Out of the Office

I’m typing this on my iPad somewhere southbound on Interstate 5 in California’s Central Valley.

Gear Review: The Mad Professor Silver Spring Reverb

BRAND: Mad Professor

MODEL: Silver Spring Reverb

COST: $195

WHAT IT IS: The SSR is a classic sounding “space” reverb. Space reverbs emulate the sound of reflections in a room, hall, church, cathedral or even bathroom tile. Spring reverb is essentially a “space” reverb but gets it’s own category because of the sonic quirks of mechanical spring tanks.

The short version is that the Silver Spring will emulate the sounds of an amp spring, a room/hall or studio (plate) reverb. The tone knob is really mislabeled. While it does affect tone, it really controls fidelity. Turned all the way to the left and you have a lofi “amp spring” sounding reverb. At noon, the tone knob makes a great room sound and all the way to the right you get a hifi plate/studio reverb.

What If?: Complete System Failure

What If? This series looks at real world situations that come up in worship leading. They may not happen often, but they happen often enough to talk about and plan ahead for. This week we’ll talk about complete system failure.

 WHAT IS CSF?

Interview: Rick Matthews from Matthews Effects

I had a recently had the chance to talk with Rick Matthews, owner of Matthews Effects, who makes great guitar effects pedals. We talked about topics ranging from gear and the music industry, Fuzz pedals in worship, and where to place a buffer in your signal chain; turns out I was doing it wrong. It was a great conversation and I hope you find it to be a useful resource as well.

Real World Worship: Could you tell us briefly about yourself?

Rick Matthews: I am a christian guitar enthusiast. I’m married to my awesome supportive wife Ashleigh and live with my two dogs Riby and Gatsby in Richland Wa. I own a guitar electronics company called Matthews Effects.

The Electric: Attack Of the Clones

In this series I try and address different aspects of the practical side of playing electric guitar in church music. This week we’ll talk about cloning effects pedals.

Whether you know it or not you probably have one or more cloned pedals on your pedalboard. What are they? Where did they come from? What does it mean? Let’s talk about it.

WHAT IS A CLONE?

Nobody Gets The Church They Want

Over at the 9Marks blog there’s an interesting post about giving up our preferences in church (read it HERE). While it was primarily written for pastors and church leaders, I felt the lessons for worship leaders was pretty obvious even before he used worship music as an example.

Sunday Worship

I’m posting a video of the music at my church from a few weeks back.

It’s not to show how good I am or brag. Hopefully this will be an encouragement and a resource for you.

We’re an average church. I’m a very average singer and musician. I am surrounded by some very talented folks who help cover, but aren’t we all.

What I love about this video is that while the service generally went well, it still shows us warts and all. I’m flat at parts, the sound mix was 100% all the time. We made mistakes. All of the stuff that happens at Real churches all over the world every Sunday.

A couple of things I think you (and I) can take from this video.

Some Thoughts On Monitor Mixes

Our friends over at the Worship Links blog have posted a link to a great piece on getting a monitor mix going for a worship band.

Getting a functional monitor mix is so important, we need to hear each other to play well together. But it can also be a really sore spot and a cause of contention between team members and the sound guy, and team members with each other. How can you get a good mix with out getting at each others throats?

How To Make Your Worship Team Better… Even If You’re Not In Charge

A lot of times we talk about how we can better serve God and our churches in our worship, song and playing. But what if we could better serve the other members of the church band? What if we could be a servant to our worship leader instead of expecting him to march to our drum?

What if by making a few small changes we could better love and serve each other? Wouldn’t that be an act of worship to the Father who would see his children “playing nice” together? Wouldn’t that be an act of service to our church if we played better and gave them a better platform to express praise, awe, love and devotion?

FALL Q&A

Every so often I like to look over the Google searches that bring people to this blog. It’s interesting what people look for, and what brings them my way. There are a few great questions, and a few ridiculous questions. What questions are people who stumble upon this blog asking? Let’s find out.