Copious Notes

02.20: talkin' Tuesday

We're going to keep this Christian pop update on the short side, because we'll be piling Dove Award nominations on top of it in a few hours.

~ Superchick (photo, right) is coming to Central Baptist Church in Winchester, May 11. And they're bringing Krystal Meyers, DecembeRadio, Nevertheless and Group 1 Crew. Tickets are $17.50 in advance, $20 at the door, and will be on sale soon. See Cooper Productions website for more information.

Don't forget that tickets to MercyMe and Audio Adrenaline's April 21 show at Rupp Arena go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday (Feb. 24). They're $15-$30. Call (859) 233-3535. It's shaping up to be a pretty good spring concert season here in CKY, particularly once the Glory Revealed tour gets rescheduled.

~ Today, you can get the new CD from Tobymac, Portable Sounds. We also have new Anberlin, Cities, and new Everlife, a self-titled disc from one of the groups that opened for the Cheetah Girls at Rupp. (We here at rctalk strongly suspect that the Anberlin crowd will not be buying Everlife and vice versa, though both crowds may overlap with Superchick fans. In this scenario, Superchick is Switzerland.)

~ Superchick, Toby or anyone would like to hit this milestone: Casting Crowns' Lifesong recently went platinum, meaning 1 million copies sold. That puts the Georgia youth group band in very rare company. Jars of Clay is the only other contemporary Christian act to have its first two albums go platinum (Jars of Clay from 1995 and Much Afraid from 1997), and Casting Crowns made it to the mark the fastest with Casting Crowns (2003) and Lifesong (2005).

~ I jinxed myself. And I'm going to share it at the bottom of an rctalk post because I think some of y'all will sympathize. A few weeks ago, I wrote at the bottom of an Apples in Stereo post how in my own fledgling guitar playing I had instituted a rule that I will always end a practice with something I can play well as a balm to the frustration of songs that kick my butt in rehearsal, like Audio Adrenaline's Big House was. Well, the very day that appeared in print, I had the chance to play both Big House and my No. 1 musical balm, Everlasting God, in front of actual people. Sure enough, I blew Everlasting God like a condemned building . Fortunately, Big House went fine, but that's the last time I write that I can play anything well.

~ OK, only a few more hours until those Dove announcements. We'll have them here for you, probably just after lunch time. Brian Littrell is one of the announcers, and it seems a safe bet he'll be reading his own name a few times.

Math & guitars

Don't miss Jamie Gumbrecht's fantastic story in today's paper about how Apples in Stereo frontman Robert Schneider has written a new musical scale for the band's latest album, New Magnetic Wonder (cover art, below), which drops on Tuesday. Seems Mr. Schneider is a  bit of a math enthusiast, which  really isn't surprising.

You may have surprised me with that a decade-or-so ago. I thought of the arts as exclusively right brained and math as exclusively left brained. It helped, at the time, that my music experience had been limited to singing in junior high and high school choirs, and playing a little bass guitar by ear (badly). It was enough to understand four-beats per measure, and a few things like that, but neither activity necessitated learning the intricate math problems that can be contained in a bar of music, or the little mathematical constructions of chords and progressions of scales. It didn't help that I had an oil-and-water relationship with math. One of my favorite Far Side cartoons was of a physicist with a complex problem on the black board. Right between the equation and the answer were the words, "a miracle happens." For me, Gary Larson had summed up how I thought anything above basic arithmetic must function. I still have nightmares about being back in incomprehensible math courses.

But I am also learning to play an instrument now, the guitar, and looking at music, trying to decipher how all those notes and rests fit together, learning the theory behind things like pentatonic scales. I also have some very left-brained friends with deep appreciations of music -- a few are even skilled musicians -- and it makes sense that they would love both math and music. My son, not being a chip off the old block in this respect, is quite proficient at math, and also likes noodling around with melodies on his keyboard. I don't think he's considering notes on a scale or anything of that sort, yet. But I can't help but think the two are related.

And despite more than three decades of contempt for math, I can't help but reading about Schneider and his new scale and thinking it's pretty darned cool.

