Worship Experience from Sunday April 19th

After a few weeks away from the blog I’ve decided to jump back in the game.

This past weekend was a good weekend for the church and for the worship department.  There were a few glitches during the 3rd service on Sunday thanks to a couple of untimely battery malfunctions (see: didn’t check the battery levels like we should have). We ran click tracks on all of the songs this weekend.  That took a little bit of the guess work out of the new arrangements on a couple of the songs in the list.  We did tag back around to the chorus on You Are Here.  That worked really nicely.   Other than the glitches things were good.

The List:

• Counting On God (Desperation Band)
• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin)
• Glorified (Anderson)
• Healer (Hillsong)
• You Are Here (The Same Power) (Hillsong United)

The Band:

• Kinsby (drums)
• Daniel (bass)
• Kinsby Jr. (e.guitar 1)
• Joe (e.guitar 2)
• Anthony (me) (Ac. Guitar)

The Front Line:

• Anthony (me again) (Worship Leader)
• Evelyn (sop)
• Genese (alto)
• Yanique (alto)
• Luis (ten)

This post is a part of the worship discussion that can be found HERE.

Worship Gathering March 22, 2009

The Set:

• Happy Day (Hughes)
• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin)
• I Am Free (Desperation)
• You Are Here (The Same Power) (Hillsong London)
• Majesty (Martin Smith)

The Band:

• Kinsby (Drums)
• Daniel (Bass)
• Pierre (E.Guitar 1)
• Jr. (E.Guitar 2)
• Jeremy (Keys/Synth)
• Anthony (Ac. Guitar)

The Front Line:

• Anthony (W.L.)
• Evelyn (Sop)
• Gail (Sop)
• Yanique (Alto)
• Myrtha (Alto)
• Luis (Tenor)

We had a good day. We began our missions week today. Yeah, that means a busy week so I’m keeping it short today. Enjoy.

This post is part of the worship discussion which can be found HERE.

Worship Gathering March 15, 2009

So today was a fun day for me. I was on the keys instead of leading today. I get to do that about once a month and look forward to it every time. I like it so much because I can focus on playing my best and not about other things. We all know what that’s like. We had a great day here in NYC. We introduced a new song and threw in an old one at the end. It was very well balanced list if you ask me.

The Band:

• Craig – Ac. Guitar
• Zach – Drums
• Bass – Daniel
• E. Guitar 1 – Pierre
• E. Guitar 2 – Kinsby Jr.
• Keys/Synth – Anthony (me)

Front Line Singers

• Craig – W.L.
• Joanne – Soprano
• Nikki – Alto
• Genese – Alto
• Fabio – Tenor

• Blessed Be Your Name (Redman) – In hindsight, we should have switched this one to the 2nd song. Oh well, you live and learn.
• Happy Day (Hughes) – A few friends of mine have been doing this with their teams for a while now. Honestly, I’ve heard the song more than once but never really liked it much. Craig wanted to introduce this one to the team and to our people so we went for it. We used a click track on this one, which allowed us to really only play through it all of two times in rehearsal before we used it in a service. That was nice. Nikki says she really thought the congregation was into it. Bottom line, I think I’m gonna pull a song from next week’s list and put this one in it’s place. I actually like the song now. It’s kinda catchy.
• Came To My Rescue (Hillsong United) – A sold transition song that has worked since we introduced it.
• You Are Here (The Same Power) (Hillsong London) – We only did the chorus of this one as a transition song into communion.
• Nothing But The Blood (Hymn) – From time to time I really like throwing in a hymn, not to appease people but just because I honestly do like a lot of the hymns. Most of us grew up on them, how could we not? We changed it up a bit and had the drums playing kinda of a “little drummer boy” marching type rhythm to it and then built up to a an “all in” chorus. Very nice.

Great day here. Our attendance has been really up lately, especially in our first and last services. The middle service is always packed but we have definitely seen a bump in the others in the last month or so.

This post is part of a worship discussion which can be found HERE.

