Coldplay.

Posted on
1

Coldplay is a band that I’m particularly thankful for. I remember being on a ski trip with some close family friends. Trevor showed let me borrow his A Rush of Blood to the Head CD for my walkman (Yes…that’s right). I loved it.

When I got home, I bought the album and later found Parachutes at a Pawn Shop for $5. I also picked up Live 2003 DVD/CD at Best Buy shortly after (when it was still new!). I remember X&Y came out, I was in Panama City Beach with my high school girlfriend and her family and had to get her mom to drive me to pick it up the day it came out. When Viva La Vida came out, I downloaded it as soon as it became available on iTunes late at night. I’ll never forget getting to see Coldplay a few years ago. We had floor seats and I spent most of the night walking up to the front, as close as I could get (I had to keep moving so I couldn’t get in trouble…but hey, it worked). It was a magical night.

I just really like Coldplay. So with Mylo Xyloto coming out, I was obviously super excited. Coldplay has been one of those bands to me. A few weeks ago some friends and I watched them at Glastonbury on DVR and had almost an hour of conversation about the bands evolution and different albums. When I first started playing electric guitar, I watched and researched how to get Johnny Buckland’s Parachutes and A Rush of Blood tone. I ended up buying a ’72 Tele Thinline Reissue because of that. I’ve been very influenced by them, and while I’m not going to review the new album, I wanted to express my appreciation for Coldplay, their music and influence on me as a musician.

Pick up all their old albums for at a discounted rate, as well as Mylo Xyloto.

Ten Out Of Tenn Tour

Posted on
Reply

I got to go with some friends from church to see the “Ten out of Tenn” tour, featuring 10 solo singer/songwriters all playing together and backing each other up and included Amy Stroup, Gabe Dixon, Katie Herzig, KS Rhoads, Tyler James, Matthew Perryman Jones, Trent Dabbs, Butterfly Boucher, Andrew Belle and Jeremy Lister (who wasn’t at the show, though they had some special guests to make up).

Apparently about every year they’ll record an album together and then do this tour. A friend of ours went a few years back and said we had to go. I had only heard of maybe 4-5 of the ten artists, but it was a great night!

Check out the Ten out of Tenn site and music!

Planning Out A Pedalboard

Posted on
4

Ok, let’s be honest…this is one of those posts that I really don’t have to post. Everyone can figure out how to plan and put together a pedalboard. But there are some things that I do that I thought I could pass on that might help as you’re planning out and putting together your board. Here’s my process:

  1. Figure out what pedals you’re going to use – I remember wanting to have certain pedals, but not being sure I’d be able to fit them. I looked up dimensions online so many times. If you add not actually having the board in your possession on top of that, it makes it really difficult. One great resource for this is PedalboardPlanner.com. You can pick out pedals and see how to plan and put everything together.
  2. Figure out how to arrange the pedals on the board – It’s easy to figure out if something will fit a certain way, but make sure you factor in the signal chain order and how you’ll be able to reach certain pedals. For example, a delay pedal with a tap needs to be in a place that you can reach and tap the tempo without knocking any knobs or other switches. You also don’t want a drive pedal or something so close to another pedal that you accidentally turn something else on or off every time you’re trying to turn that drive pedal on or off.
  3. Place the pedals on the board and factor in your patch cables and power cables – Sometimes everything fits one way, but when you add patch cable jacks on the side of a pedal, things don’t always fit anymore. If you’re not using solder-less patch cables that can be customized in length, you may have to factor in the length of the patch cables. If you’re using a power supply like the Pedal Power 2+ or something, you have to plan and test the connection jack for the power cables and make sure they fit well too. I always arrange the pedals a way on the board and take a picture so I can remember how it fit and then try it a few different ways and just go with what is easiest and what I like best (see bottom for some of these pictures).
  4. As you’re building your board, start at the beginning of end of the chain and test each connection – Whether you’re using solder-less cables or not, check each cable as you’re putting it together. This will save a lot of time instead of getting to the end once everything is all done and nice and neat and finding out there is a bad cable or connection.
  5. A clean board is always better – Spend time keeping cables hidden and out of the way. Using black cables naturally helps with this. Use any slots or holes to run cable as well, so it’s hidden and more clean looking. Keep pedals as straight as possible. I always like for there to be as little blank space as possible and pedals to be pretty tight.
Finally, as I said earlier, I always take pictures as I’m planning out how to fit things properly. Here are some pictures of my planning from a few years when I went from a small board back to a big board…and one of my biggest boards ever. This was the one I had to do the most planning for. I bought a lot of new pedals and a new board. This is one that took a lot of planning to get, but is one of my favorite ones I’ve had that looks super clean.

Only Once A Year? // Christmas in September Chapel

Posted on
Reply

In planning our NCCS chapels this year, I started thinking it’d be funny to do a Christmas chapel during a random month. The more I thought about it, the more it really made sense that we should celebrate Christmas and the miraculous story of Christ’s birth more than just once a year. I grew up going to chapels like this under Will Goodwin, who planned some great and creative chapels. I’m proud that this is one of my first “Will Goodwin Ideas”.

So today, we had a “Christmas in September Chapel” to celebrate Christ’s birth and the humility He displayed in leaving heaven to become fully man, while remaining fully God. It’s a weird paradox and mystery, but it’s worth celebrated more than just a month at the end of the calendar year.

