This Sunday marks the one year mark for the new Live Oak Vineyard. We are a Vineyard church that was established on the first Sunday of July in 2006 when two churches becamse one. It has been a wonderful year overall that has brough a lot of great new friendships into our lives. It has been a year of deep committment by a couple of hundred people to establishing a new community. Good stuff.

This Sunday is special, so we are going to celebrate and thank God for our first year together. We will be doing the following songs;

• Alleluia (Sheri Carr / "Stand In Awe" VMUSA)
• Awesome Is The Lord Most High (Chris Tomlin / "See The Morning")
• As Children (Jeremy Riddle / "In His Presence" VCF Anaheim)
• If You Say Go (Diane Thiel / "Sweetly Broken" VMUSA)
• Forever You (Gavin Thompson / "Sweetly Broken Club" VMUSA)
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown)
• Bless His Name (Tony Sanchez / "Sweetly Broken" VMUSA)
  

See you tomorrow!

Labels: Set Lists, Worship Leading

Mis' and I just got back from Beantown in Sierra Madre. We were checkin' out Steve's show at Beantown, and were hangin' out for a while. Good times. Sierra Madre is like teleporting out of LA into a small town. I like it there. It's up on the hill northeast of Pasadena, and it's really chill up there.

The internet connection at our apartment is really slow right now for some reason. The internet guy from Charter is coming in the morning. Hopefully he can get 'er done, and get us back to 3 Megs tomorrow so I can watch Champ Car qualifying on Race Director. I guess we'll see.

G'nite from Pasadena.

Labels: Leisure, Music

If you were looking for my "other" blog, I'm done with it. I've been thinking about some stuff, and I've realized that I need to focus on better things. I know that I've shut down the "rant" before, but I'm doing it again. Maybe this time for good?

Thanks, AC, for kicking me in the butt and making me realize that life is good, even when it's hard.

And AC, I found an old mini-disc of a song called, "Mr. Bag of Bones".......I should clean it up and send you an mp3, it's pretty cool.

If anybody wants to shout out some prayers for me, that'd be cool. God's definitely dealing with me on some stuff after a long conversation with a mentor of mine today.......it's good.....tough....but good.

God Bless,

Scottie

Labels: Christian Life

Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise..... Ps33:3


I recently pulled out a very old pocket Bible that was given to me when I was in fifth grade. I cracked it open for some reading earlier today and noticed that I had scratched a note in my 11-year-old scribble writing a note that said, "Psalm 33:3 A verse on how to worship".

I thought to myself......Wow, I think that verse must have sunken into me at a young age, because I'm often told that I'm too loud, and that I do too many new songs. The skilfully part....well...I can only say that I do my best. :)

Labels: Christian Life, Worship Leading

Joel Klampert at CECWorship Resources Blog has a cool weekly post of his set list, and I've borrowed his idea. Here is our set list for June 24th:

Set 1

• For Me (VMUK)
• All I Have (VMUSA - Stand In Awe Playlist)

Set 2

• Pour Our My Heart (Vintage VMUSA Classic)
• You Are Wonderful (VMUSA - Never Looking Back)
• If I Have Not Love (Redman - Facedown)
• Glory In The Highest (Tomlin - See The Morning)

Observations:

"All I Have" is a song that seems to be striking a chord with our congregation. They love singing this song.

"Glory In The Highest" was first sung last week by my wifey, and she did great. I wanted to run this one again to reinforce it and get people more familiar with the song while they remember it from last week. I love this song, because its' all about Him, and not about us. We Vineyard folk are often always singing about "us" and our need for Him, and not to "Him" and about "Him".

"You Are Wonderful" is just another great song by Darren Clarke. Simplicity is the strength of this song. And it's another song that speaks to "Him" and of "Him".

It was a wonderful time of worship, and it folded around Jon's message of "extravagant love". I must admit, that in the second set, our songs and words didn't feel extravagant when compared to Mary's outrageous act of love and the tears she dropped on Jesus' feet. It left me feeling like I must spend more time in the word and with Him and get a revelation of how worthy He is, and how much He loves me and has done for me.

Labels: Set Lists, Worship Leading

I've just had a listen to some cuts off of the new Lifehouse record, and I'm pretty impressed. In particular, the track titled "Broken" is pretty powerful.

I'm fallin' apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on...... I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holding on to you.......

And the music behind it has a depth I've never heard from Lifehouse before. I must say that I think Stanley Climbfall was unlistenable, and their recent self-titled release was OK, but this song makes this latest record for me.

Labels: Music

Tim Hughes has a blog post from a couple of days ago that talks about "worship values". He has some great insight.

He lists them as:

• Christ Centred
• Holy Spirit Led
• Real
• Intimate
• Sensitive
• Transforming

You can read his post here.

Labels: Worship Leading

Charlie Hall (SixSteps Records/Passion Artist) writes:

Of course we know, and have been hearing for a while now, worship is not just the songs we sing. It is a life laid down that says “burn me up God. Use my money, time, energy, skills, family, job, all I have. Help me make you a big deal and pull the attention on you.” Songs are one vehicle that helps a group of worshippers do this. These songs come along and they inspire, remind, and punctuate the life of a Jesus seeker. This being said, the goal of worship is not to just to sing songs.

The goal is Jesus, to peel back the beautiful curtain of “the song” and see the one the song is about. Music, songs, art, are vehicles to pull back the curtain. They reveal Him. When we gather around meeting with God, we can know He is there. But simply knowing He is there and treating Him as the centerpiece of the room is different. We should pull Him to the center of the room and let everyone look on Him and say the most beautiful things that can flow from our hearts.

