Allow me to introduce some great music from John Claybrook. John and I haven’t met in person before, but we’re twitter friends, and I’ve been enjoying his music lately. He is a really cool guy, and he’s a really good musician. Here’s a bit about him from his website:

John Claybrook is from Alexander City, AL and has been playing music since the earliest years of his life. A master of his craft, Claybrook has led worship in his home church and across the nation for years and has garnered attention from major Christian artists such as Michael W. Smith and Third Day.

If you read on, you’ll find that in 2007 he was selected as a finalist and appeared on national television for the Christian Artist Talent Search. That is pretty sweet!

Here’s “Reign Over Me”, one of my favorite songs from John’s album “Masterpiece”. I’d describe John’s music as pretty straight-up Rock and Roll, but with some acoustic influences. He writes a good hook, too – great stuff all around!

You can preview the whole album and buy it for $10 on his website.

Also – visit John’s:

• Website: Music // Blog
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Myspace

See all posts in the “Basics of Recording” series here.

In order to record, there are several things that you absolutely need to make it happen. I’m going to briefly describe the essential ingredients here, but I’ll plan to dig deeper into each one in future posts. They are:

The source (your voice, guitar, etc).

This could be a lot of different things. I’m talking about whatever it is that is making (or triggering) the sound that you’re trying to record. Common examples include your voice, a guitar, etc.

Something to capture the source (microphones).

Homer says "Eat More Salad"

Nobody wants to hear fitness advice from a fat guy, so I would suspect that nobody wants to hear audio/video advice from a guy who doesn’t know anything about it. I’ll start with a bit of my background in recording.

Home digital recording really hit its stride as an affordable option for hobby musicians when I was in college as a freshman or sophomore. At first, I bought a microphone and a cheap mixer and went straight into the sound card on my computer. That sounded pretty terrible, so I picked up an M-Audio Delta 44 and dove into home recording.

Ten years later I’m still at it. I’m not a professional sound engineer or video technician, but I’ve learned a ton of things along the way, and the music I create sounds way better now than it did back then. I’ve been into making videos for a while now, too.

I can talk all I want, but I figured it would be better to show you rather than tell you.

I record all my music with my dinky little home-recording setup. I’ve been asked more than a few times about my recording and video editing process, so I’m going to write a series of posts on the basics of audio recording. You’ll learn all you need to know to get your songs out of your head and into your stereo (or iPod).

Check back to this page as I’ll link to each post in the series right here. Planned post topics include:

1. Essential Hardware – What You Need to Get Started
2. Hardware I Use
3. Microphones
4. Interfaces
5. Software
6. Prepping For Recording
7. Mic Placement

Once we get the groundwork laid, I’ll go into posts about more software-specific basics like EQ, compression, mixing, etc.

Is there anything else you’d like to know specifically about recording? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to the list.

Songs (buy links direct to iTunes)

• Awakening – Chris Tomlin (pre-service) // buy
• Everlasting God – Brenton Brown // buy
• How He Loves – David Crowder Band version // buy
• Saviour King – Hillsong United // buy
• Song of Hope – Robbie Seay Band (after the message) // buy

Charts for all these songs can be found on the charts page.

Notes

We did the same set for both Evergreen and River Oaks.  In the band we had drums, keys, bass, electric (lead) and me on acoustic, plus three vocalists (myself included). The band did great!

Both services were really good. At River Oaks, we saw 6 or 8 new people today. It was really cool to get to know some new people, and I hope we’ll see them again next week.

I posted a few weeks ago about 5 reasons you should transpose your music. Quickly, those reasons are:

1. Put songs in keys your congregation can easily sing.
2. Put songs in keys that you can sing.
3. Put songs in keys that are easy to play on your instrument.
4. Give your band charts in the open key (not the key that requires a capo).
5. Facilitate smoother transitions.

I use Planning Center to transpose not only chord charts but mp3s as well, and it couldn’t be easier. You don’t need any knowledge of theory to do this.

Planning Center is web-based software that does all kinds of awesome things, but this webcast focusses only on the transposing feature. it’s also free to use (they have paid plans as well).

Our first Awesome Indie Artist!