Worship Gathering March 8, 2009

I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling it after the time change. Nikki and I said we were gonna go to bed early last night to compensate for the time change. Well, that didn’t happen. I’m tired.

Today was the last day of the six week long “Vision” series. Our people have been challenged to have a vision in each part of their life. Good stuff.

We’ve recently moved some things around on our stage and added some equipment. We’ve also made an effort to use more loops and click tracks to make sure we’re all growing as musicians, with our timing. The whole team has really done well with the changes and started to gel even more as a team. Thumbs up to everyone.

The Band:

• Kinsby – Drums
• Zach – Bass
• K. Junior – E. Guitar 1
• Joe – E. Guitar 2
• Anthony (me) – AC Guitar
• Craig – Keys/Synth

The Front Line:

• Evelyn – Sop
• Gail – Sop
• Nikki – Alto
• Yanique – Alto
• Luis – Tenor

The Set:

• He Lives (Generations Unleashed) – I put this song in the category of, “If it’s not done right, it will flop”. That said, this song, in the second service, was much better than in the first. It just seemed like the guitars really opened up for this song the 2nd time around. I don’t know if this is the best song to start a set off with but hey, you live and learn.
  
• Glorified (New Life) – We used a click track for this one. We actually thought about using one with it at rehearsal but decided not to. On my way home from rehearsal I was kicking myself and really thought we should use a click track for it so I uploaded the track on planningcenter and told the band to give it a listen and we would start our check on Sunday morning with it. If it worked right away we’d use it, if not, we’d scratch it. To my surprise, we were locked in right away and decided to use it. It was great. The sound was so full. Definitely the best we’ve done this song.
• Hosanna (I See The King) (Brooke Fraser) – Well, sometimes you just do a song too fast, even when you try to slow it down, without a click it’s really hard to break out of that. Even though it was a bit fast, the song was good. Honestly, we’ve done better but what can you do.
  
• God Of This City (Tomlin) – We’ve done the chorus of this song before during one of our prayer meetings on the fly. We finally decided to actually arrange the song and learn it the correct way. We used a click track on this song as well. Excellent is all I can say. Great song, great arrangement.
• You Never Let Go (Redman) – This song has been in our repertoire since it came out. Our people really love this song and really go for it when we pull this one out. I love in the bridge section when it says, “still I will praise You, still I will praise You”. Great end to a good worship set.

This post is part of the worship set discusssion which can be found HERE.

Set List for Sunday March 1st 2009

Here in NYC, we had a great worship experience today. Our worship set had some great songs in it today. I’m loving, “You Are Here (the same power).

The Band:

• Acoustic – Anthony (me)
• Drums – Zach
• Bass – Daniel
• E. Guitar 1 – Pierre
• E. Guitar 2 – Joe
• Keys – Ed

The Front Line:

• W.L. – Anthony (me)
• Sop – Joanne
• Alto – Nikki
• Alto – Suni
• Tenor – Fabio

Our sound check was smooth and easy this morning. Everything sounded great. I pop in my IEM and it’s like I have my finger sticking in my left ear. If you use IEM you probably know where this is headed. I knew the problem but couldn’t fix it since we had already started and our set was had rehearsed transitions between the first few songs. I had to have my left ear for our 4th song. We were using a click track and the click was in my left ear. I could’ve panned everything to the right but the WL aviom is backstage-ish and not easily accesable during a set. We end Sing, Sing, Sing and do the good worship leader thing that stalls for a few seconds and ask everyone to say hello to one another. I quickly unplug and head to my IE case. As you may assume by now, the left ear was totally sealed with ear wax. Excellent!! I had neglected to clean them for let’s say, a few weeks. I do a quick 2 second cleaning job and all is well. The great thing about it is that no one but me noticed there was a problem. That was during the first service.

The second service, our drummer kicks through the bass drum head during the second song. YIKES!!! Luckily, he had some stage tape in the cage and was able to patch it up well enough to get through the set. Again, Only the drummer, me and the sound techs knew there was a problem. Well, of course until I announced to the church that drums sometimes give and what can you do.

