X:Worship (3.0)

May 16th, 2007 by Jaybrams

I’ve been putting this off so i could put it in video form, but I just never got the chance and don’t want to wait any longer.

Worship Confessional for Mother’s Day, May 13th, 2007.

This week was a bit rough for me vocally. We started with Hands and Feet by Audio A. Mark Stuart tends to push his voice to the limit and this song definitely pushes me to the top of my range. I can easily hit any of these notes individually, but to continuously stay in that portion of my range can wear on a guy… (Oh and one of the main reason’s Audio A is calling it quits? “The real reason we are giving it up is because our lead singer; Mark Stuart’s voice is going.” Says Drummer Ben Cissell. “If he was still singing like an angel we’d probably keep going.”) So we do Hands and Feet and it pushes me a little, which is normally good, but while the band is still trying to build chemistry it’s not such a good thing. Case in point: On Thursday we had to practice Hands and Feet quite a few times, and on Sunday we had to practice it twice. At this point, i could feel my voice starting to say “you’re pushing me to hard” so we moved on…

But it was a little too late. The rest of the worship set was difficult for me. Notes on the high end i usually have no problem with became a problem, and notes on the low end were flat as well. To top it off, the support vocalist was not able to make it (for valid reasons), so I was an island unto myself. And not like a a beautiful island with white sandy beaches and glass-blue water… It was an ugly island with algae-ridden dirty water and shards of glass mixed with the sand.

Musically Hands and Feet went pretty good. We changed on the fly how we wanted to end the song, and everyone followed great.

Then we went into Lincoln Brewster’s All To You, which is greatness. Again, vocally weak, but musically strong. James (on sticks) throws in a Drum solo, which was pretty nice. At practice he tended to go right into a full blown solo, so we worked on building it, starting with a solid rhythm, going into a more advanced rhythm and then the full blown solo. He cut it a little shorter than in practice so we didn’t all quite come in at the same time, but it worked. Right out of that, Josh did some shreddin’ over the chorus. He’s very talented, more so than he knows… he’s still learning how to tap into the knowledge he does have. So, it wasn’t Lincoln Brewster-esque, but it fit and matched the style. At the end, we broke it down and went through the chorus a couple of more times.

Then more trouble… we’re going to to into Surrender (not sure off hand who originally wrote it), which has always been one of my favorites. It starts with me on guitar, picking through the verse. Immediately I noticed that my G String (those pesky G Strings!) had gone out of tune and i wouldn’t be able to hide it. So, i had to improvise… i started doing the whole “praying while tuning” thing, not sure i hid it so well, but i fought through it. Same story: Musically strong, Vocally weak. It’s a building song with a pretty strong / full chorus towards the end.

That was it for the main set. We had a reflective song picked out and practiced (Give Us Clean Hands) based on information that we would be speaking about Sexual Purity. About halfway through the message I was convinced we weren’t speaking about Sexual Purity, but i waited it out. Towards the end I let the band members know not to come up with me, that we’d package Give Us Clean Hands for another day. Instead I improvised and did a solo version of He Knows My Name, which really fit very well with the message. And, btw, it was the ONLY song i felt i did well on vocally.

So that’s it.
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Band Mates:
Josh- Guitar
James - Drums
Travis - Bass
Myself- Guitar / Vox

Intro: Josh’s Jam
Hands and Feet (Key Of D)
All To You (Key of E)
Surrender (Key of G)
Reflection: He Knows My Name (Key of E)

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