That is how I approach leading. The songs are built to honor and convey things to him and about Him through art and creativity. As they are sung, people begin agreeing, “yes, God is like that. Look how wonderful He is.” Songs can be sung as songs but there are days when I am tired of the numbness of just singing. Familiarity to anything can create numbness. I want the songs to open up the windows and throw open the curtains to God. I want to pick songs that will engage my heart and leave room for new songs to come and be opened in that moment.

Read the rest at worshiptogether.com

Charlie nails it on the head here. For some reason, Christians fixate on the familiar. I see it all over the Christian sub-culture. If you flip on any Christian CCM radio station for a day, you will hear Matt Redman's "Blessed Be Your Name" about 8 times, sung by 8 different artists, with 8 "cool, new arrangements".

I love Charlie's perspective. Familiarity creates numbness to the message in a song you've sung a hundred times. But something new and fresh brings a song to life, or re-visiting a song that has been off the set-list for weeks or even years.

Be sure to click the link to read the rest! It's good stuff.

Hat Tip: Dan Wilt tipped me off to this article.

Labels: Wonder, Worship Leading

Vineyard Music USA has a preview of "Stand In Awe", their next Playlist release. We've already been doing four songs off of this upcoming CD at the Live Oak Vineyard, because we heard them on earlier club releases.

"Allleluia", "Stand In Awe", "All I Have", and "God Of All Glory" have all been songs that have touched our church.

Some of the songs have been re-recorded and re-arranged, and you can listen to them at VineyardMusicUSA.com.

Labels: Music, Worship Leading

Inside Worship Magazine presented an article by Matt Frise with some ideas on humanizing worship spaces for those of us that are in buildings that aren't as grandiose as a European Cathedral.

Vineyardwestern.com has this article available, here.

Labels: Worship Leading

Worship Leaders:
Tom & Melisa

Set List

• Bless His Name (Tony Sanchez/VMUSA "Sweetly Broken" Playlist)
  
  
• Worthy, You Are Worthy (Matt Redman/"Facedown")
  
  
• I Will Trust You (Chris Lizotte/VMUSA "Sweetly Broken" Playlist)
  
  
• Glory In The Highest (Chris Tomlin/"See The Morning")
  

See you Sunday!

Almost every musician has done it. Almost all of us have made that snap decision to buy a piece of gear without really thinking about it. I did that a few years ago when I snatched up a Hot Rod Deluxe for cheap at Hugo Helmer Music in Mt. Vernon, WA.

Hugo Helmers is actually not a bad little shop for Fender and G&L gear. Their prices are actually pretty good, too. But their shop is very subdued, and when I demo'd the HRDX, I really didn't ring it out. I get really timid and shy about playing in a music store as it is, let alone playing loudly. At low volume the amp sounded awesome. I snatched it up.

At the time, I was leading worship, playing lead guitar for the worship team at VCC Mt. Vernon, and playing in a little indie-pop band called Farewell Addison. I mostly used the amp for the band, because that little amp is LOUD. With a pair of 6L6 power tubes, it pumps out an honest 40-watts of power. After a few shows with F.A., I couldn't stand the thing. The overdrive sounded like you took a bunch of nuts and bolts, and put it into a coffee can and thrashed it around. Worse yet, my pedals and effects sounded terrible through it.

I put it away, letting it sit unused for about three years. I dug it out for three outings that I wanted to take something smaller than my AC30, and regretted it all three times.

I was ready to give up, but read about a few mods to try at the The Unofficial Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Owner's Guide!

The first mod was to disconnect the negative feedback loop, which is a circuit that keeps the power section from breaking up as quickly as it normally would. However, once the amp begins to clip, it doesn't breakup very nicely at all. This circuit seems to be in place because all Fender wants to empahasize the great "Fender Clean" sound. Well, I'm not all that into the Fender clean thing.

This first mod was important, because it related to my second mod. I wanted to convert this amp to a 15-watt EL84 powered amp. Groove Tubes makes the 928-PR Substi-Tube socket adapters that convert a 6L6 pair to an EL84 pair that is self-biasing. They also claim that it converts the amp to Class-A, but I think that is baloney.

The EL84's helped! Being a Vox fan, I knew they would. The amp began to become musical, but the EQ was hardly responsive. I began to wonder about the speaker.

So on a Saturday afternoon, I rigged up a G12 greenback out of my AC30, and played my HRDX through it. Wow! What a cool vibe. Finally that "quack" that the EQ could not take out was gone, and the EQ actually had some response. I was stoked. My birthday was coming up, and I tipped of the wife about it.

After my birthday, I had the money to get a good aftermarket speaker. However, the G12's in my Vox are British-made speaker. They are pretty top-notch, and the only aftermarket Celestion G12's I could find were Chinese re-issues for $120, or originals on Ebay for mega-dough. But then I read up on the Eminence Private Jack. It's a 50-watt clone of the G12 Greenback. Wow, perfect. It will work both with the EL84's or with the 6L6's if I need to pop those in for more power.

I got the speakers installed, and went away for a week on a trip to Indiana. After a wonderful time there, I returned to LA. I was chompin' at the bit to try out this new speaker. On Thursday, I had a chance during worship practice, and I was blown away. Wow, what an awesome difference. Suddenly I like my Hot Rod Deluxe! After being so ready to sell this thing off, I now am excited to explore more sonic joy with this thing.

A success! Finally. Of course, after adding tube sockets and a new speaker, I could have bought an AC15 reissue, but now I have something even more unique. It's like a Fender/Voxy hybrid. It's actually a bit Mesa-sounding. It sounds amazing with a Fulldrive II in front of it. Now if only I could figure out how to make a buck on the OEM speaker I just took out of it. Anybody want a real bad sounding speaker?

Labels: Gear

Hey everyone, this is my first post. This is a test. There is nothing to see here.

But check out VineyardMusicUSA.com!

Labels: Leisure