I thought I’d share some of the mishaps from this morning. It seems that all too often I read that “everything was great”. No way can EVERYONE have an uneventful Sunday. I’d like to read more about that stuff in other’s posts. Those kind of stories make me feel normal.

Here’s our Set:

• Always (Generations Unleased) - we sang through the Verse and Chorus in Gmaj once and then straight into the intro for Hosanna.
• Hosanna (Praise Is Rising) (Baloche)
• Sing, Sing, Sing (Tomlin)
• You Are Here (The Same Power) (Hillsong London) – This was a new one for us this week. We did the version from the “This Is Our God” album with just the chorus section. When I first heard this version I was blown away. A couple other people I let listen to it weren’t too high on it but I really liked it. The chorus section really drives the song home at the end. We used a click track that I made on this one as well. Our keyboardist wasn’t able to make rehearsal this week because of a last minute work conflict so the track had the piano intro on it as well. Ed looked great up there fudging the piano though.
• Came To My Rescue (Hillsong United) - 2nd week in a row we’ve done this arrangement. It’s a really kicking song to build up to the really up song, “Always”.
• Always (Generations Unleashed) – We tied the set together by ending with the same song we started with, except faster and in Bmaj.

There is always a risk in ending a set that’s not the typical way you bring a time of worshiping with music to an end. You risk losing everybody that you just brought along with you. With those risks in mind, I think ending on an up song was a nice change. It just felt right today.

This post is part of the worship discussion which can be found HERE.

Sunday Set List For February 22nd 2009

Ok.  So today’s weather has been terrible.  Grey skies and off and on rain is not my idea of great Sunday weather.  It didn’t start out feeling like “one of those days” but not two minutes after walking in the doors of the church it appeared like it was going to be “one of those days”.  Things could have been a lot worse and of course in my mind, being the realist that I am, I thought that I would just have to chalk this day up to being not a great day.  We were introducing the full song, “Came To My Rescue” of which we had only previously done the bridge section, throwing in, “Glorified”, which we introduced to the church last week and ending with an up tempo song that is pretty dependent on two electric guitars.  When I arrived I was informed that one of our electric guitars had gotten sick with some stomach virus on Saturday night.  Yeah, you guessed it, the guitarist who plays all the nice riffs for all three of the afore mentioned songs.  YIKES!!  I quickly called up two guitarist who were not scheduled to play to see if they could fill in.  Yep, you guess it again, neither were able.  I could ramble on all day but I know many of you worship leaders that are reading this have had days like this.  At least we still had one electric and Joe did a great job holding it down all by himself.   We took out two of the songs and actually kept the new one.  Here is the list.

• Today Is The Day (Lincoln Brewster) - Nice opener that we haven’t done in a over a month or two
• Everlasting God (Brenton Brown) - This has become our “familiar song” to throw in right after an opener that we haven’t done for some time, just so we don’t lose everyone.
• God of Ages (Hillsong) - We replaced “Glorified” with this one.  Hey, what can I say.  We’ve played it in the ground but last minute, you gotta go with a familiar tune.  I’m sure the church didn’t think a thing about it since we haven’t done it in at least 3 months or more.
• Came To My Rescue (Hillsong United) – We’ve done the bridge section to this song once before so it wasn’t totally a newbie.  Just add a nice thick pad and piano and you couldn’t even notice the other guitar was missing.  I liked it.  We’ll keep it around too.  The church seemed to pick up on it more easily since the bridge made the entire song seem familiar.
• How Great Is Our God (Tomlin) – Again, we threw this one in last minute due to the lack of a 2nd electric.  We all know this is a nice song to tie everything up with.  Can’t go wrong with a driving Tomlin ballad-esque song.

