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1) You Are So Good To Me (Pasley/Chaffer): Key G. Third Day has a pretty well known arrangement of this tune. We do it pretty close to that.

2) Revelation Song (Riddle): Key C. Yet another HOJ remix. Nothing major, just kind of changed up some rhythmic stuff. We’ve always kind of rocked this one out (way more than the recorded version) so we didn’t change the vibe of this song as much as we just freshened it up a bit. Worked out well.

Pardon my bad harmonies and lame guitar playing…just goes to show (maybe) that my strength is coordinating, writing and arranging and not necessarily performing. Haha.

3) All We Want is You (Evans): Key E. I love this song. The verses are a little wordy, but the simple chorus makes up for it. This is one that can be done at a moderate mellow tempo, or for us, a moderate rocking tempo. Driving 8ths in the bass, simple straightforward on the drums, and the chunk chunk sound on the guitars (palm mutes, top 3 strings[E-A-D strings]).

We did more of an acoustic set this week. Since we didn’t have electric guitar again this week. We just cranked up the 2 acoustics, put the drummer on rods (and cranked up the drum mic volumes a little) and rocked it out “unplugged” style. Went very well. For vocals, we had 4 total, but only featured 2 each song. It was a nice sonic variation from the regular 3-4 vocals always on sound that we usually rock.

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The reality of our move is beginning to sink in (for me and for members of the team). We chatted for a few minutes before first service about the “next” person coming in. I’m trying to be as encouraging as I can. I know that God has the perfect fit to take the Music at HOJ to the next level. It’s just a little bittersweet knowing that we’ll be leaving all these WONDERFUL folks behind.

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Part of Sunday Setlists at Fred McKinnon’s place. Come join and share yours!

I worked all week on cutting and editing video and have quickly come to appreciate that even though I CAN do it, it’s probably not my calling in life.

We used a video story to bring home the message from Sunday. It was pretty powerful. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I was blessed near the last minute to be able to use some instrumental music from Fred McKinnon instead of having to whip some up myself. Thanks, Fred, the music worked perfectly!

Setlist:

1) Everlasting God (Brown):
Key A. Lincoln Brewster arrangement. We had no electric guitar this week. But we still had a good full sound with 2 acoustics, bass, and drums.

2) My Best Friend (Hillsong):
Key C. This is always a fun one. Pretty standard arrangement.

3) My Savior Lives (New Life Worship):
Key B. Pretty straight forward arrangement. I think I blew out my voice on this one though. I should probably do it in A next time :)

Part of Sunday Setlists: where worship leaders and worshipers get crunk and share their experiences from Sunday worship gatherings!

1) You Are Good (Houghton):
Key E. Just about everyone knows this one. It’s a great tune. I was on drums this week so it was fun to play this one.

2) Blessed Be Your Name (Redman):
Key G. We key it down just a bit when our female lead vocalists lead this one. It always comes out nicely! Our arrangement is pretty standard.

3) Shackles – with Cool King G-O-D rap intro (Mary Mary/Hutto):
Key Em. We love this song, but wanted to do something fun with it. I created a simple loop and ran it from my iphone (got off the drums and we just did this whole song sans live drums). “Cool King G-O-D” is a rap song I wrote a little over 15 years ago (I was 16 or 17 when I wrote it – I’m 32 now). Admittedly it’s not the greatest hip hop tune of all time, but it’s a fun one to do. I took 2 of the verses from it and used it as a kind of rap “pre-tag” before shackles. We actually could have used some male vocals on the “He’s the Kiiiiing” part on the chorus, but our girls did a good job of trying to sound gangsta. Ha.

Our shackles arrangement pretty much stayed the same structurally. We kind of changed the groove a bit. Added a little “breakdown” in the middle (repeated at the end).

Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance dance
Everybody in the House lift your hands hands
Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance dance
Everybody in the House lift your hands

“House” is capitalized because our church name is House of Joy.

