Music Recommendation

Alright, as an experiment in my plan to update this blog more frequently, I thought a semi-regular music recommendation post might be something fun.

Today's spotlight will be on Parachute and their album Losing Sleep.

On Sunday, Laura and I went to Nashville's 3rd and Lindsley to hear one of our favorite artists, Andy Davis play. Parachute was the opener for this show. Laura was excited to hear them because she had downloaded a song of theirs from iTunes for free, but I hadn't really heard of them.

They took the stage and opened with their song Ghost and I was instantly hooked. The band was tight, the melody was catchy, and the lead singer sounded great.

Song after song I was continually impressed. So much so actually that I bought their CD on my iPhone while they were still performing.

I've now had a few days to listen to the album and I have to say there is not a bad song on the album. Their sound is not completely original. It fits in with most current pop (a la Coldplay and The Fray), but their melodies and the lead singer's voice make them stand out in my mind.

I'm going to be on the road a lot over the next few weeks and know that I will be listening to Losing Sleep for a lot of the trip. It's great driving music and just an overall good listen. I haven't heard a bad song.

Rethinking my Social Media

I know that not many people read this blog. I'd say a main reason is my lack of any content.

Now that I'm graduated and have a little bit more free time in my life, I'm in the middle of rethinking how I want to do Social Media.

I've realized that I spend a large amount of time on the internet, but I don't do much worthwhile with that time.

Twitter has become a main outlet for me, and I love it. However, I want to get away from the constant tweets of what I'm doing (though not completely), and try and make it more worthwhile for people to read.

The same will go for this blog. I feel like I have some things stirring in me right now that will make this blog more interesting and a real thing. We'll see. This post could just be one lost among the few dozen that I have put on here since I started this a year ago.

For tonight though, I have a new layout that I like and that's enough for me.

Blessed

I graduated from college on Saturday.  It's crazy, but true.

As the craziness has subsided and relaxation begun, I've decided to get all of my thoughts together into a blog post.

First of all, I am blessed to have been fortunate enough to go to college, much less graduate.  It didn't really hit me when I was in school, but when people started congratulating me for graduating, I realized that it really is a big deal.  It's not something that everyone does.

Also, tonight I was rehearsing for a show I'm playing next week.  I'm playing 3rd and Lindsley (here in Nashville) with my friend Amy Stroup.  It's going to be broadcast live on Lightning 100.  If you're in Nashville, you should be there.  If you can't, at least tune in and listen.  If you're not in Nashville, listen online at lightning100.com.  We'll be playing at 8PM Central Time.  I'm really excited.

That being said, tonight, while we were rehearsing, I thought to myself "I'm setting myself up to make a living doing this, and look how much fun I'm having!"  Now I know that not every gig I play will be as fun, but as I rehearsed in a room with my friends, I couldn't help but think of how blessed I am to have the opportunity to hopefully make music for a living.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say.  I just wanted to say that.  Thank you and have a good night.

A List

Here is a list of things that I am excited about/enjoying lately:

• Playing guitar for fun
• Ableton Live
• American Idol
• Finishing School
• Kings of Leon
• Having my iPhone back
• Ordering TOMS Shoes
• Playing with Carl this summer
• New bedroom furniture
• Cleaning my house
• Actually trying to make music
• Laura coming back to town tomorrow
• A few weeks of relaxation

Umm, that's good for now.  I just wanted to update my blog.

Pittsburgh Update

I started this entry when I was actually in Pittsburgh, but had very little time while I was there, so I will finish it now.

Friday started at 4:15 when I woke to leave for the Nashville airport for my 5:50AM flight. Originally, we were going to be flying ourselves, but a trailer was going to be taking our gear up to Pittsburgh. I received a call at 4:30 from one of the vocalists telling me that our truck had broken down 2 hours outside of Nashville. They had gotten some of our gear off of the truck (enough for us to get through the first night's set) and we were going to fly it. So my pedalboard and Tele made the flight with me.

After a relatively uneventful flight, I found myself in Pittsburgh.

We took a cab from the airport to the convention center where we were performing. If you haven't been to Pittsburgh before, it's a very bizarre and cool experience driving in for the first time. From the airport, you drive on the freeway through some hills for probably 20 minutes. Suddenly, you come upon a tunnel through a mountain. When you come out the other side of the tunnel, downtown Pittsburgh is in front of you. It was a really pretty looking city with lots of bridges (apparently more than any other city in the world but Venice).

When we got to the venue, we began setting up our gear. I opened up my pedalboard to find that it had been searched by the TSA. Yet not only had they searched it, they had torn it up.

