Sunday Summary – Music: April 10 & 12, 2008 EASTER!

A few years ago we tried something out of the box – before we had the ability to broadcast Andy live…

Due to the other campus’ strong desire to have Andy do an Easter message on Easter (and not a week delay like all other messages), along with an attempt to solve our Easter Sunday morning crowd dilemma, we tried something radical on a Good Friday:

We did an Easter service on Good Friday – the exact same one as was going to be done on Easter Sunday.

It gave a chance to record Andy’s message AND a chance to help offset a few thousand people from Sunday morning.

Remember, it was the same thing Friday night as it was on Sunday morning.

Well, the experiment worked, and we’ve kept up that practice at the Alpharetta campus for a few years now – and based on this morning’s Easter Sunday crowds, we won’t change that anytime soon…

That said, the service over the last few years has taken on way less of a formal, solemn Good Friday vibe, and a far more “up” tone, celebrating Christ’s conquering of death. Although we’ve done our best to incorporate some elements that reflect the whole Easter.

This year we opened with Andy giving a short welcome, a couple announcements and roadmap of the service, and then invited folks to just sit and listen for a few minutes…

Then we went into Charlie Hall’s song “Mystery“, which is absolutely incredible. During the bridge build up, a video started (created by our incredible media team!) that showed historical art depictions of Christ, each one landing on the quarter note beat. Interspersed was text on how Christ came to save the whole world.

As the drums hit the 8th note builds, the picture then turned to photos of people from around the world and continued to intersperse text reflected the lyric of the song.

The building bridge of that song is powerful enough, but the video and stage lighting elements added to the experience 10-fold. GREAT job by all our lighting, video and media teams!!

We then went straight into worship without skipping a beat. Someone in one of our meetings played “Human” by The Killers (a great song, if you’re a fan…), and someone noticed that you could sing the verse of “God Is Alive” over top of it and it was super cool!

So we gave Jared Hamilton, our part-time Music Assistant, the task of creating a similar sounding loop at the same exact tempo and key as “God Is Alive”, which was going to come straight out of Mystery.

The loop ended up sounding very cool, and added a new depth of energy that was really palpable in the room.

By the way, we purposely raised Mystery 1/2 step up to Bb and God Is Alive down 1/2 step to – you guessed it – Bb! Kinda like a smooth flowing medley

After G.I.A., we went into “Stronger” by Hillsong – a tune we introduced last week that has a message and lyric that fit in really well with Andy’s talk.

But we did end the worship set with “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” – a tune strategically picked to connect with the first-time guest (of which there many on Easter!”.

It’s so cool to break it down in a few sections and listen to the audience sing, and sing loud!

Then, after the message and as a response, we did a shortened, moodier reprise of “Stronger”, which ended up being quite powerful following Andy’s invitation for folks to make this the day they put their faith in Christ.

Now you see why it was important for us to introduce that song last week and also sing it in this morning’s worship set!

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Anyway, everyone was a trooper, doing 1 service 4 different times (plus a ton of tech rehearsals and run-throughs!).

East Band: Todd Fields, Steve Thomason, Ben Snider, Earl South, Ashley Appling, Christ Arias, Ryan Stuart

West Band: Eddie Kirkland, Brad Long, Danny Grady, Scott Meeder, Richard Meeder, Mike Bielenberg, Rosie Pinkermann

Thanks for working so hard all weekend, folks! I believe God did some amazing thins in the lives on the people that came on Friday and Sunday!

Sunday Summary – Music: March 29, 2008

First, a big shout out to our Long Island guests! (You know who you are… )

Sunday was a fun day. Sometimes the mood on stage and off is just a little brighter and perkier than others – this was one of those days.

No real reason why, other than the fact that everyone was glad that 5 straight days of rain was over.

That, and the fact that we did some fun tunes…

Sunday was our “Strategic Service” day – the day we honor our existing volunteers, and push for new ones.

So we opened with a highlight video – a montage of photos from every area that volunteers serve, underscored by each side’s live band doing Jack Johnson’s “Better Together“.

It’s a happy little tune, just like most of Jack’s repertoire. Danny Dukes sang it on East and Eddie Kirkland did it on West.

And I got to use a vibraphone patch, so that alone made my day… .

Worship was, at least for me, more fun than usual. I played on East with Chrystina Fincher leading. If you don’t know Chrys, she’s a firecracker rock-chick. I mean, this is the mother of 3 that sang Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” at DRIVE and Catalyst conferences!

So a win for Chrys is a set of “up” tunes that have a lot of energy and really allow her to show off her dynamic personalty and lead a crowd in worship.

Plus, Eddie was leading on the West, and he can sing the phone book, so no worries!

We started with Chris Tomlin’s “Let God Arise“. Now if you don’t dig this tune for worship, chances are you’ve not heard the right person lead it.

Tomlin’s recorded version lacks something, and you don’t realize what that is until you hear someone with a stronger, more aggressive voice sing it. It’s a great tune, but a smooth, tender voice like Tomlin’s doesn’t do the song justice. But when you put someone on it that has some grit, the song takes on a whole new persona!