It was fun. Here’s an actual video. The mix is not quite where I’d want it to be. The drum loop is almost non-existent but live it was thumping and for some reason the bass guitar all but disappears when shackles starts. Video is not usually on my mind on Sunday mornings so I didn’t think about the mix for this one. Anyways, besides those issues you can at least see what we did.

Shackles – HipHop – 2nd service from Jimmy Linville on Vimeo.

As always Sunday Setlists are a part of a great gathering of worship leaders and worshipers from all over the world sharing their Sunday worship experiences.

1) We Shine (Fee):
Key Am/A. Great tune. I think at one point in the second service I actually growl/screamed the prechorus. It was rockin.

2) Your Love Is Beautiful (Hillsong):
Key Cm. We choose to drop it a step for our keyboard players (me, mainly). This is one of our favorites…but might have run its chorus. We’re adding a few new songs into the rotation this summer anyways.

3) How Great is Our God (Tomlin/Seventh Day Slumber Version):
Key B/G#m. This one rocked. The team pulled together nicely and rocked this one. A wonderfully roxed out way to take a familiar and loved song and add some GRRRRR to it. The SDS version is pretty tight.

More Sunday Setlists

Walk-in:
Ripped a riff from Audio Adrenaline’s “I’m Not The King” and added a simple James Bond-esque counter melody on top of it. Then at key points threw in a Mission Impossible inspired rhythmic breakdown. Fun stuff.

1) One Way (Hillsong):
Key A. Funny story. My wife comments after service, “I love that new ‘That Thing You Do’ feel you guys did One Way with today.” I was like, “Thanks, babe,  but we’ve been doing it like that for almost a year…” She was like, “Oh….” Hahaha!

So, we do kind of mashup the That Thing You Do vibe with an almost western/surf feel. Works out pretty good on this tune. A great song to use some whammy bar or tremolo effects on your electric guitars.

2) O Taste & See (Johnson):
Key G. We haven’t done this one in a while, but I love it. It’s such a simple and repetitive song, but so rich! Cortni rocked it! She’s one of my go to female vocal leaders! One thing new that we kinf of improved (rehearsal) into on accident was a half-time feel towards the end. Instead of just repeating the chorus verbatim musically, we go to a drums and vocals break (chorus) with a break down kind of half-time feel. Worked well, and broke up the potential monotony of this great tune.

3) I Know Who I Am (Houghton/Tomlin):
Key A. For some reason my mind keeps thinking this song is in D every time we play it. Especially if I’m on keys, which makes for some interesting chords! I did play guitar this week, but rehearsed on keys. Weird, I know, but I forgot my guitar at home and all I had was keys for rehearsal. I should be fired.

This is a great song that goes over so well. One of our female vocal leaders, Ros, tears it up. I sing the bridge. The energy of this song is so great for group worship.

Speaking of rehearsal:
The last few weeks I’ve been utilizing a split rehearsal format. Vocals come in at 6:30 and rehears with me (on keys or acoustic) for 45 minutes. The Band comes in and has 15 minutes to set up and then we rock full team rehearsal for an hour.

Pros:

• The vocals have never been tighter. Even though they rehearse parts during the week, it’s great to be able to come in and tighten those up.
• Before a lot of times when I’d need to rehearse with the vocals the band would get to chatting or even start noodling on their respective instruments. I don’t mind that so much as far as volume, but they’d lose focus a bit. It’s always a good thing when we can just plow through our rehearsal times and not have anyone lose focus.
• I also get to spend a little bit more time interacting with the vocals in a little more intimate setting. Not that we didn’t interact before, but I’ve always found the smaller the group, the better the interaction.

Cons:

• The entire rehearsal is about 15 minutes longer give or take.

As you can see the Pros have far outweighed the cons with this.

Today’s Sunday Setlist is part of many others shared by worshipers and worship leaders from all over the world at Fred McKinnon.com