They ripped up the velcro carpet which keeps the pedals locked down.  They tore up one of my patch cables.  It was very frustrating.  I've file a complaint with the TSA.  Hopefully I can get some money toward my new pedalboard.

Frustrated, I sent a message to my friend Phil Baquie who I knew was sponsored by Pedaltrain pedalboards.  He got me hooked up with Pedaltrain, and I am now a Pedaltrain artist.  My new Pro-HC case should be here today.

For anyone who doesn't know, we were performing with DayOne Music at an Amway convention.  It was a surreal experience.  We did motivational songs and fun covers.  The people I played with were very fun, but the audience was just weird.  They got very excited over cheesy motivational songs.

The show that night was a bit rough as we were all working with gear that we were not very comfortable with.  We made it through though.  After the show, we were all hungry.  Yet Pittsburgh is a very weird town.  Downtown shuts down almost completely after 8PM even on weekends.  Very few places were open any of the time we were there.  I will never understand that.  We did eventually find a suitable restaurant.

Saturday was a lot of fun.  I got to spend most of the day hanging with Matt King and Seth Marcum.  If you don't know them, you need to.  They're really funny guys and absolutely incredible musicians.

Sunday Morning we did a worship service, which was interesting, because the rest of the time the convention had been about worship of stuff and money, but I won't say anymore about that.

I flew home after and have started my last full week of college now.  2 papers due this week and I'm essentially done with the stress of school.

The Best Video of the Day Ever

Ok, so I've been watching Crowder Band's Clip of the Day every day that they've been in the studio for the last couple of weeks.  The most recent one has been my favorite by far.

Things to pay attention to:

• Mark playing Family Force 5 on his guitar
• Crowder's Obsession with Salsa
• Crowder dipping cheetos in Salsa
• Crowder's freakout at approx 1:20 in the the video
• Shane Wilson's Dance as Jack records.
• Cute babies
• Hearing new music from Crowder Band

I present to you, Church Music Recording: Day 16

Out of the Box

First of all, this is my third blog post in a week and I'm not out "touring."  I'm very impressed with myself.

Now onto the real content...

Any of you who are musicians I'm sure get into a creative rut.  I find that it's a really easy place to get into for me, especially playing worship music.  This has two reasons for me: 1) I often play the same songs over and over again and have created my parts for these songs.  2) Worship sets are usually only 4-6 songs.  I have a "bag of tricks" that will get me through that big a set without challenging me to keep working beyond that.

That rut is not a good place to be, especially when I aspire to doing studio work and having to be creative on the fly.

Tonight, I resolved to take steps to move out of the rut, and I have to say that I'm really happy with the results.

The first step in the process began a few days ago.  I've been listening to a few albums lately that have been blowing my mind.  The main one is a Belmont band called Lorien.  I played in a School of Music ensemble with their keyboard player last year.  They just released that CD a few weeks ago and I have been listening to it non-stop.  There is some fantastic guitar work on that album.  It's not incredibly difficult, it's just tasteful.  That statement is what I hope people say about my playing, so I took some ideas from them.

The other album is U2's No Line on the Horizon.  The Edge is still one of the most amazing guitarists out there in terms of sounds and tasteful licks.  I love Magnificent off that album.

The second step was taking myself out of my comfort zone gear wise.  For most worship sets, I use the exact same setup: my Les Paul and my Dr. Z Maz 18Jr.  This afternoon I was learning a country tune, so I had my Tele plugged into my Dr. Z Stangray.

For those of you who aren't guitar geeks like me, the Stangray was designed by Dr. Z and Brad Paisley.  A tele plugged into that amp is pretty much instant amazing country tone.  This is not generally ideal for worship music.

As I was playing this afternoon, I tweaked some settings on the amp and my pedals and ended up with a great rock tone.  It was completely different from what I was used to, but worked strangely well.

Every few weeks I play guitar for the youth group at my church.  Youth group is a great place to experiment guitar-wise because most of the time, the kids don't notice what you're doing.  As long as it's loud, they're happy.  I decided I would take my Stangray (30 watt amp = loud) and tele and see what happened.

We played some pretty standard songs:

• Everlasting God
• Blessed Be Your Name
• Jesus is Lord (I didn't know this one)
• The Wonderful Cross
• In Christ Alone
• Jesus Paid It All

I challenged myself to do something different from what I normally play on those song and had such a good time.  I hope that this trend continues.  I'm playing at big church this weekend.  I'll see what I can do.