Guitar for Worship

This is Alex McLean. He’s the one in the hat. One of my favorite pictures
ever. (Hint: look closely. It took me awhile. And no, nothing is going to
jump out and scare you.) He’s over at www.betterthanblank.org . Cool name,
huh? He’s the executive pastor at my church, so that means he’s technically
my boss. But ‘boss’ is such an ugly word. I instead choose to call all my
bosses ‘friends.’ Not sure how they feel about that, but it does raise my
own self esteem quite a bit.

Anyway, Alex is a very talented musician, and perhaps an even more
talented, shall we say ‘producer.’ He plays acoustic guitar, drums, and
vocals very well. But he can hear keyboard, electric guitar, bass, or even string
parts in his head and once he sings them for you and you play them on
your respective instrument, it’s like, ‘Whoa.’ So he’s cool.

He was also the one who got me into playing simplistically instead of
technically, musicianship over speed, sound over style, etc. Basically,
the modern indie and worship style over ‘look how cool my chops are.’ Or,
as I like to say, U2 over jazz-metal (which, and I’m very ashamed to say
this, used to actually be what I called my guitar style.)

So, before Alex was the executive pastor, he was the media pastor. And
I remember one evening of our Saturday night service…….the service had
just ended, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for just having had
the talent to squeeze in 8.5 solos into our worship leader’s 5 song set (and
the word ’solo’ is translated very loosely here….more like a soaked in delay,
reverb, and mids, hit as many notes in this measure as a hack like me
possibly can, guitar part). And I remember Alex coming up to me as I’m
tearing down my rig:

Alex: Hey, Karl!
Karl: Hey, Alex!
Alex: Hey, you sounded great tonight!
Karl: Thanks!
Alex: All the songs you played sounded great……except for the ones
with the solos.
Karl: Uh……I solo’d in every song.
Alex: Ya.
Karl: Oh.
Alex: Well, maybe it was just too much delay and reverb in certain parts.
Karl: But, I never turn off my delay and reverb.
Alex: Ya.
Karl: Well, see what I’m trying to do is play the correct counterpoint
to the D Maj scale, but evoke the feeling that the Christian life isn’t
all happy all the time by actually playing a D minor passage in the
classical type of the scale, harmonic minor, in a mode I invented myself. 
And the faster I play it, the more it works. That’s how counterpoint is. I
really think it lends a good flavor to ‘Heart of Worship.’ The best band
ever, Tourniquet, does stuff like this all the time. 
Alex: Have you ever listened to any U2?
Karl: Who?
Alex: Ya. I’ll get you some cd’s.

And so was birthed my U2 man-crushes (my wife is understanding,
though). And more importantly, was birthed the mindset of trying to play
just whatever the music and the worship calls for….which 95% of the time,
is simple, tasteful, and needs those three simple and tasteful notes to sound
amazing.

Props to Alex, at Better Than Blank.