My Church Gig

Donnie Darko is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.  In a very memorable scene a teacher asks students to read a paragraph describing a potentially complex moral dilemma (something like someone found a wallet with money in it but kept the dough then turned the wallet in to lost and found) then asks them to place an X on the life line between fear and love.  Donnie argues that life isn’t that simple; you can’t evaluate every life situation on a one-dimensional line.  Then he gets sent to the principles office for… well, you’ll have to rent the movie.

So it is with intensity in music.  You can’t just place an X on the volume line between quiet and loud.  It’s not that simple.

I say this all the time: Greater volume does not necessarily equal greater intensity.

The inverse is as true:  Less volume does not necessarily equal less intensity.

Intensity is borne more out of complex concepts like motion, tone, balance and tension than by the one-dimensional concept of volume level.  There’s a certain level of maturity a musician gains the moment he or she realizes that song sections don’t necessarily need to be louder or softer – they just need to vary in intensity.  Here’s why this is important to me.  Every time I’m behind the console and I hear a band just play softer, not only does the detail of their parts vanish, they typically get sloppy.  I know because I bring up the faders to get them back in the game only to discover the game’s been momentarily suspended.

I say this as a bass player to other bass players and the drummers to whom we are married to for moments at a time:  Play what you mean.  Mean what you play.  Always. “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a well placed, well chosen note.” –Proverbs 25:11 for musicians.  It applies to all musicians, but especially the rhythm section.  Don’t succumb to the path of fear!

That doesn’t mean you need to be always aggressive.  It means don’t futz around playing ambiguously as if it adds anything to a tender moment and as if few people will hear what you’re playing anyway.  It’s usually just a tender cacophony of background noise.  Instead, play well chosen and well placed notes, like apples of gold in silver settings.

Well, I have the perfect audio clip as an example for you.  We have several great drummers but I’m going to brag on James who played last weekend.  He has every bit of this maturity in understanding intensity.  He drops in the perfect snare hit every time.  He chooses every note and places them well.

Here’s a section of “Jesus Lord of Heaven” which was an awesome moment of worship at our 11:00 service last Sunday.  During this 2nd verse, chorus and bridge the congregation went from standing to hands raised to singing loudly in gratitude to God. It was a moving experience.

As you listen note that the volume level is pretty much the same throughout.  The snare on two and four is the same throughout.  Things that add to the increase in intensity include the organ going from a sweet transparent tone to a rock tone and moving up only one or two inversions; not way crazy up the keyboard.  Also, the electric guitar goes from sparse slides with echoes to eighth note arpeggios adding more and more motion.  All in all every note by every player was intentional.  All of this allowed the vocals to breathe and go where they wanted to go.  If you notice anything else please leave a comment.

Disclaimer: this is a straight board mix with no post-production except for the normalization that Garage Band put on it when I exported the clip.

Jesus Lord of Heaven (example mp3)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.