Guitar note: I've been remiss in writing about the guitar lessons, maybe because I didn't want to admit I've been working on something that has been kicking my butt, lately. I think I mentioned that my teacher had surmised I'd become good at strumming in 4/4 time, and so I was trying to stretch myself by learning the lead on an Audio Adrenaline song, Big House. Good to stretch. Bad to pick something that's really fast and incorporates a bunch of slides, bends, hammer-ons and other stuff people who just strum in 4/4 time don't mess with much. Note to self: When you re-embark on this plan, select something a slight bit more realistic.

Anyway, it prompted me to institute a Copley practice rule: Always end with something you can play well. It was actually inspired by golf. You know, even if you shoot 150, you'll walk away feeling great if you shoot well on the 18th hole, or do something really cool toward the end like chipping in. It makes you want to come back.

So, I decided to make it a personal rule that I will alway end quality time with my guitar playing something that reminds me I can actually play the thing, no matter how much the previous 55 minutes, or whatever I have devoted to practicing, have made me feel like I can't.

Tommy Emmanuel: Inside the music

After several visits to the Bluegrass, guitarist Tommy Emmanuel has become an exceedingly familiar face to Lexington music lovers. Folks who want to know a bit more about Emmanuel and his approach to guitar playing will want to pick up the January issue of Guitar Player magazine (the issue with the 60th anniversary of Fender guitars on the cover), which features a spread on Emmanuel in its Master Class section.
In addition to an interview, there are several guitar tabs of Emmanuel’s compositions for guitarists who want to try playing like Emmanuel.
One of the really cool things was the photo (right) at the top of a short article about Emmanuel’s guitar gear. It was shot in Lexington for the Herald-Leader by staff photographer Mark Cornelison, when Emmanuel was here in 2000 for his first concert with the Lexington Philharmonic.   

(Note: I would link to the article, but Guitar Player does not post its content on the web until well after the print publication comes out.)

Christian pop stars show you how to play their hits

The New Song Cafe always seemed like an interesting feature at Worshiptogether.com. I mean, I don't remember anywhere that, on a regular basis, mainstream pop guitarists I admire like The Edge and Pete Buck ever did TV shows or released videos showing you how to play their hits. But each week, Christian pop artists are showing how to play their tunes at the website -- Michael W. Smith and Leeland Mooring are on there  this week. But -- and it may be because, having just celebrated my first-annual 39th birthday, I am getting old -- setting up at my computer with my guitar just didn't seem like a thing to do. Plus, the videos were so tiny, it was hard to tell where the players' fingers were, and streaming video can sometimes be a bit testy.

But the insight is invaluable, as chord charts often come up woefully short in terms of showing how to play a song. If only the Cafes came in a more user-friendly format.

Worship Together has addressed that with Live: Training for Modern Worship, a DVD of a dozen New Song Cafes, and an accompanying CD of the songs. It is actually the fifth DVD of New Song Cafe episodes, which are available at the Worship Together store. But the new disc is my first go around with it.

Overall, it's pretty good. All of the episodes have a fairly standard script: The hosts, Brenton Brown or Vicky Beeching in most instances, introduce the artists who talk a little bit about the origins of the songs they are playing, they play the tune and then talk through the chords. Some of the episodes are quite interesting or amusing, like Chris Tomlin comforting all of we beginners by saying he looks for the easiest way to play tunes or David Crowder discussing how his mother inspired the word play of Wholly Yours.

The most useful episode was hosted by Peter Furler of Newsboys with Beeching (photo right, courtesy of EMI Christian Music Group) sharing her Yesterday, Today, and Forever. Furler has a very easy manner as a host and makes his questioning valuable with a few words: "How about the rhythm."

The biggest frustration of the episodes is a concentration on chords, almost to the exclusion of rhythms. On Third Day's discussion of Communion, it is easy to pick out Mac Powell's chords, but I needed the sheet music to see what exactly was happening with his strumming hand. (As we've mentioned before on this blog, Worship Together does offer free sheet music to download each week, and often one of the titles is the song on that week's Cafe.)

This DVD also exclusively features guitarists. Granted, guitar is the lead instrument of pop music and modern worship, but it may be nice to give keyboard players, even bassists and drummers, some insight as well. I'm not sure how many Cafes do bring in other instruments. Smith is on there playing a keyboard, this week.

