Psalm 3

The context

This Psalm begins with a note of context. ‘A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.’ Almost as an accessory to the Absalom story, David wrote this prayer to the Lord while under an incredible attack on his kingship in the land of Israel. There is far too deep a plot to outline here, but the story on David’s flee from his son Absalom’s conspiracy to overthrow David’s rule (~ 2 Samuel 13-19) is well worth the read and gives us a far greater perspective on Psalm 3. The full story does an amazing job of outlining the details of David’s abdication as a father, the rape of his daughter Tamar at the hands of her half brother, David’s son Absolom’s fury over the event, and the drama that ensues as David flees Jerusalem.

David’s trust amidst adversity

And that’s where David is as he writes this prayer. A nation of millions has turned against him (v.1), and small group from his court have come to protect and support him during this time. Despite his fear, conviction, and shame, David unwaveringly trusts in God. Even as he’s leaving town people are throwing rocks and dirt, cursing him (saying ‘there is no salvation for [him] in God’ (v.2), but David knows that God holds the cards and will deal what he will (2 Samuel 16:5-14). David has a peace in God’s sovereignty. He cries out to the Lord, and freeing him of his anxieties, the Lord allows David to rest in comfort (v.4-7). (more…)

We’ve been having some typically blustery and rainy days here in Seattle as of late and I can’t get enough. Come March or April, I probably will have had enough and will be ready to move on to our beautiful Spring and Summer weather. Until then, I enjoy a cup of tea and seek to find some music which accentuates the gray skies.

Satie: French revolutionary composer, and the godfather of ambient music. A friend gave me a CD compiling most of his piano works recently and I was instantly hooked. The Gymnopédie pieces are probably my favorite at this point some of the most beautifully simple melodies and colorful chords I’ve heard in a long time. My first thought was that it sounded very modern and had a hint of the minimalism I’ve come to love from Arvo Part and Brian Eno. After a little research, I was surprised to find out that he composed much of this music in the 1800s! I can’t very well imagine what kind of reaction these songs would have gotten in his day, but they seem to have influenced a ton of modern composers and bands.

In all of his glory, though, Satie worshiped art as an end in itself and toyed with spirituality in a variety of ways, apparently never coming to a belief in Jesus. He even started some kind of bizarre church for art/artists. I found some interesting info on this here.

As Christians we can’t worship art as an end in itself, but it seems like more often than not, we’re so afraid of doing so that quality gets sacrificed. Is God more glorified when our offering of worship is more excellent by human standards? I find it curious that so many of the greatest artists of all time have been in it for their own glory and not the glory of God. What does this say? Can you not be simultaneously a worshiper of Jesus and someone whose craft is perfected in a more humanistic way?

Joel Brown was born to missionary parents in Jerusalem, Israel 1979. The Browns moved back to California and settled in Bakersfield, where Joel began playing drums in local punk bands.

After high school, Joel left B-town behind and he and his two band mate-best friends arrived in Seattle.

They quickly realized the Seattle music scene belonged to the twenty-one or older crowd which is bummer news to eighteen year old music fans.  Simultaneously, Joel had to stop living off of his parents’ faith and figure out what Jesus was all about.

He began attending Mars Hill church and in time, came to faith in Christ. As 2000 began, he started work at The Paradox, the small all-ages music venue Mars Hill launched.

In 2001 he married his long time sweetheart, Emily, and spent the next two years recording bands, running sound at shows, and touring with his band, The Prom.

In 2003, Mars Hill opened in Ballard and Joel took a position managing the ever-growing sound needs and currently leads a Mars Hill-based worship band called Red Letter. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Emily, and twin girls, Blythe and Naomi.

With the Continuous Worship conference fast approaching, we thought we’d give it a little extra nudge by quoting some of our fav Harold Best quotes. To be honest, we folks in the worship dept at MH have kind of become Best-ians if there is such a thing. So much so that we’ve actually adopted some of the terms he uses in Unceasing Worship into our regular vernacular. Anyhoo, here’s Deacon Joel’s thoughts on his favorite quote to kick things off. Enjoy.

It’s incredibly hard to pin down my “favorite’ quote from Harold Best’s book “Unceasing Worship’, but this is one that really makes me think (watch out it’s a long one! From chapter 11): (more…)

Well, we ended up finding a mix engineer who met the requirements that I put in my last entry: We’re seeking to find someone who has mixed records where we like the way it sounds, also having worked with secular bands that we respect, so that the record doesn’t have a specifically “Christian’ sound to it.

We landed on Jacquire King. He’s a guy from Nashville (funny enough) that I’ve heard is a Christian, but has mixed a great combo of Christian and secular bands: No Doubt, Modest Mouse, Tom Waits, Third Eye Blind, Kings of Leon yet also Mute Math, Toby Mac, David Crowder Band, and Chris Tomlin!

We’ve been very satisfied with the mixes, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel that we will soon be done! This has indeed turned out to be the best thing we’ve done at Mars Hill by far and it feels good to listen to the mixes (though it’s been exhausting to hear the songs so many times!) and feel as though our prayer has been answered, that God would be glorified and our level of excellence (for the sake of Him being made much of) would increase.