We had Christmas songs, a tree, lights and lots of cool Christmas videos. Our praise team killed it leading these songs:

  • All I Want for Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
  • All Creation Sing (Joy to the World) – Seth Condrey (we used the opening track from this song on the album underneath a video so the band came in during the video)
  • Angels We Have Heard On High – Chris Tomlin
  • Little Drummer Boy – acapella with our whole team on different percussion instruments…inspired by what we did at Oak Leaf Church when I was there a few years ago.
It was a great morning and I think we walked away with a great challenge to be follow Christ’s example in humility and show joy every season, rather than just Christmas.
Here’s a video of our Little Drummer Boy…and yes, that’s me and Ty Faulk on some drums.

Shout Out to Kyle & Dirty South Drums

Posted on
Reply

I would be remissed if I did not give a shout out to my brother-in-law, Kyle Troop, after all the help and hookups he gives me. Kyle owns Dirty South Drums and is a dealer for multiple brands I use. The most frequent thing I buy from Kyle is Lava Cables…especially Lava Cable Kits or extra Lava Cable.

Almost every time that I re-do my board, I run out of cable. Most of the time I can plan ahead and order it from Kyle, but I was in a bind this past weekend. It was Saturday and I needed my board for Sunday morning at a church and Passion Kids Sunday night. Kyle had 7′ of cable at his house and just enough right angle plugs to satisfy that I needed.

I just wanted to say a big thanks for everything, Kyle!

If you’re looking for Lava Cable or almost anything else in the music world, check out Dirty South Drums and order it through Kyle!

Pedalboard Update: Fall 2011

Posted on
7

I’ve been thinking about changing a few things around on my board for the past few months. I was going to just swap out a pedal or two, but things were too tight to swap, so I had to wait to do a makeover. In the next few days, I’ll be posting about how I plan out a pedalboard, but in the meantime, I wanted to post the board and what I’m doing with what.

Here’s the chain:

  • [JHS Little Black Buffer - this will be first in the chain, but I ran out of power cables to power it, so I'm going to wait to put it on there until I get another cable]
  • EB Jr. Volume – still put pre-drive to control gain…I’m using this a lot more now. It’s nice to be able to pull back gain so easily
  • Budda Wah
  • This1sMyne True Bypass Looper – everything in the rest of the chain goes through this and has stereo outputs at the end
  • Diamond Compressor
  • Micro POG
  • RC Booster – currently using this for EQ and anything else needed…it pretty much always stays on, but will probably change once the Little Black Buffer gets put in the chain
  • Timmy – main drive for everything
  • Joyride – used for kicking everything up a bit and also used as a light drive
  • DD-5 – my favorite digital delay pedal
  • DD-20 – decided to use this over the DL-4 as it’s a little more versatile and you can dial in the BPM
  • DD-5 – kept another one of these on the board to use for different settings
  • Echo Park
  • RV-5
  • Empress Tremolo – I swapped this out for my Tap-A-Whirl…I love the sound and the gain knob on it that allows it to be heard better than the TAW.
I’m still using the Juicebox and Pedal Power 2+ to power it and Lava Cables. I’ve also got one FS-5U and a mini tap (that I got with some pedal I bought in the past, though I’m not sure who made it…maybe Dan at This1sMyne…?) for the Boss delays.

I’ve also updated My Gear Page to show these new updates.

New Music Tuesday

Posted on
1

We’ve been out of school on fall break yesterday and today and when I woke up this morning, I took my time getting out of bed. One of the first things I did was get on the iTunes app on my iPhone. I immediately noticed how many great artists were releasing new music today! Thought I’d pass along a few of the albums I bought today:

NEEDTOBREATHE – “The Reckoning” – Who doesn’t like NEEDTOBREATHE? I think many of us have been awaiting their follow-up album to “The Outsiders”, so I’m looking forward to listening through “The Reckoning“.

Gungor – “Ghosts Upon The Earth” – I’ve known of Gungor for a few years. I heard of them when we were playing a Student Life Camp with a team who had been with them a few weeks before we were with them. I got “Beautiful Things” last year before Passion 2011, and quickly fell in love. There isn’t much to not love about them. I knew they had a new album coming out, but had no idea it was out today. Super excited to listen to “Ghosts Upon The Earth“!

Leeland – “The Great Awakening” - I’m not sure Leeland will ever be able to follow up their first album, “Sound of Melodies”, but I’m excited that they’re still making music…and good music at that. Can’t wait to get “The Great Awakening“.

ALL THE BRIGHT LIGHTS – “Still Beating – Single” – I love these guys. They just make good music and I can’t get enough of their self-titled album. Can’t wait for more from them! In the meantime, grab “Still Beating” and get some major value in 99cents for a 7 minute song!

I know that there are many other releases today, including one of my friends from college, Jamie-Grace, but these are a few that I’m particularly excited about.

Celebrating 10 Years with Crossroads Church

Posted on
4

Yesterday, I was privileged enough to get to go back to Crossroads Church in Douglasville to play for their 10 year anniversary service and celebration. It was so great to play with some old friends but it was also a really cool thing for me because Crossroads was the first church that brought me in to play. I believe it was Easter Sunday 2007…my freshman year of college. God has done so much since then in the life of Crossroads as a church and it was so cool to see how faithful He’s been since it’s beginning, my first days there and up until today. God is so faithful to complete what He starts…and he’s not through there yet!

Here’s a little clip a friend videoed of the opener from yesterday: