!

I'd just be straight & say to him something along the lines of "Your medley is a great idea & I'd love to do it, but I don't know 3 of the songs & have no time to practice them.  Would you be a good man & choose some from the existing setlist & once I get time, I'll practice those other songs for the next time".

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@xgsjx I did message him to say that the medley was a great idea, that I wasn't going to be at rehearsal and that I didn't know 3 of the 5 songs but, it's still going ahead. 

 

I'm not leading this week so I'm going to stand at the back and enjoy the sonic car crash as it unfolds. 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Sardonicus said:

Lord Jesus Christ, I lift up @Richard R to You and to ask You give him confidence on Sunday, to allow him a flawless performance and to fill his fingers with a groove so holy that even Lazarus himself would rise up to strut his stuff, and as we ponder on the miracle that is the empty tomb, we know that You will be here for us always, thank You, Risen King, Amen 

Thank you @Sardonicus. On other threads that might be taken as  joke post, but on this one it's genuinely appreciated.
Quite how we'll manage to truly groove to "Holy Spirit Living Breath of God", I'm not sure, but this band does a pretty funky version of "Blessed Be the Name of The Lord" .  

 

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@Richard R Glad to hear that your Sunday went well 🙏.

 

Mine went better than I expected it to thankfully and the ill-planned 5 song medley went well, even though it became a 6 song medley and the song order changed on Friday night and then again on Sunday morning 2 hours before the service.  

 

As I couldn't make Friday rehearsal, I messaged my mate to see how it went and he told me that this week's bassist (a 16 yr old that is a talented multi-instrumentalist and a great kid) actually turned up without a bass 🙄...wtf did he think he was going to play?  I would've given him a mic and told him to sing basslines.

 

Referring back to the issue of over-committing and playing on my Sunday-off, the new Summer rota has just been issued and the most anyone will play in a row now is 2 weeks, after that you are guaranteed a Sunday off.  Life is good, God is great!

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Like most churches I'm assuming, we select our songs from CCLI, I had a couple of classics that I wanted to play but as they are not licensed on CCLI, we can't play them because if they're still copyrighted we lose the livestream. 

 

I so wanted to do a version of `Here I Am Lord' aka `I, The Lord of Sea and Sky'......denied. 🤷🏼‍♂️

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I went into this in nauseating detail when we started doing this, including long phone calls with CCLI and  the PRS and PPL folks too. It's over 18 months now, so hopefully I've remembered this right!

 

Churches are not required to pay royalties or PRS on songs performed during worship, or PPL for recorded music played as part of worship, when in the building. The copyright issues for a streamed performance are the royalties due to the writers from the viewers on livestream, and potentially your local recording of it.  If you're using YouTube then that's covered by a blanket agreement between YT and the PRS. (Think of YT as being a huge pub that books a lot of bands. It's the venue's job to keep track of what is performed and to make returns to PRS. They do and apparently very well.)  Some performance and recorded music may get automated copyright claims against the livestream, which just means that either you can't monetise your stream (which you aren't) or occasionally people in the US and Denmark can't see the stream or the recording.

 

CCLI covers the fees due for the copying or display of the words of the song, it has nothing to do with fees due from the performance of the song. It also covers you for recording (i.e. copying) the song.   If you don't display the words of the song on your livestream, and don't display on projectors in church, or photocopy from songbooks, then CCLI is irrelevant.  You should pay CCLI to cover streaming the words on YT, because effectively you're copying the lyrics and distributing them. If you don't show the words for that song, then CCLI is irrelevant.

CCLI streaming license covers you streaming songs from your own server or on a platform such as YT etc. If you are using your own server then you need the CCLI  streaming license as you're recording then streaming from there. But the stance from the PRS people was that  if you were streaming on YT, then it is YT's responsibility to make the PRS returns and a CCLI license wasn't actually necessary. Convenient, but not necessary. Again - think of YT as the venue making the return. 

 

So in short: If you perform it and stream it, the writer will get their royalties CCLI or not.  If you stream the words as well, then strictly speaking you are distributing their words without copyright clearance, but YT won't block you. The writer won't get anything for your copying the words. I seem to recall there are a few we have done where the words aren't covered by CCLI, and I think we did put the words up. We always put the full song acknowledgements in the service description on YT anyway. 