The Team looked like this:

Band

• W.L. – Anthony (me)
• Drums – Kinsby
• Bass – Daniel
• Electric Guitar – Joe
• Percussion – Ben

Front Line Singers

• Sop – Evelyn & Gail
• Alto – Myrtha
• Ten – Luis

The choir, singers and band were great today at simply rolling with the last minute changes.  I really don’t like changing things last minute but some times it can’t be avoided.  Thank God it didn’t turn out to be “one of those days”.

This post is a part of the worship discussion which can be found here.

Sunday Set List February 15th 2009

We were supposed to do this set a few weeks ago but I was sick so the set changed that week. I couldn’t resist the temptation to go ahead and pull out the list from that week I missed and insert it into this week. We had a rehearsal on Saturday for some new songs we are adding to the repertoire, which we do once a month, so it was nice to not have to ask those scheduled this week to learn a totally new set and be prepared for the new songs we were to learn on Saturday.

Today was great. As I’ve said before, we have 3 services. The first service, it seemed like Zach was on a little speed on a couple of songs but that was corrected for the last two services. A great day.

The Band:

• W.L. – Anthony (me)
• Ac. Guitar – Anthony (me again)
• Drums – Zach
• Bass – Daniel
• E. Guitar 1 – Pierre
• E. Guitar 2 – Joe
• Keys – Craig

Front Line Singers:

• Nikki
• Genese
• Fabio
• Joanne

• Sing Sing Sing (Tomlin) - A great starter.
• Counting On God (Desperation Band) – We transitioned straight into this song from Sing Sing Sing with the kick and then adding the E. Guitar Intro
• Glorified (New Life) – This was a new one for the church today. Great Song!! I love the line, “for You deserve this, life laid down like the one that You gave”. Great line.
• The Stand (Hillsong)
• Jesus Messiah (Tomlin) – We had communion today and used this song to continue worship while the people were served.

Glorified is definitely a keeper. I really loved this song from the first time I heard it. If you’re not doing it in your church you should consider adding it.

This post is part of the worship set discussion which can be found here.

Sunday Set List February 8th, 2009

I thought today’s worship set was excellent. Craig was leading again this week. The band looked like this.

• W.L. – Craig
• Ac. Guitar – Craig
• Drums – Kinsby
• Bass – Zach
• E. Guitar 1 – Pierre
• E. Guitar 2 – Kinsby Jr.
• Keys – Anthony
• Front Line Singers – Nikki, Luis, Evelyn, Suni

I felt like the band was pretty locked in and the harmonies were good as well. Here is the set:

• Always (Generations Unleashed)
  
• I Am Free (New Life Worship)
  
• Hosanna (I See The King) (Hillsong) [Nikki did great at leading this one. I am a little partial though ]
  
• Overcome (Desperation Band)
  
• Fire (Abundant Life England)

This post is a part of the set list discussion which can be found Here.

Worship Set for Sunday January 25th, 2009

Craig was at the helm of the worship set again today. We had a rough sound check this morning but I think things panned out. Craig is officially the king of breaking guitar strings. He snapped the D during the 2nd service and then the infamous G during the third service. No problem though. The set went off well. Here’s the list

• Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)
• Take All The Glory (Abundant Life Church/England)
• Mighty To Save (Hillsong)
• A Medley of Our God Reigns (Delirious), Awesome God (Rich Mullins), Came To My Rescue (Hillsong United)

This post is part of the worship set discussion that can be found HERE.

Chris Tomlin Concert

Nikki and I just got back from the Chris Tomlin “Hello Love” concert. Wow, what an amazing time. We saw him at a worship conference this past summer and that was great but tonight, it was kickin’. I’ve been to plenty of concerts but this one ranks up there with the best. It wasn’t great just because the music was kickin’ and the band was tight. It was great because there was a purpose to what we were doing. It felt more like an awesome time of worship than a concert.

Israel Houghton and New Breed where there as well. He isn’t my number 1 favorite or anything but he really surprised us both. We really enjoyed him tonight. Maybe I haven’t given him a good enough chance.

A shout out to my Bellerose people, thanks for the tickets. It was a great night.