Breaking Out Musically

I've been thinking about how I can break out as a musician, and step into worshiping god to my fullest through my instrument, and by extension how we as a group can do the same. When I think about when I started on the worship team, it was a big moment for me, not only in that it was really the first time playing in front of people, but also the first time I was able to worship God. Back then we just had acoustic guitars, and I just filled Chris's spot when he left. Then, we started adding electrics, and started doing something new, and adding a new dimension to what The Rock had done before.

I remember that first Sunday when we first introduced the electrics, Pastor Al was out of town, and the Youth Group took over all aspects of the service. The youth took over the greeting, and prayer, Pastor Mark preached the message, Cody prayed for the offering, and Kelly, Peter, Jeremy, Jake and I did the worship. I felt like we were adding something that was missing. At the time I thought it would be a one time thing, since it was something different and unknown (and loud), but to my surprise the leadership and body responded positively to what we did. It was also the next step for me, I was forced from behind the mostly unheard acoustic, to playing loud electric riffs that had to be heard if we were going to pull off what we were trying to do. We gradually added the electric more and more, and added more electric heavy songs, until we got to where we are with the type of worship we lead.

For a little background, I've been playing guitar for close to 25 years now, when I was a teenager and in my early 20's I was very serious about playing guitar, music was what I wanted to do. I had weekly lessons for many years, learning how to read music, theory lessons, Jazz lessons, soloing lessons. I played in my bedroom for hours every night. I was even in a short lived Industrial band. I thought I was pretty good at guitar, I could play Beethoven and Mozart by sight, I could play most anything I heard on the radio, and any style I wanted. When I graduated high school and went to college, I was a music major at College of the Desert, which is where I met the love of my life. As a music major, there is a lot of compositional homework, we were given a bass line and told to write a four part harmony, or a bass line and soprano, and told to fill in the other 2 parts, etc. It was all about the rules of writing music, classical music. And I was really good at it, ask Melody what she thought, it was almost effortless for me. It's hard to explain, but here was the problem as I saw it, when I sat down to write music for an assignment, I didn't "hear" what I had written, I could look at it "see" what it was going to sound like. I could look at the staff paper and see that this part was too slow, or that part had to much going on. I couldn't feel the music. It's the same for me when doing a cover of a song, I can play that song, but I don't feel the song, I can't vamp on the song. My biggest love at the time was improvisational Jazz, this was before I got into the jam band scene. For me, music in a box is boring, which is why I always gravitate to improvisational music. Why I thought, would anyone want to play the same songs, the same way every night. Where's the excitement, the adventure, the rawness, the emotion of that. And for this reason, after many years of study and devotion, since I could not do what I most loved about music, I quite the music program and went into electrical engineering. For the next 10 years, I didn't play very much, 3 years of school, and starting my career was a big part of that, but looking back I felt somewhat betrayed that I couldn't live my love of music, so why play at all. I began playing again, but not very intensely, until 1-2 years before I joined the worship team at the Rock.

And that brings us to where we are today, where I am, and why I'm writing all this. It's now been a few years since we played that first electric service, and without a doubt, we're much improved. But lately I've felt a little, bored isn't the right word, but lackadaisical about where we are. It feels to me like we haven't made any significant progress as team in quite some time. Worship service on Sunday is not a problem, when we show up, God is there ready to lead us where we need to go, and it's more often than not awesome. No, what I'm talking about is moving to a higher place musically where God can continue to use us to move his people to greater things. While I know that Worship isn't a performance for personal glory, I do feel that there has to be some performance in the music to help get people where God is leading. It might not be very worshipful, but nothing takes me out of worshiping God faster than music that is not very good. I am not trying to excuse my self here, or point fingers, besides my finger would end up in unnatural positions pointing back at me. I am more than willing to admit that when Stasi points at me to rip off some sweet solo, I freeze like a deer in headlights. What I am really trying to do here, is challenge myself, and all of us to make a move to the next musical level. For me that means not only moving past my belief that the only reason I am still playing with you guys is that I have sweet gear, but also putting my musical past behind me, and playing God's love and sound. For you it might be something else. To that end I am commiting to all of you that I will practice more, and more intensly going forward. I do think we have a team that make some sweet music but we all have to commit to it together. I still hope there's some improv in there though, that I will never give up on.

Brian