Tuesday, January 20, 2009

worship confessional (1.18.09)

Ok, so services went great this weekend overall, but I did have my most embarrassing worship moment of 2009 (so far) ... I'm wondering has anyone else ever done this? We were singing Matt Redman's 'You Never Let Go' and you know how the bridge lyric is kinda borrowed from the second verse lyric? Well... I was singing the second verse--my mind was really resonating with the truth in the words, too--and I just totally abandoned the verse and ended up just singing the bridge, albeit an octave down. I looked up at the rear screen and realized it and I did two things: 1) I stopped singing. 2) I said into my mic, "let's sing that 2nd verse one more time... sorry about that." (at that point, I felt like I had to kinda apologize for basically ignoring the form of the song with my eyes closed) yeah... it was a bummer, but only at one service. :)

Setlist went like this:

Hosanna - Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown
Forever - Tomlin
You Never Let Go - Matt/Beth Redman
The Wonderful Cross - Tomlin & co.

feature tune - Gone by Switchfoot

Filled with Your Glory - Jon/Tim Neufeld

As you know if you've been reading my confessionals for the past month or more, we've been trying to really spend time making the transitions meaningful in our sets lately. This week's transitions were especially fun, one in particular. The set started in G with 'Hosanna,' and we pushed the tempo just a bit so we could just leave it there (122) into 'Forever.' We do the key change a la MWS at the end of 'Forever' so we landed in A on the final downbeat, which is where 'You Never Let Go' starts. When we ended 'You Never Let Go', we got rid of the click just for the final down chorus and then restarted on the final chord with the tempo for 'Wonderful Cross'... we slowly moved through the A, F#m, E progression of 'You Never Let Go' (2 measures per chord) and then when we struck the D, our bass guitar player immediately went into the melodic piece at the beginning of 'Wonderful Cross.' The other thing that was cool (at least I thought) is that I kept my capo on the second fret and played 'Wonderful Cross' with C voicings, using the C/G chord as the primary one chord. If you've never done that, you'll find that it produces an amazing undertone and actually sounds you're playing a note lower than your guitar can even play (without re-tuning of course)... anyway, try that sometime, it's kinda fun.

'Gone' was a blast... that's just a great song, and Ryan, the Associate Music Director, made tracks with a bunch of the loops, tams and digital artifacts in the song. That's always fun. Hey, I'd love feedback on some of your embarrassing worship moments if you have any like me :) Hope all of your weekends went well and God was glorified above all else.


This post is also a part of Sunday Setlists

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wonderful Cross is such a great song!

David said...

The Wonderful Cross - I love that song! I remember hearing it for the first time on a DVD of an early Passion conference - totally blew me away. Sounds like you had a great time with God Mark - bless you

Ben said...

Ouch! It happens...even nicer for us to hear that it happens to pros like you Mark! :)

AvenueChurch said...

The most embarrassing moment for me was one week when we did "Ancient of Days" and I decided to linger in that song between the D and A to bring us into the next song (which I don't remember what that song was). Anyway...may I suggest to not linger too long in an upbeat song, because your spontaneous singing on top of it may begin to sound more like a rap than worship. My pastor later told me that it sounded like I was rapping and to never do that again.

Isn't it just grand that us worship leaders get to make our mistakes on stage? What a great way to learn!

Anonymous said...

Love the transitions- always notice them! And "Gone" is one of my very favs- fun and sounded great! The video rocked, too!

"Hey Bono- I'm glad you asked..."

Gary Durbin said...

One time I was holding the bible and reading scripture to the crowd & my strap gave way. The guitar hit the stage with a thunderous boom. Horrible.