Anyone here using Hall's tunes on a frequent basis? My church just had a huge youth retreat and I used Center and I Will Overcome. Another church that I attend here in the city, www.lifechurch.tv, uses Song Of The Redeemed quite frequently, and they also do an amazing version of On The Road To Beautiful. Right now, I'm hashing out Micah 6:8. It's not that it's terribly hard, but it's getting the full band (especially drums) together on it. Anyone else using Hall?

 

cj

I use Marvelous Light and Song Of The Redeemed on a regular basis. They seem to go over well. SOTR is repetative enough that it catches on after a week or two. We've got a pretty sweet light setup (25 moving lights) so that when he sings 'we sing it in the darkest place' and then the drums come in, we do this awesome strobe effect on the drums. It's an awesome effect.

yeah, i'm useing song of the redeemed too. i play mostly for middle school / freshman sophomore in high school. i used to play salvation all the time, but it's time to go out with the old and in with the new.

i've done center a lot lately and all we need...actually i've done King Eternal a few times the past few months.

ryan

King Eternal?! Going old school Hall on us. That's pretty sweet. I don't think I've done that one in years. Probably around 2003ish. I like Center pretty well, as well as All We Need. I haven't tried them live yet, but I have been pumping out some Song Of The Redeemed. I'm still using all of the "On The Road To Beautiful" tracks on a regular basis though.

that's awesome. i'm still hammering out all the earth like it just came out!  ok, maybe not like it just came out, but I still find myself playing it a lot.  yeah, i've done a couple of old school stuff lately, and we actually did the old version of the vision last friday night at a gig i played at and since i was playing keys i got to do the fun piano part!  i think we pulled out lover of my soul a month or two ago, and i started going down memory lane!  peace!

ryan

Ah....Lover Of My Soul....such an amazing song!

Because of the topic of this post, I thought you all might find this interesting...

A few weeks ago when we played at Thirsty we got to play at the Late Night, also. Instead of playing songs that we always play, we took it as an opportunity to play songs that we NEVER get to play, but really love! Pulled out some songs from Thought, Porch and Altar, and even Nathan and Charlie. Most of the songs we've NEVER even played live. Heck, our bass player had never even heard some of them before we played them. Such a fun time...terrible transitions...lots of moments of "oh crap, I hope we don't screw up"....and even a few "oh crap, I can't believe I just did that". Regardless, it was such an amazingly fun night of sharing songs that many of the people in that room had never heard before...and I was surprised at how many HAD heard the songs before. Started the night with Charlie on the acoustic, playing "Everything Is Alright". Nothing flashy....no new arrangements...just Charlie 99% of the time. I was surprised at how many people cheered when he started it and sang right along. No big earth shattering moments of raucous (sp?) celebration, just a lot of moments of "Hey, I really LOVE saying that to God" whether it was silent meditation, muttered praying or audible singing. THAT'S a live setting that I enjoyed.

that's awesome brian.  i can't say any of my experiences can top that one (but not like you were trying to top anything) but about 7 years ago charlie was doing this thing at bridgeway one weekend and it was pretty much a mini little worship conference and i think charlie brought in don johnson (not the one from miami vice) to play B3 that weekend, but it was back when seth was leading from time to time.  anyways, we sang holy visitation for like 30 minutes that first night, and of course give us clean hands because it was really spreading, but i just remember sitting in the sanctuary there thinking, "does it get any better than this?"  I mean, charlie's my favorite anyway just because we're all from okc, but that was the best weekend i've ever had.  and it spawned out of nothing more than about 50 or 60 people from all different backgrounds coming together  just to worship.  i  have seriously lost count of how many people i talk to when it comes to the subject of who's your favorite worship leader, and i always have a bridgeway story to tell or sometime i dropped by charlie's office and he was willing to talk for a few.  it's the small things in my mind that make him who he is.  you know i'm not trying to put charlie on some distant pedistal that no one can touch, but ever since the day i first heard joel's window, i knew that this guy was for real.  now granted i've only heard him do "Everything's Alright" maybe live once, and i'm sure it rocked at Thirsty, but to me songs are totally irrelevant.  it's his ministry that still blows me away.  btw brian, you looked awesome on the webcast at 722 when you guys released "Flying Into Daybreak".  Take care!

ryan

Don't you just love the feeling you get when you start a song and within the first 8 or so bars you begin to wonder why in the world you are doing that song? Or here's my favorite "oh crap" moment. I've got a drummer who gets in his own little zone when the spirit moves, and he tends to push the tempo just slightly. One night, we were playing a song that we had a nice little djimbe/synth loop in the back ground keeping a real tribal feel to it. It might have even been Sweep Me Away. Anyway, he got to the part where it was time for him to come in, and he started off great....but slowly but surely, he pushed it just a little bit so that it became 2 1/2 beats ahead of where we were supposed to be, and he had no idea, so he just let the track run. It was the hardest thing in the world to follow with 2 different beats of 2 different tempos rolling through the PA stack at the same time. My ears are going crazy just from remembering what it sounded like.

To answer these two questions simultaneously(spelling someone..it's late)

1) Live I've used a few actually. Regularly I use "Marvelous Light", "My Drink", "Sending", and a re-worked version of "Sweep Me Away". There's a video floating around somewhere of "sweep" but i digress.

2) I've had three meltdowns before leading worship and none of them were pretty.
  a) We were doing "Famous One" and all the drummers in the house know that beat is kind of important. My drummer went blank and didn't play it right. It was so bad I could cry. My bass player started tapping to get him back in time but it just wasn't working. Train wreck city.
  b) I was working at a youth camp in Charleston, SC one summer and we were doing "My Glorious" like every couple of nights. The kids liked it so I used it a decent amount. So by halfway through the summer, the words should be known. I went to sing the first verse, got the first phrase then my mind went completely blank and I backed away and the other guitarist died laughing while he was playing.
 c) This is by far the worst ever. I was doing a retreat for my home church and we did this Underground church kind of thing. I was out in the woods with my guitar playing quietly so that when they figured out where it was, we'd all worship under the stars etc. Well everyone gets there and it's going great. People are into it, I was into what God was doing there. I then did a lead in to the last song "Amazing Grace". I started talking about how much the song meant to me and my walk and how even though we've all sung it 2000 times it still means so much. Well, we do the first verse no problem, we start the second verse and right after the "...and grace my fears releaved" I completely blanked and forgot the words. So in my haste to not look dumb I sang "we've known less days". The camp pastor, the youth minister, the college people there leading breakouts all put their heads down and start trying not to laugh. Yes, most of the kids didn't notice but the kidding that I got from those that did, wow. I will never live that down.

Sorry to be long winded. It's boring here at FSU in the summer on campus.

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Rockin out for the right reasons.

I LOVE these stories!

Hey Brian~ what are the odds we could get a disc of your Absynth/Reason/Garageband tracks you use live? I think it'd be cool just to hear them, much less use them in our church homes across the nation.

search for Absynth sounds on Limewire/Kazaa/any p2p program...I've posted them on my computer and shared them all over the place. Space Wind is one of my main sounds. Watch for it. You'll be surprised how many places it pops up online.

i've used marvelous light, center and all we need and they all work really well! they are well written, simple and catchy melodies for the people to catch on pretty quickly!

Wow, didn't realize how old this topic was!!

I've used "Closer" quite a bit and "King of Glory" in live worship settings . . . and we've used "Salvation" in the past.

By the way, is there anywhere on the website where we can read some of the ideas that drove Charlie to wrote these tunes? Like maybe the Bible verses he was reading or that the songs are based on?

 Thanks! 

Manny
Far From Close
www.farfromclose.com