Archive for category Music
The Blues
When I was learning the guitar, my dad had a whole bunch of blues tablature books. There were some modern players like Jeff Beck and Jerry Garcia, but most of his books were about acoustic, finger style blues.
I cut my teeth on stuff like “Black Snake Moan” by Lemon Jefferson and old, old Mississippi blues. My dad used to tell me that the blues was the backbone of all American music, whether it was rock or country or even jazz. For awhile there, I forgot about the blues but lately I have been finding a lot of old stuff, like this video of Lightnin’ Hopkins above.
What drew me to the blues was nothing so noble as desiring to learn the true nature of American music. I read a line in one of his books that went something like this: there are no wrong notes in the blues, just wrong times. I liked any form of music that involved having no wrong notes!
The blues essentially has only two structures. There’s a 12-bar version and a 16-bar version. The 12-bar blues are by far the most common form, and it works like this. In the blues, the most common key is E, so let’s do a twelve bar blues in E.
The musical alphabet consists of seven tones, each with a letter from the alphabet: A B C D E F G. There are also a number of semi-tones. If you’re getting the semitones by raising the pitch of tones, they are called sharps (#) and if you’re getting them by lowering the tones, they are called flats. The semitones are: G#/Ab, A#/Bb, C#/Db, D#/Eb, F#/Gb, G#/Ab. That’s it. You have twelve tones and semitones, and they are the basis of all music.
Almost all blues are in what is called 4/4 timing. That means a bar is equal to four beats. If you stomp your foot four times, that’s four beats.
To play a 12-bar blues in E, you start with an E chord (which is the tones E G# B) and play it for 16 beats or four bars. Then, you switch to an A chord (A C# and E) for eight beats. Go back to E for eight beats, then to B (B D# F#) for four beats, to A for four beats, back to E for four and then to B for four. That’s your 12 bars, or 48 beats.
After that, you just find notes that sound good over the 12-bar rhythm. That’s pretty much all there is to the blues. It is an ultra-simple style of music, and yet I have been playing it for two decades now, and I never get tired. There’s always something new to try, some combination of tones that makes a completely different tone.
You can play 12-bar blues progressions for hours, changing rhythms and leads, putting crazy lyrics to the rhythm and watching where it goes. There’s just no end.
Don’t believe me? All I can say is that 12-bar blues is the basis of all good rock music, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Roy Orbison. It is the foundation of punk, country, folk and even something as unexpected as bluegrass. It is even the foundation of most gospel music. That’s how influential this one style is.
This Sunday, Nichole will be “debuting” a song she wrote called “Why So Downcast?” based on a psalm and it is built on a simple 12-bar blues. I am challenged and excited by the chance to play with her because I think true blues reflects the penitence and longing of so many of the psalms from Scripture. I think it is worshipful, even though it isn’t your typical church worship song.
See you Sunday at The Road!
Keep Pounding Away
I have a reputation for being pretty good in front of people. It takes a lot to make me afraid or nervous. I’ve been in front of people all my life. There are family videos of me at the age of four or five, waving my hand in time from the platform, standing next to my dad.
For years, I led worship for teens in both a youth group and a Christian school. Twice a week, I would get in front of a bunch of kids and sing my heart out. Usually, it was terrible.
I have sung and played guitar in some of the most embarrassing, awful situations. I have preached absolutely terrible messages that upset and angered people for decades! I am and expert at looking like an idiot. I know how to fail miserably in front of people.
In order to learn how to do things well, we have to do them badly. Others, people who know they will take a hit for it, need to let you fail miserably.
But you have to just keep pounding away! You have to keep trying, keep putting it out there. You can never say, “Well, that’s it. I’m done.” The only way you get better is to do your absolute worst, be told it is terrible and learn not to do that again.
I am thankful for men like my dad and many others who put me up there to be embarrassed. I really am. They let me fail early and often so by the time I got to my thirties, I was failing far less frequently and far less spectacularly.
I am Outta Here – for the weekend
Posted by Erik in Media, Movies and TV, Music on June 1, 2012
I am headed to Syracuse, New York, for the weekend for the Biblical Imagination Conference with the man, the legend, the awesomely bearded Michael Card.
While I could never aspire to have a beard like his, Michael has long been one of my musical heroes. He combines teaching and art in a way that you never quite know which is which. I have a true appreciation for the way God has used his abilities as a gift to the Church.
So, I leave you for the weekend with Michael and Phil Keaggy playing “The Poem of Your Life.”
Psalms in Worship
Yesterday, the Acoustic Gurus presented a song I wrote using Psalm 1 for lyrics.
If you have a songbook with 150 different lyrics that you claim is inspired by God, why do you sing songs by less inspired authors?
Like it or hate it, I think our primary source material for music should be the Scriptures. Most people who know me also know that I have little tolerance for “prom songs for Jesus” – songs written to Jesus but sound like you’re channeling a teenage girl – and 7/11 songs – seven lyrics repeated eleven or more times.
So, rather than just complain about the sorry state of worship music, we have set about writing new tunes for the most ancient worship songs we possess. The video above is the first of several we are working on.
See You in a Couple Days
As this is being published (I wrote it last week), my wife Nichole is in surgery to have the remainder of her thyroid removed. She has undergone a similar surgery back in 2009 and it is hard to believe we’re here again.
Here are some videos for you to watch while we wait to see how the procedure goes:
Enjoy.
Worship Isn’t About Music
It is about our heart. Sadly, this is how our music can sound to God’s ears when we are more focused on “our thing” instead of His.