Those things said, the disc is really interesting, and several artists offer a few different ways to play their tunes. I was amused, for instance, that demonstrating Everlasting God, Brown (photo, right) shows a completely different (and harder) way to play the main theme then I had learned. But then, at the end of his chat with Beeching, he swings back and shows the fairly simple G-Gsus sequence I know (once again though, you really need the rhythm to make that work).

Whoever's song you try to play, unless you are a fairly accomplished guitarist, you'll need to watch the DVD with the remote nearby to pause. But if there are selections you really want to learn on this or any of the New Song Cafe discs, you should be able to do that with most of these episodes, even if you're an absolute beginner, like me.

Hendrix's namesake gear

A few months ago, I wrote a column about finding out there is a Copley Guitar Company and getting my Copley. It was fun, but in a way, it felt a little goofball. Do people named Philips get geeked if they buy a Philips TV?

Well, I found a little redemption in the pages of Guitar Player magazine. The December issue features a review of the new Marshall Super 100JH amplifiers. The amps are a reissue of the same ones used by one James Marshall Hendrix -- you may know him as Jimi. Anyway, there is a story accompanying the review in which Marshall owner James Marshall, recalls meeting Hendrix. Now, Jimi had been playing Marshall amps at some stops on tour, so it wasn't just the name that he dug. But clearly, James Marshall liked dealing with Jim Marshall. According to the story, Jimi said, "I've just got to have this Marshall amplification. Can I meet up with this character who has my name -- James Marshall?" They did indeed meet, and Marshall has credited Hendrix with being his company's greatest ambassador.

The Marshall 100 reissues, which retail for $8,000, are an awesome sight to behold, even in the magazine. For a guy who usually plays through a 30-watt combo amp, this thing looks like it would blow you off the stage at the first strum. But it would be fun to test drive one someday, maybe with a Copley guitar.

~ Hey, don't forget, if you're out on Black Friday shopping for guitars, amps or whatever, don't forget to let Jamie know how it's going at It's All About.

Play guitar with Will Ferrell

Will Ferrell's character in Stranger Than Fiction is an IRS auditor whose whole world is numbers. I don't identify with this. Notice, I avoided a profession in numbers for the far-less-lucrative field of words.
But Will's Harold Crick (photo, left, courtesy of Sony Pictures) is also a wannabe guitar player, and with this, he and I are of one mind. For those who haven't seen the trailer for Stranger, the story is about how Harold starts hearing a voice that is narrating his life. That voice turns out to be a novelist, played by Emma Thompson, who, unbeknown to her, is writing a book about Harold. She thinks she's writing fiction. One of my favorite scenes is when Harold goes into a guitar shop looking for his ax and Thompson's voice-over says what each one would say about him. But the scene that interested me most was when Harold is in the apartment of Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and charms her by playing (I'd Go The) Whole Wide World, a song by Wreckless Eric (photo, right) that was covered by the Monkees (Thanks to Ross, below, for straightening me out on the history of this tune). Hmmmmm. At this point in the story, Harold had been playing his sea foam green Strat a few days, maybe a week. Is this a song he could pull off that quickly?
Being a beginning guitar player, I decided to investigate. First, I am not terribly familiar with the song, so I downloaded a recording from Napster. Then, I went looking for a chord chart, and plucked one off Jumbo Jimbo's Song Lyrics Archive. (I am well aware that a lot of chord charts, online and off, are not exact representations of what is played on a recording. In this case, the chart seems to match up with the recording fairly well, at least providing a framework in which to play along.)
One thing I've discovered since I started learning to play last year is a lot of pop songs are indeed three chords. Whole Wide World is actually a two chord song: E (top chart) and A (bottom). That makes things real easy. I wish I knew this song when I started playing. The verses are steady, played in somewhat muted 4/4 time with the chorus a bit more of a spirited strum. I'm still working on that chorus a little bit. I'm not the biggest fan of chord charts because I like to see rhythms written in musical notation to get precise clues on how to play them. That said, my wife, a fabulous piano player, will often say something like, "just get the feel of it." Anyway, long story short, yes, Whole Wide World is a song Harold probably could have easily picked up well enough to impress a Ana. I don't know if Will Ferrell plays guitar, but it probably wouldn't have been difficult for him to learn it for that scene. The way he played it even rang true, a little halting and pitching his voice too high. While a beginning guitarist may dream of moments like the Pete Townsend windmill pose Harold strikes in the guitar shop, this hesitant  take is how you wade into actually playing. That scene may be the most realistic thing about the movie.