 

Hope that helps!

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We had a great day at church today.  We have been having two services on a morning to ensure "social distancing" but this had meant that some people chose to go to the same service each week and lost touch with people who attended the other service.  With the relaxation of covid rules we returned to having one meeting and today was the day!  It coincided with many of our youth groups coming back from a short Youth Camp.  We have many groups and activities for youngsters from birth to young adults during the week but not all of them will turn up on Sunday mornings - until today.

 

Our church is blessed with lots of secondary school and university students as well as toddlers and junior school children.  I am old enough (71) to be a grandfather to most of our church!  They all piled in this morning bringing with them their parents and siblings who would not usually attend on Sundays.  Our small hall was packed.  There were 155 chairs laid out and only a handful were not occupied.  I was playing bass guitar in the band and when everyone began to sing it was inspiring.  We started with "How Great Thou Art".  Everyone seems to know it.  When we repeated the chorus at the end - acapella - I choked up.  It has been so long since we were able to really let our praises ring out.

 

We have out grown our building and are looking for new premises.  Not so much a problem as a blessing!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last night I set my helix up slightly differently... I set up a really middy forward tone and then cut the lows quite a lot. Two patches one spikier using at the SVT4 and one rounder sounding I think with the Acoustic.  Unsurprisingly (and in retrospect obviously) this fitted in the mix way better this morning and meant I was actually audible rather than just being a sub bass mush.
Lots of fun. :) 
 

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I had my first singing lesson last week, I decided to go for lessons to learn proper breathing techniques and how to protect my voice because, it is an instrument at the end of the day.  Even after my first lesson, I found it so much easier to sing, my voice sounds softer and warmer and I'm not getting dry, sore throats from forcing my voice too hard.  I also found that my bass playing was more relaxed this Sunday because I wasn't stressing about my vocal performance...it's a WIN WIN!!

 

I'm only going to have another couple of lessons but, for anyone that sings on a regular basis, I thoroughly recommend giving them a try.

 

If it helps my voice last longer and keeps me in demand, I'm all for it.

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My singing is usually tolerable for a few bars then goes all to pot.  To those who keep saying "anyone can sing" then I have to reply  "by the same token anyone can spin bowl". I would like to be able to sing, I probably could learn to sing, but I know it would be a hard slog and I would prefer to spend the time practicing bass 😎

 

Good on you @Sardonicus. Both for singing and for putting in effort to become better at it.

 

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@Richard R When I joined our churches worship team, I initially expected to only play bass and sing backing vocals however, God has plans for us all and mine was to end up alternating between bass/backing vocals some weeks, lead vocals/acoustic guitar some weeks and lead vocals/bass the other weeks.

 

I love the challenge and my singing and guitar playing have definitely improved for it, I used to consider myself a bassist first and foremost but now I play bass and 6 string in equal amounts.  My wife has a keyboard so I'm also planning to learn how to play that soon, I must love to be punished 😁

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Our church has started the Worship Central course.

 

The Course — English — Worship Central.urlhttps://worshipcentral.org/the-course/eng

 

I am finding it hard work - the playing is easy, but I find the act of worship while playing very difficult.  Even the idea of someone playing guitar to lead worship in a small group, I find very cringy and I have not manged to sing along yet. 

 

I have realised that I only play while on stage - my worship is reserved for those weeks when I am not playing in the band.   

 

 

Has anyone else tried the Worship Central course?  Anyone else struggle to raise their metaphorical hands while playing the bass?

 

 

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6 minutes ago, bass_dinger said:

Our church has started the Worship Central course.

 

The Course — English — Worship Central.url 67 B · 0 downloads https://worshipcentral.org/the-course/eng

 

I am finding it hard work - the playing is easy, but I find the act of worship while playing very difficult.  Even the idea of someone playing guitar to lead worship in a small group, I find very cringy and I have not manged to sing along yet. 

 

I have realised that I only play while on stage - my worship is reserved for those weeks when I am not playing in the band.   

 

 

Has anyone else tried the Worship Central course?  Anyone else struggle to raise their metaphorical hands while playing the bass?

 

 

Service is worship.

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