Music that Lets the Heart Lead the Way
This post appeared in a slightly different form in 2008. I am reposting it because I believe it is still true. The content of this post may be offensive to some Christians, and that is definitely not my intent, so if you are offended, please accept my apologies.
I’ve never been a big fan of prom songs for Jesus. I have tried to like a lot of the mainstream Christian contemporary music, and there are a few artists out there who really strike me as incredible – Keith Green, Michael Card, Rich Mullins.
For the most part, however, the Christian music market feels recycled, bland and uncreative. Either the musicians are stealing phrases from their “secular” influences or they’re producing pure vanilla music in the name of creativity. It is an epidemic that has made me something of a cynical old crank when it comes to Christian music.
(And lest you think I am picking on only ‘contemporary’ Christian music, I feel this way about a lot of the hymns in the hymnbook as well. There are plenty of derivative, conventional tunes and predictable, mediocre lyrics in there, so there’s no reason to focus only on contemporary music.)
What Is It?
How many love songs to Jesus do we really need? And how many musicians are actually satisfied playing Gsus, C2, D2, Em7 OVER AND OVER AGAIN?
I understand the rationale behind praise and worship music – they are writing songs in recognizable, easily sung settings. I even understand the desire for contemporary Christian artists to “sound like” secular counterparts, but where is the creativity of the Spirit?
When I listen to something so tremendously creative like Starkindler or Hidden Face of God – in my opinion, two of Michael Card’s finest albums – or the demos of The Jesus Record by Rich Mullins, I come away frustrated by all the wanna-be’s who populate the Christian musical landscape. Card’s work in particular is just light years ahead of most of the stuff that passes for Christian.
If you’ve never listened to Michael’s music, then you might be tempted to class him as just “Christian” music, but he is so much more than that. The lamenting open chords of “The City of Doom”, the Celtic resonance of “The Hidden Face of God” or the Hammond organ and saxophone laying down incredible R&B influences in “Soul Anchor” – all of them are reflections of the message he is trying to convey. More than any other musician in the Christian world, Michael is a creative soul. Creativity transcends labels, and when it is really unleashed, the result is true music, true expression of the soul.
There is a famine of true creativity in Christian music today. It is reflected in the weak, unexpressive worship music churned out by the CD full from music mills around the world. You can hear it on any number of Christian CD’s that are feeble attempts to Christianize secular hip hop, alternative rock, nu-metal, swing and any other style you can imagine.
Rather than leading our culture, rather than speaking what is in our hearts, we attempt to get a set of beliefs to conform to particular musical styles. Erwin McManus speaks strongly to this problem of letting culture lead us:
An Alternate Way of Thinking
Rather than being Christian musicians, I think we need to be musicians who are Christian.
If we stop trying to do the “Christian” music and just write and play from our hearts, I think something new will come out of us – music with a spirit, with something distinctly Christian and yet creative. It can be done – Michael Card does it all the time – and it can probably even be done in whatever musical form is appropriate to it. I just don’t think it can be done when we’re focused on an agenda. Music is not about an agenda; it is just about the music. Music is the language of the heart, something more than just musical phrases and lyrical motifs.
That’s just my opinion.
Why Don’t We Use the Title ‘Worship Leader’
One of the first things we did in forming Bedford Road Baptist Church was get rid of the title ‘Worship Leader’. We did not make a big deal about it, and only the elders and the music team we told we were no longer using the title. We just dropped it from our vocabulary.
Over the past few months, people have begun asking, “Who is the worship leader?” and my most common response is, “The pastor leads the worship gathering.”
Consider this quote from D. A. Carson:
I would abolish forever the notion of a ‘worship leader’. If you want to have a ‘song leader’ who leads part of the worship, just as the preacher leads part of the worship, that’s fine. But to call the person a ‘worship leader’ takes away the idea that by preaching, teaching, listening to and devouring the word of God, and applying it to our lives, we are somehow not worshipping God.
This is a worthwhile observation. In the postmodern church, it has become far too common to distinguish ‘worship’ as the music of the worship gathering. This simply is not Biblical.
We abandoned this title of ‘worship leader’ and instead have a team who work together to take us on a worship journey – from the band who plays accompaniment for the congregation to the elders who lead in prayer to the preacher, we are all leading worship.
if you would like to read more about this subject, this series of articles from Bob Caughlin of worship matters.com are worth considering.
Funny How History Repeats Itself…
Posted by Erik in Doesn't Fit in a Category, Music, Things We Shouldn't Discuss on April 1, 2010
The very first song I learned to play on the guitar was “Eve of Destruction”, written by P. F. Sloan and best known as performed by Barry McGuire in 1965. I don’t know why my dad taught it to me – probably because the chords were pretty simple – but it has stuck with me over the years. I was just thinking how eternal the words are, especially in light of the series we’re getting ready to teach from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
It amuses me that in 1965, McGuire and Sloan were protesting the escalation of the Vietnam War, the draft and segregation and yet in 2010, the words could just as easily be applied to current events.
So, without further ado, I give you, “Eve of Destruction”:
The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
[Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy]
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Getting Excited for Easter?
Here’s a clip of the Grace music team practicing for Easter. If you look close, you can see our brand new drum kit and our incredibly excited drummer. They’re doing a stellar job, and I am wicked excited for them to lead worship on Easter.
There are 200 seats in our auditorium. I believe God can fill them all. We’re looking forward to seeing what he is doing in this season!
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the Music category.
