easter and guitar at wec

Things went awesome for the Easter services at Waters Edge Church.

Needless to say, things were a complete success, judging by the number of people standing up during the services signifying they had made a decision to follow Christ. That, of course, makes all the practice and waiting and practice and practice SO worth it.

To try to keep with the music theme of things, I'm gonna review things from a music point of view.

Awesome.

The Waters Edge band, I may say, has never sounded better. After seeing a couple vids of performances during practice, everyone looked awsome, and sounded better. The drummers for the beginning were one of the coolest openers for a Waters Edge service.

I was quite satisfied with my playing today. Of course, playing the U2 song, I was in my element completely. Even with the percussion additions, things still kept quite in the neighborhood of where I like to hang out in terms of technique and content. The two worship songs we did, "Happy Day," and "From the Inside Out," are two of my favorites that we do. Thusly, I know exactly what I want to play throughout the song, and feel confident enough to grab little ideas for improv everywhere.

I got exactly what I wanted out of my Tele for each and every moment of every song. Especially, the dual pickup control allowed me to do some awesome volume and tone control that I don't necessarily do normally. I had my bridge pickup turned up all the way, and my neck pickup turned up to about 3. What this allowed me to do is to have a nice full lead tone during times that I was being loud, playing on the bridge pickup. If I wanted to drop the gain down a bit, I'd switch to the neck pickup, and the juice going to the preamp model goes down and the sound gets cleaner. In-between for both pickups. She sang beautifully for me.

I also used the wah pedal to get a further add some tone control since I don't like to mess with my tone knobs. During the last part of the sermon where I'm in the background over the hymn and Stu's speaking, I threw the wah down all the way to spread the tone along the EQ spectrum and make things muddy. I varied it a bit to get add a touch on dynamics here and there, but I rode the low end for the majority.

I had a video camera with me most of the day Saturday during practice and today. Got lots of candid moments with people, and I'll try to get that edited and posted for your viewing pleasure within the next couple of days.