Next was Marvelous Light, a fave by Charlie Hall, but one that is nearing it’s last days and will soon be put out to pasture. So enjoy it while it’s still around!

We concluded worship with a new song by Todd Fields that he co-wrote with Eddie called “Jesus Reigns“. It’s got a great mid-tempo groove ad is a blast to play. The verse is a little wordy and with some odd syncopation, but it certainly learnable over time. The chorus, however, is fantastic – a great hook that’s super easy to pick up and repeats a bunch.

We’ll be singing this one for a while! It’ll be on Todd’s new project due in May.

There you go!

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East Band – Chrystina Fincher, Danny Dukes, Ryan Stuart, Steve Thomason, Ben Snider, Ashley Appling, Richard Meeder, Me

West Band – Eddie Kirkland, Danny Grady, Brad Avery, Jennifer Young, Mike Bielenberg, Pat Malone, Wayne Viar

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Sunday Summary – Music: March 15th, 2008

Well, I was away this past weekend, so I’ll give you the 2nd hand reports…

We didn’t do any openers or closers – which usually makes for a simplified week, and this was no different. However, a couple of the tunes were newer, which means that not all the musicians had played them yet.

That brings up an observation. With our musician and Worship Leader schedules – like ‘em or not – it can often mean that at a Wednesday night rehearsal there are guys in that week’s band that have played a tune a bunch, and sometimes others have not played it at all.

And what makes our musicians great is that the guys that are more experienced with a tune are quick to aid the ones that haven’t played it. They’ll kindly offer notes or suggestions based on their own past experiences. Pretty cool.

Alrighty, so here’s what we did – nothing elaborate or crazy, just a good, effective time of worship…

Salvation’s Chorus by Todd Fields

Hands of the Healer by Eddie Kirkland

Everything by Tim Hughes

I’m really digging that Everything tune. I’m a big Tim Hughes fan. Have I said that before? Not sure…

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East Band – Mike Gleason, Trey McKnight, Earl South, Scott Meeder, Jeremy Moyers, Mike Hines, Chris Arias

West Band – Todd Fields, Ryan Stuart, Pat Malone, Ashley Appling, Danny Grady, Bill DeLoach

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Who are you a big fan of?

Sunday Summary – Music: March 08, 2009

I can’t remember a time when something happened as much as it did this past Sunday…

But more on that later (doh!).

As with many of our power-packed services, especially ones with baptism, we were a little pressed for time up front, especially since we were definitely going to do closer. And doing closer means Andy needs to be on stage speaking even earlier than usual.

So we opted to two worship songs that were a little out (or outdated!) from our current songs to strategically go with Andy’s message series. Again, we don’t normally program worship to be directly coordinated with a specific message or series, but yesterday was one of those rare times we did.

Andy was wrapping up the “He’s Still Got The Whole World In His Hands” series – one that has really hit home for a lot of folks in lieu of these crazy days we’re living in.

So we dusted off Charlie Hall’s version of “On Christ The Solid Rock” from the Passion Hymns album to start. We’ve done it a bunch over the last few years, so it wasn’t a total newbie – plus it’s a great rendition of the classic hymn. And hey, who doesn’t like a good 6/8 sea shanty? Somehow all the musicians turn into Maritime fisherman or pirates…

But the lyric sets it all up: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness…“.

We then did a tune that we haven’t done for a looong time, and even when we did, it was infrequent and short lived at best. It’s Matt Redman’s “You Never Let Go“. It was a big hit at High School camps a few years ago, but never really had that “grown up” appeal. Something about that “oh no, You never let go..” part that has always seemed a bit, I don’t know, campy? The content is not, it’s the “oh no” part. Maybe it’s just me…

Either way, the Worship Leaders on each side did a great job with it, and it helped a ton that it was appropriate for the series, and not out of left field.

Steve Fee and his Fee Band boys, who were with us in East this past week, had done this tune at Buckhead Church at the beginning of this sermon series and put an extra spin on it. At the end of the tune they did not ritard, and when the band hit the last chord Steve on acoustic kept playing the “1″ chord. After 4 bars of just acoustic he started singing the verse of Amazing Grace:

“Through many dangers, toils and snares…

we have already come.

T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far…

and Grace will lead us home.”

The band hits big diamonds on “T’was” and “safe“, then builds through the last line into a giant all-skate of the 1st verse (Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…). Goosebumps, people. Goosebumps! Some serious Holy Spirt movement, if you know what I’m talkin’ about. From there, back into one final chorus of “Oh no, You never let go…“.

The whole thing is about 6:30, but worth every second.

BUT! If you can believe it or not, the musical highlight came at the end of the service….

Steve and the boys are currently working on a new album, and Steve had played one of the new tunes for Andy – who loved it and even shaped some of the series’ message content around the tune.

It’s called “Everything Falls” and will probably be the first single off the new record, due in August.

Steve and Eddie Kirkland wrote the song, and it’s one of their best.