Stop scribblin' and play yer guitar

It's a few minutes after midnight Thursday night/Friday morning. I'm just getting back from a late night of work and watching the Mets flame out to the Cardinals in the National League Championship game. It's been a long week. I'm really tired and should head straight to bed. But my guitar is sitting in the corner of the living room, and it's too quiet.
Before this starts sounding like an old Kenny Rogers song, I'll explain. About a year and a half ago I decided to actually learn how to play the guitar I bought myself for college graduation (that would be the Fender Stratocaster in the photo, right). I had messed around with some books and tried to make sense of chord charts in the past, but never seriously pursued learning to play. So, I got together with my  friend Jim Olive who teaches guitar and attempted to make at least a twice-monthly date of it. And I try to practice as much as a guy with a wife, two-kids, a house, a busy job and some active volunteer obligations can. I wish I'd gotten serious about this in high school.
It has become a bit of an obsession, sometimes keeping me up late beyond reason and prompting me to carry Guitar Player magazine around as much as my daily calendar. But moreover, it's been a joy. It's one thing to hear a song and like it and another to entertain the idea that you could play it. On Woodsongs, Michael Jonathan gets it right in his little mini-sermons about putting creativity in your own hands. Yeah, I probably coulda, shoulda gone to bed Thursday, but what better way to wind down than playing a few favorite tunes.

At this point, I can strum in 4/4 time, and that's about it. Sometimes, it feels like I've made very little progress. Other times, when I go back and try something I was struggling with a year ago, I'm surprised at how far I've come. Either way, there's no timetable here. No demands. I have a career. This is a hobby, though one I take seriously.

A few months ago, when it was a lot warmer and I started this blog, I promised to start chronicling the journey of a middle-age guy learning to play an instrument. Now, I'll start to make good, and if my obsessive nature plays out, you may read more than you ever want to know.
To kick it off, here are a few things I've learned in the last year and a half; advice I'd give to anyone else who wants to tackle guitar or another instrument later in life:
1. Get a teacher. A book can only tell you so much, and there is a lot about learning an instrument that has to do with technique and touch, things you really can't learn from a book.
2. That said, be curious. It adds to the fun. I subscribe to two guitar magazines, Guitar Player and Play Guitar, and have pulled lessons and advice from them that have added to the experience.
3. Find someone to play with. First, the only thing more fun than being able to make music is being able to make music with other folks. Also, it pushes you. I play with my wife, who is a really good pianist, so trying to keep up with her really makes me work.
4. Don't get too stressed. Keep this in perspective, particularly if you are learning later in life. You won't be playing Rupp Arena. (I'd be happy to play a camp fire someday.) If you miss a few days or even weeks of practice, if there's something you're trying to learn and you can't seem to get it, don't let it ruin the experience. It's supposed to be fun.

I have to give credit for a lot of that advice to my Yoda, Jim.

So, I will check in from time with some updates and highlights of how it's going for me. I have a lesson this week, and a current goal is moving beyond strumming in 4/4 time. Three chords can get quite dull over a five-verse song -- my Blowin' in the Wind will put you to sleep faster than Ambien. I'm also working on a few songs to play in a couple of weeks.

In addition, I'll let you know if I see some cool guitar-oriented stuff, like a few posts ago I was pointing folks to a neat interview with Third Day guitarist Brad Avery in the Epiphone E-Newsletter. The photo above, by Mark Cornelison, is of my Copley acoustic-electric guitar. I just saw a tidbit about another guitarist and his namesake equipment that I'll share later this week.

But at this point, it feels like I've written too much. I'm going to go play my guitar.

Free Christian pop

I received a very cool sounding e-mail today (Oct. 18) from Rocketown/RKT Records. Seems the label has decided a good way to get the word out about some of its bands -- a roster that includes this year's best new band, Hyper Static Union (photo, right); as well as Shaun Groves, Ginny Owens and others -- is to give away some tunes. So, Friday, Rocketown is testing the concept of Free Music Friday. The deal is, according to the e-mail, that Friday you go to MyFreeMusicFriday.com  and there will be a selection of tunes for you to download. Rocketown does emphasize that as of now, this is a test program to see how it goes. We'll let you know if it becomes a regular thing. Rocketown is one of the most consistently good labels in Christian rock. So whatever you can download Friday should be good stuff.