We’ve also landed a sweet mastering engineer Emily Lazar. Her credit list is too long to mention here, but she has done records that you own and love, trust me. Mastering is the very last step of the recording process and is essentially like the icing on the cake. The engineer balances volume levels from song to song as well as giving it the last bit of sonic character. While it may not make or break a record, it is still a crucial piece of the equation that can have a drastic effect on the overall sound. I’ve never had such a high profile mastering engineer work on a record that I have, so I’m curiously excited to see how that turns out!

We have been chomping at the bit with overdubs for quite some time now, several bands are finished, and a few bands are about ¾ of the way along. There have been some good times and some grueling long nights, getting into what we’re lovingly calling “seshdog’ mode. This is where you have spent too much time in a window-less recording studio and you should go home, but you’ve got to get that mythical guitar tone that you’ve been searching for over the past few hours. It’s such a bad place to be, and no matter how much I tell myself not to become a seshdog before I go in to the studio, after a few hours, the black hole has removed all sense of logic and reason (pun intended). (more…)

The sickest jams that I have been kicking as of late are some staples I have Marvin Gaye, “What’s going on?’ and Michael Jackson “Off the wall’, “Thriller‘, and “Bad‘. “What’s going on?’ has become one of my favorite records in the past couple of years due to some fantastic songs (though admittedly certain songs’ lyrics are sub-par) combined with a very unique and beautiful sonic landscape. The older Michael Jackson records were done in a way that defined the eras that they are from, yet they have an incredibly timeless quality to them. Thriller, which I found out recently, is the greatest selling record of all time, has seven #1 hit singles on it, only one of which is a worthless waste of tape “The Girl is Mine” a duet with Paul McCartney.

The only recommendable new items on my list are a band called As Tall as Lions, with their self titled sophomore release; and Feist’s new one, “The Reminder’. There’s definitely some less-than-remarkable material on both of these records, but overall they have some great songs sung by some great singers.

Pastor Tim’s new band (someday they will be named, but for now they are non-committal) is wrapping up some various overdubs this week mostly doing guitars and vocals.an interesting track we did a few weeks ago was some stomps and claps on “What Wondrous Love is This?’ harkening back to Radiohead’s “We suck young blood’ and Queen’s “We will rock you’. We had about 10 people in a small studio with a tube U47 micing the floor. Everyone would sway back and step forward at the same time. We must have tracked this group 4 or 5 times, giving the illusion of 50 people slamming their feet on the floor it had a killer low end thump a la hip hop records.

We had a wicked string recording sesh last week. A group of Mars Hill string players came in 3 violins and 2 cellos (does anyone actually play the viola? Come talk to me if you do.). Brian Eichelberger (E-Pop) put together some outstanding string arrangements, which really took the songs to the next level. We sat the players up in a semi-circle with 2 AKG 414s (through GML mic pre’s) doing a close stereo pair thing. They sounded great and we ended up dumping the Coles 4038 ribbons which we had hoped to use as well, but were far too mid-rangy. I also put up a FET Sony C-37 (a mic which has grown on me a ton during the making of this record) in an omni-pattern in the middle of the group. I threw it into a Summit EQF-100 for some mid-sweeping goodness and slammed the Urei 1176 as well. This created a very full string sound with only 1 mic. Most songs we tracked either the Sony or the AKGs for 4 to 5 takes, again giving the illusion of many more players than were actually present.

On a more geeky level, I’m going to touch on some actual recording techniques and general nerd talk on how we’re getting those sweet sounds to tape.

For the drums on “Solid Rock’ (which is being done by Epop), Brian wanted to get a very pulse-y sound. The drums play only on Bass Drum and cymbals, and build throughout the song to a loud 8th-note crescendo at the end. Brian said he wanted to hear the compressor “breathing’, which is essentially where something is being compressed in such a way as to be very noticeable for effect. It makes you feel like the drums are slamming against a brick wall on every hit. To achieve this effect, we pulled out an old omni-directional EV microphone similar to what would have been used on an on-site news report in the 70’s. This was run through a Shure level-loc (popularized in modern recording by an amazing recording engineer - Tchad Blake), which is an insane compressor originally designed to be used for announcements on a P.A. in a bowling alley or something of the like. Lots of fun!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written about our studio project, (which is a hymns compilation of several Mars Hill bands) largely because I’ve been really busy working on it. We are now knee-deep in production, and we’ve finished 4 of the 5 bands’ basic tracks. Pastor Tim’s new band will be going in to do their basic tracks at the end of the month.

We are seeking to capture Mars Hill Church’s missional perspective on corporate worship in a way that shows our diversity and inspires other churches and musicians not only to worship Jesus, but to do so in a way that is in tune with their local culture Christian or not.

I’m really excited about the way things are turning out we’ve been able to hone in the already great existing arrangements, which has been great for Brian and I (the producers) as well as a nice time for the bands to be able to step back and get new perspective on songs that many of them have been playing for a long time.

This is something that we as bands at Mars Hill wrestle with and as music director, I am trying to address (forgive the bad analogy) the need to keep the “wheels turning’, but never getting a chance to really work on the engine. We’ve grown at a very fast pace and have just barely been able to create enough new bands for new campuses as they crop up, so stopping to re-group or record has rarely been a luxury we’ve had. Though Projects like this one are a nice “break’, we’ve opted to do this one while keeping most of the bands in current Sunday rotation because of necessity. While this has been difficult and a lot of work, I feel it has gone well so far and we haven’t burned out any of our volunteers.

For the next blog, I’ll geek out a little on some tech-y stuff and discuss how we got good sounds in the studio…