Thursday, May 22, 2008

What are you listening to as you play?

This will be the first in a series of many youtube videos from the Church Musicians Seminar that I held last Saturday. The goal is to help bands figure out how to do what they do better to serve in the leading of the Church in our gatherings of worship.

You might want to pass this series on to the music leader at your church. I think most everyone who attended found it to be extremely helpful.

In terms of the personnel, these three guys (Tim Rosenau on guitar, James Gregory on bass, and Scott Williamson on drums) are some of Nashville's finest musicians and have played live, or on the recordings of too many Christians artists to name here. Just take my word for it: These guys know what they are talking about.

The video quality is not the best, but the audio is there for the most part and that is the important part.

In terms of today's question... Listening is one of the biggest things to understand when playing in a band. How you focus your listening can make or break the unity of the music that you present. This theme will continue to be added to as this series progresses, but I wanted to give them more of an open ended question to start off.

Let me know what you think.

1 comment:

Scott Sterner said...

Zach, this is good stuff. I really appreciated Scott's reminder to not over-mix yourself in your own monitor. I think we tend to get lazy, especially if we have click because we just think, as long as I'm locked into the tempo, then it's not as important to hear the other instruments. I'll be thinking about it next time I'm leading worship.