Also on the free music scene is Derek Webb, who some of you may know has been offering his Mockingbird album for free download for several months now. At the download website, Webb explains his motivation saying, "I love music. I have grown up with music as a close confidant. And I believe in the power of music to move people. There's something remarkable about the way a melody can soften someone to a new idea.

"As an artist (and often an agitator), this is something I am keenly aware of. My most recent record Mockingbird deals with many sensitive issues including poverty, war, and the basic ethics by which we live and deal with others. But I found that music has been an exceptional means by which to get this potentially difficult conversation going. And this is certainly an important moment for dialogue amongst people who disagree about how to best love and take care of people, to get into the nuances of the issues . . . It's actually never been as simple as it is today to connect music with music fans. And I want people to have a chance to listen to Mockingbird and engage in the conversation."

Last year, I put Mockingbird on my list of the year's best Christian pop albums, so obviously I think it's worth a purchase price. For free, it's essential.

Finally, for musicians out there (and wannabe musicians, like me), Worship Together offers  three free sheet music titles to download. Right now my wife an I are working on Brenton Brown and Ken Riley's Everlasting God, and I just downloaded three Delirious (photo, right) selections from this week's offerings. I can't wait to get to Rain Down. There's a brief, free membership to sign up for at Worship Together, but it's painless, and then you get an e-mail reminder each week of what new titles are available.

Cool interview with Third Day's Brad Avery

I'm just passing along a cool interview with Third Day's Brad Avery (photo, right) that was in the most recent e-newsletter from Epiphone. Brad endorses Epiphone guitars and amps, and this Q&A has interesting stuff for 3D fans and guitarists. Check it out by clicking here.

BTW, when I started this blog, I promised to chronicle my own quest to learn to play guitar at midlife -- if Jamie G can learn to sew, I can learn guitar -- and thus far I have not made good. But this weekend I will get a guitar lessons note out there.

10.3: It's Tuesday, and that means . . .

. . . new Christian pop releases.

It’s been a bit of a dark day in my world: Both my computer and the office coffee maker are on the fritz.
But, I have a new Pillar CD to write about, so things aren’t so bad.
Chances are a lot of original Pillar fans were somewhere in the 13 to 16 range when they latched onto the quartet  around the turn of the century. (I think we have enough distance to start calling the late 1990s, early 2000s that, now.) Those original pillars of the fanbase have grown since those dial-up days, and so has the band. The Reckoning is a muscular, mature effort by a group that is exploring its sonic palate and diversifying its subject matter. This disc can be as raw as the opening track, Everything, or poignant as Angel in Disguise, a tough song about sexual abuse. The latter tune shows the band has the courage to navigate into treacherous waters, and in doing so they explore a songwriting style we are not used to from Pillar. We highly recommend the deluxe edition, particularly if you are a musician. The bonus DVD includes two hours of concert footage and a segment with each member of the band talking about their respective contributions to the album. As a budding guitarist, I really liked Noah Henson’s segment, even if I’m not quite prepared to tune my Strat to Drop-C and play his licks.
The big message here, if we haven’t gotten it already, is Pillar is here to stay, and its fanbase should grow with this impressive effort.
Also looking to grow their fanbase today is Skillet, which releases Comatose, and Todd Agnew offers a Christmas effort, Do You See What I See. Considering what Agnew has done with classic hymns such as Amazing Grace and Come Ye Sinners, it should be cool to hear his take on the Yuletide season. We don’t trumpet too many “various artists” releases  here at Copious Notes, but WOW is the major franchise of Christian pop and WOW Hits 2007 drops today, along with greatest hits CDs from Michael W. Smith, Rich Mullins, T.D. Jakes and Twila Paris.
~ Check in later this week, Ichthus fans and other cCm lovers with good taste. We had a little sit down with Shake Anderson of the Ascenxion Band last week, and we'll  bring you the highlights of that chat before the  group's Saturday night gig at Asbury. Also Saturday, the print edition of rc talk will be in YOUR Herald-Leader's Faith & Values section.