So many of you have stumbled here looking for information about and recaps of Passion City Church meetings. The last update I gave was back in the Spring before the church took a break for summer. Since then, I’ve quit writing recaps. Honestly, I wasn’t at the first few meetings this fall with being on the road and being sick. However, I’ve decided to stop writing them since Louie is writing recaps over here now.

I love this church and it’s unbelievable to see how it’s progressed and become more and more like a church body every meeting. I’m sure that there will things that I will update about from time-to-time, but I wanted to explain why I wasn’t blogging about all our meetings anymore.

I hope to see y’all at church tomorrow or in the near future (including the Atlanta dates for the Glory in the Highest Tour).

for God. for people. for the city. for the world.

Even though I wrote this post forever ago, I wanted to come back and explain it in a little more detailed manner.

I had heard of a few guitar players who would make ambient pad sounds on the fly live and loop them. Pads are great for transitions and just filling up the mix as well. I knew that I could make these loops on the fly or record a bunch of presets and use them live in different keys, running my guitar through my effects and running the looper into an amp. This is what I had heard and seen some other guys do before, but it just didn’t make sense to me.

I would have to buy another amp to run the pads through (increasing my rig to three amps with my stereo amps) and would be another pedal to put on my board and so on. But if I got rid of the amp, then the tone of my guitar alone with the pedals would not sound near as good.

I thought I could record some keyboard pad sounds from Reason into the Boss RC-20XL Loop Station and only have to run an output from the Looper. The Boss Looper allows you to record into it and save it and loop it. I chose the Boss RC-20XL over some other loopers simply because Chris Orr already had one and gave it to me. It’s got eleven presets and I just use each one for a different key of pad (although I really only use 6-7 of them). I found a few good sounds in Reason, ran an output from my computer and into the Looper and recorded the pad holding the I and V in every key we play in on the Looper. I only record about ten seconds of pad sounds and cut off the recording while I’m holding it the keys still, so that it loops cleanly. Because I play the I and V, there typically aren’t any times that the notes sound dissonant (you have to watch it in different chord progressions though…and be sure to watch it during any key changes as well). I will play a few different octaves for some of the keys, depending on how they sound, but I typically play the I on two octaves and the V just on one.

Live I just run the Looper into a volume pedal and into a DI. This lets me control the volume without bending over and twisting the knob. I still run my stereo amps and then get another line ran for the pad. We mix it very low in the house so you can hear it during transitions well, but it doesn’t cut through the mix while we’re playing very much at all. Because it’s really there to fill the mix just a little and help during transitions, make sure you don’t go overboard in making the sounds or mixing them in the house. By itself, it gets boring, old and doesn’t sound good playing by itself for a long period of time. I will usually pick through some clean, delayed chords or make other ambient noises using my volume pedal, delays and reverb play some partial chords to add variety (pulling your tone knob back on the guitar and turning up the repeats has a nice effect as well).

I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it like this, but have found it to be the easiest and cheapest way for me. I hope this helps and y’all can take it and run with it. Let me know if you have any other questions…

It’s back.

I’m hoping that I’m more manly than I was two years ago when I tried this. I really hope to have an awesome bushy beard by the end of the month.

We’ll see…together.

Day 5

• I would venture to say that Colbie Caillat’s music is the music of fall…it just fits so perfectly.
• School is getting harder to stay focused on…only 32 days left before I’m done forever!
• I watched Twilight for the first time the other night. Not bad, but not worth all the hype in my opinion. But then again, I’m not a teenage girl…
• I’m actually enjoying Heroes this season. Maybe I’m crazy or everyone else who doesn’t like it is…
• People that are pulling out their Christmas music and decorations already are crazy! It’s not even Thanksgiving yet! It’s just so wrong!
• I’m thoroughly enjoying the cool weather (as long as it’s fall and not winter weather) and the beautiful leaves outside right now in Atlanta. It rocks my world every year.
• God has really opened my eyes lately to how blessed I am. He’s given me some great opportunities that I really don’t deserve. Some of them haven’t even opened yet, but I’m thankful for a chance and praying for His will and guidance.
• Facebook/Twitter is cool. I told only a handful of people about our engagement and then posted it. Within a day or so, almost everyone we know knew. And on top of that, all the kind words and love meant a lot.
• Facebook is also cool because people know its your birthday and make you feel great, without you even saying a word. Again…totally feeling the love and so thankful for it!
• Hannah’s Blackberry broke and we’re trying to work out a deal so that I can get a new iPhone and she can get my old one without us having to really pay any money. I just wish the new iPhone 3GS was actually a better upgrade than it is…but still would be awesome!
• I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately apparently. I keep passing out as soon as I get in bed and on the couch at school during the day. I need to start changing my bad habits…like blogging this late…starting now.