Plus a great band and a live string quartet made the whole musical experience incredibly powerful – especially on the end of a very relevant message and series.

On a personal note, I played the live piano for that tune on Sunday, which is totally exposed for the intro, 1st verse and chorus. And I don’t know if I’ve ever been so nervous playing 4 of the most simple chords – Am, F, C, and G.

A child could play those in their sleep, but all I could think was “don’t screw up, everyone’s counting on you, don’t screw up, they can hear every note you’re playing, don’t screw up, this is probably going on a DVD, don’t screw up, one wrong note and you’ll ruin this moment for 5,000 people, don’t screw up, or you’ll never get asked to do anything ever again, don’t screw up, you’re a professional, don’t screw up, what’s the order of these 4 stupid chords???, don’t screw up, is it Am first, or C? AAHHHHHH!!!!!”

And now you see why musicians are neurotic.

But everything was OK – due to years of practice, but mostly a whole lot of grace from God.

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East Band – Steve Fee, Matt Adkins, Heath Baltzglier, Brandon Coker, (with strings and me on the closer)

West Band – Danny Dukes, Ryan Stuart, Brad Long, Danny Grady, Wayne Viar, Richard Meeder, Keith Thomas

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What runs through your mind before your featured moment on stage?

Sunday Summary – Music: February 22, 2009

OK, we’ve recovered from last week…

We learned a lesson about song selection from last Sunday, and had an incredible Night of Worship on Thursday night.

FYI – in case you weren’t able to attend Thursday night, here was our set list…

Night of Worship – Feb 19.pdf

(50 points if you can spot my typo on the set list…)

Anyhooooo….

On Sunday morning we had some cool stuff, as well as an interesting scenario.

First off, Andy was speaking here live, which meant that the content before the message needed to be shorter in order to broadcast the message feed to the other campuses.

Sooo, we did something we haven’t done before: We cut one of the worship tunes, but only for the first service! Meaning 2 worship tunes at the 9:00 AM service and 3 tunes at the 11:00 and 12:45.

This is because in the second service (11:00 AM) we use the recorded video of Andy from the first service. So everyone – East, West, Browns Bridge and Buckhead – are all watching the recorded 9:00 message while Andy rests his voice (and body and mind) off stage.

He’s then back live for the 12:45 service when he’s speaking at North Point, even though it’s not being broadcast to another campus. Browns Bridge uses the recorded video for their 12:45 service and Buckhead uses it for their 6:00 service.

Confused yet? Hold on…

This also means that we didn’t have to cut the top-of-the-service content for our 11:00 (video) and 12:45 (live but not broadcast) services, meaning we could add in that 3rd worship tune for those 2 services.

Now try getting that through to a group of Pavlovian Worship Leaders, musicians and production personnel who have already rehearsed and done one whole worship set and service a different way!

But they did it, and did it great!

Here’s the worship set:

God Is Alive (this was the one we cut for the first service)

Wonderful The Love

Lift High

After the worship set (in all 3 services) we did something we have hardly ever done here at North Point – an Offertory song!

Now if you grew up anything like I did, nary a week went by without an offertory song. Whether it was the choir or a soloist, or what – there was always an offertory! And, on a few occasions when I was a teenager, the offertory was me playing a newly learned classical piece.

One time, at the church back in Canada I grew up in, Jennie (my then girlfriend, now wife) and I did Great is Thy Faithfulness, with her on violin. That’s when our pastor said to my mom, “She’s the one, isn’t she?” That was a fond memory.

A not-so-fond memory was when I was about 15 and massacred a piano solo of “El Shaddai”. Butchered it. I put chords in there that don’t even exist.

That was the day I learned (the hard way) that I must practice something past the point of nausea, all the way to a healthy hatred for the song. True internalization. Muscle memory. Ability to play the song with your hands while having a conversation with your mouth and brain.

Otherwise, you’ll look like a fool. Trust me.

Alrighty then…

Nowadays, we only do an offertory if it’s a song that sets up the message, usually with tension or a question that the message will then address and possibly answer. They are a songs that might describe an imperfect scenario or situation. Basically not a song that would fit as a closer that would leave an audience with an answer, or basic sense or closure or hope. Now that’s not set in stone, but it’s a good rule of thumb…

So we did a tune called “Storm” by Lifehouse. A neat, moody song that is really quite haunting. Ryan Stuart‘s incredible vocal matched with the East band’s ability to master the song’s subtlety (plus some cool ethereal programming I did ) made for a really unique, cool experience.

Give the song a listen and you’ll see just how polar it is to our usual Sunday AM content…

The song set up Andy’s first message in the series “He’s Still Got The Whole World In His Hands“. And it was a GOOOOD one!

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East Band – Eddie Kirkland, Ryan Stuart, Danny Grady, Ben Snider, Scott Meeder, Earl South, Mike Bielenberg

West Band – Mike Gleason, Steve Thomason, Matt Melton, Pat Malone, Joe Lee, John Carrozza, Karen Bitzer

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Ohh, a little Digidesign Venue console action…

What song made you learn how to practice the hard way?