I’m going to start things off with a song from my good friend and fellow worship leader Alastair Vance. He’s written lots of great songs, and he has a very cool blog going at AlastairVance.com. You can also follow him on twitter and youtube. Alastair and I have also recorded a few worship videos together.

You’re The Only One

You can listen to and download this song for free:

And here’s a video of the same song:

Alastair leads worship at Story Church in Durham, NC.

Want me to feature your music here on my site? Don’t be shy. Send me a message! I really enjoy connecting with other indie artists and worship leaders.

I’m excited to announce a new blog series here at Brian Wahl Music. I’m calling it Awesome Indie Artists.

Over the last several months and years, I’ve developed some pretty cool real life and internet relationship with other independent artists and worship leaders. There are some really talented people out there writing, recording, and releasing really good music, and I think you might be interested in getting ahold of it.

As I run across these talented individuals, I’ll post about them and highlight their music. You’ll see them below, and hopefully the list will grow and we’ll all be listening to really great indie music.

Artists

Alastair Vance

Alastair is a worship leader at Story Church and songwriter from Durham, NC. He’s married to Liz they and have three kids – Nathan, Noah and Katie. Alastair and Liz moved from Ireland to make our home in North Carolina, USA in October 2007.

Visit Alastair’s: website // twitter // youtube

Also, visit Alastair’s music page on his website where you can listen to a lot more of his stuff.

How about you?

If you are an indie artist or worship leader and you’d like me to blog about your music, don’t be shy! Send me a message and let me know all about it. Alternatively, if you’d like to feature my music on your blog, that would be pretty cool!

I found a great post over at the DIY Musician blog from CD Baby about playing live. This would be aimed more for the non-corporate-worship type settings, and many worship leaders (myself included) like to get out there and play music in all different kinds of venues.

Here’s a link to their article:

Click me! (original post on the DIY Musician blog from CD Baby)

Here are the CliffsNotes:

1. Stay positive.
2. Your audience size is not a reflection of your talent.
3. You never know what unseen factors are going on.
4. Park your dark cloud elsewhere!
5. All’s well that ends well.

Memorizing a stack of worship songs may seem like a tedious task for sure, especially if your song-book is over 100 songs, but here are five reasons why you as a worship leader should memorize everything.

1. You will make fewer mistakes

This may seem obvious, and it is probably the most important reason for you to memorize your music. If you’ve been leading worship (or playing in a worship band) for more than just a bit, no doubt you’ve hit a few wrong chords. Maybe you’ve forgotten the lyrics on a verse or something. As a leader, this is embarrassing, and I’ve certainly been there more times that I’d like to admit. Memorization won’t guarantee these kinds of things will never happen again, but it will go a long way to prevent it.

2. You will have more confidence

If you’re not thinking about what chords to play and what words are coming up next, your confidence will go up exponentially. If you don’t believe me, just give it a try – memorize the songs for your next worship set and come back and report how you felt playing them. You’ll also feel more free to “get lost” in worship.

3. Get rid of the music stand

This might seem a bit superficial, but let’s face it – music stands are not rock and roll, at all. More importantly, you won’t be glued to a sheet of paper sitting on a stand. This will make you feel more free than you might think.

4. You will sing better

Memorizing music can make me a better singer? Yes! For one thing, you’ll have to practice your songs to memorize them. The more you sing, the better you’ll get. Another thing that happens is you’ll learn where the song goes musically (as far as the vocals go), and you’ll get better and better at nailing the notes. Give it a shot – pick a new song or one you’re not as familiar with. Play it and pay attention to your voice (record it if you can). Then play it over and over again until you memorize it. Once you’ve got it down, pay attention to how well you sing it. You’ll be impressed with your progress.

5. You will become a better musician

Memorization comes from repetition and practice. The more you practice, the better you get.

Confession:

I’m writing this post because I didn’t memorize my music this last week. We did Christmas songs, so they weren’t the usual worship songs we usually do, and I wasn’t as familiar with them as I am with other songs we sing. Things went OK, but here are my gut reactions from the service:

• My confidence was far lower than usual.
• I botched two transitions because I was not familiar enough with the changes in time signatures from one song to the next. Had I memorized them, it would have been smoother.
• I was glued to my music stand, and almost forgot some lyrics.

Do you make it a point to memorize your music? Why is it (or isn’t it) important to you? Please feel free to share and add your insight in the comments.