Taylor’s gear has been updated from his most recent tour with Phil Wickham. Check it out here!

I had this idea back in high school to make a book out of the story of the girl who I was going to propose to and I’s story. About a year ago, I started working on this book. Within the past few months, I buckled down and really worked on making it look more of a surprise than giving her the book and her knowing it was coming the entirety of looking through the book.

I decided I’d pretend like it was a gift from my parents to me for my birthday and the first part of the story would be my story. Then when I met Hannah, it’d quickly become our story together leading up to that night we got engaged. Because of the purpose of the book, it couldn’t be long so I had to abridge my story and our story down to 20 pages, complete with pictures (provided by Morgan Blake, although she didn’t know what they were being used for).

Once I got her dad’s blessing, the ring and the book, it’d be all ready to go. The more I thought about waiting until my birthday on Wednesday, I realized it might be easier to do it over the weekend.

I got back in town last night from Baton Rouge at about 10. Since she’d been driving my car some while I was gone, I knew I needed to take her home. I also knew the book had come in over my trip and was sitting in the packaging at my house. Once we got to my house, I grabbed the ring from the best hiding place ever (girls never look in guitar pedal boxes in your studio closet!). I started asking her if she sent the package and acted like I didn’t know what it was. We opened it up and chalked the mystery gift to being a gift from my parents…after all, it was a story about my life. She took the bait and wanted to take turns reading each page through it (I knew there was a risk in her wanting to flip through the book, but I also knew she’d want to read through it together). When the book turned to being about us and our relationship together, she still didn’t know what was up! The book turns again and blatantly says that this book isn’t about Nathan, it’s about us. She kept asking, “Wait…what is this?!”, so I had to read the rest. This is when I could really feel my heart pouding in my chest even though I hadn’t been nervous besides fumbling over a few words while reading. Then it talked about how special our love story was and said that it was time for us to turn the next page in our storybook. This is when I got down on my knee and pulled the ring out.

She immediately started crying and buried her head in my shoulder. Once I got her to look at me, I told her how I felt. I didn’t rehearse it and still don’t know what I really said…it was completely from the heart. I finally asked her if she’d marry me and she said, “Yes!” and jumped on me! After about a good 15-20 seconds of hugging it out, I said, “Don’t you want to see the ring?” We laughed and I put it on her finger.

It was a really special time for us. Thanks for all the love, kind words and support!

Last night we made it official…Hannah and I are getting married! Everything went so perfectly. Here are some quick thoughts and such running through my mind:

• A lot of people have been asking about the story of how it happened. I’ll be posting another post right after this one sometime today about it, so be sure to check back.
• There is no date set for sure yet, but with me traveling a lot there is only a small window of time we can do it. It’s just a matter of finding where we want to do it and confirming one of the few dates.
• It still hasn’t really set in that I’m getting married…
• I’m sorry if we woke you up or didn’t let you know personally. On top of having a lot of people that we wanted to tell and couldn’t get to them all, it happened really late at night.
• I just back into town an hour before it all went down, so I knew that the aftermath would be late and would be hard to tell people…especially the older people in our families. I didn’t realize how many people were still awake by the time we were able to call and text everyone we needed to and finally posted it on Twitter and Facebook.
• It’s not really official until you put it on Twitter or Facebook anyways…
• I’m super encouraged by everyone’s calls, texts, Facebook wall posts and Twitter replies…thanks so much! It means a lot to us!

Holla!

That’s right friends. The For Sale section is back on the blog. Hit it up for some good deals on gear and more!

A few years ago, my friends and I started a worship band. Things took off quickly after we played a retreat for North Cobb Christian School and then ended up leading First Baptist Church Woodstock weekly. We recorded a four-song demo that fall (2006). We didn’t really know what we were doing but it turned out pretty cool and we learned a lot from it.

Although we closed the door for the band, the demo just hit iTunes. Get it here for under $4!