it's all about YOU

Woa la!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

It's a crazy many weeks after the last post. Many things happened but words tend to elude me when i needed them most. sigh.. :(

Currently the core activities are vocal practices and musician practices.

LalalaHrr!

A lot of emphasis is being put into vocal training, maybe cos most vocalist need improve on their breathing and "lala"-ing.

From my observation, there are practices like lying down and singing, singin' sounds that help in err.. singing the right way! :)
And practice singing the album songs.

*pardon me, cos i noe nuts about singing, i tot it's just air passing through the throatie..

You can do it, la-la's! Breakthrough to realise ur full potential!!

Muzikians

Most of the songs practiced during the last few sessions are soooothing worship songs.. Lots of piano & keyboard action. There are chinese songs too, with R&B romantic-like intro, very Chinese-pop style, like a new song that popped out of 933 hits.

oh, i can't wait till next yr for the..

transform!
power musicians!

bratz singers!

bian! bian!

2-in-1

combined prac! (muzikians & singers combine)

lame lame.. wahaha!

Artist Spotlight: Paul Baloche
By Christa A. Banister

Artist Spotlight: Paul Baloche

Texas-based worship leader Paul Baloche opens up on the popularity of worship, his songwriting process and how he avoids cynicism.

Although he’s written congregational favorites like “Above All” and “Open the Eyes of My Heart,” worship leader Paul Baloche still wouldn’t exactly be considered a household name—something that’s “just fine” by him. Now in a revealing interview, Baloche opens up about the continued popularity of worship music, his songwriting techniques and how he’s manages to avoid cynicism (something that isn’t always easy in the Christian music world).

IntegrityMusic.com: Michael W. Smith says he always envisioned himself becoming a professional baseball player. I thought I’d be a sportswriter instead of a music journalist. Did you ever envision that you’d write the songs that people would sing in Sunday morning services worldwide?

Paul Baloche: I can honestly say that I never did. I was always “just the guitar player” and was pulled into leading worship reluctantly. Then in the midst of leading worship at my church, there were just moments in between songs where I would just sense this prayer rising up. And I would just start singing a simple phrase—from the prayer—and I just figured that it was just for my church. As the years have gone by, I’ve tried to be more intentional in writing worship songs. But I must say that in the beginning I never quite imagined churches around the world would be singing anything I’d written.

IM.com: Since you’ve been in the business for a while now, trends seem to come and go in music. But worship music has stuck around for a while and continues to connect with audiences. Does that surprise you?

Baloche:I guess it doesn’t. As crazy as our culture continues to get with things changing so far, I think people are crying out for an anchor in their lives, and they want to connect with God. Music is such a powerful vehicle. It involves our emotions. Modern worship music isn’t a brand new thing by any means, but I can’t see it going away. I think as long as people are trying to reach out to God and are trying to connect with Him, I think music and songs are a great vehicle to help in that process.

IM.com: Does there ever come a point in songwriting where you feel you’ve said everything you can say in a congregational worship song?

Baloche: At times, having written all these years, you tend think at any moment you’ll run out of things to say to God. But the scripture written a 1,000 years ago says to “sing a new song to the Lord.” So for me that means the Bible is commanding us to sing a new song. So that’s what I try to do.

IM.com: How does that process of coming up with a new song work for you?

Baloche: I would say that no two songs come together the same way. But most of the time it comes out of different times during worship. Maybe it’s in between songs where there is just that moment of lingering, and I just kind of sense these phrases. Or maybe a song results from something I read earlier in the week, a scripture or something I wrote in my journal, maybe even a prayerful idea.

“Open the Eyes of My Heart” was an example of where I didn’t start out to write a song. It was just a phrase I had in mind, and I find that process happening over and over again—where I have one little line, and that’s the beginning for me. Then throughout the weeks that followed, I’d take that line along with other ideas and just try to chew on them throughout the day. Maybe I’d sit down with the guitar (and I’d call it worshipping with it), take the idea and not just try to click into songwriting mode, but try to let it gestate. I’d let that seed germinate and kind of worship with it and sing it out prayerfully with a melody. Then all of the sudden you get another line, and a concept starts coming. You start to think this could be a really neat song about a particular aspect of God’s character. So I try to do more of that, just spending more time letting worship songs become more of a byproduct of honest worship, instead of like cranking out something clever.

IM.com: With that method, how do you remedy a situation where you might get stuck on a particular line?

Baloche: There comes a point, way later in the song where it become a kind of crossword puzzle—where most of it’s inspired, and you’re just missing a couple of lines. There’s where you might take out the rhyming dictionary. I try to hold off on that as much as possible, because it seems like the good stuff come from a place of worship, an honest moment of saying “I need to connect with God.”
Sometimes you write a song just to flex the songwriting muscle, just to stay in shape. But the ideal is what I just described.

IM.com: An important distinction for most worship artists is that worship is a lifestyle. How does that statement apply to you personally?

Baloche: The first time the word worship is used in the Bible is when Abraham is getting read to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. There wasn’t any music involved, Abraham certainly wasn’t singing, which underscores the point that worship isn’t really about music. Music is a vehicle to help us worship, but what I think God is after is a relationship. Worship, at its essence, is what we were created for— relationship with God. And that has become a cliché, but it’s true. We were created for his pleasure, and if we are not plugging into God and we’re not seeking His will for our life and being a part of advancing His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, then we are missing God’s best for us. Worship means wanting to learn how to receive God’s love, and to not try and find my identity from other places. I used to skip that one, I was like, “OK, worshipping is loving my wife and loving my kids.” And in the last couple of years I’ve realized before I do that, I need to come to God as his child and learn to receive love from him, grace, mercy, identity, all the things we can try to look for, even in ministry. When that’s in place, worship naturally leads to loving my wife, trying to be sensitive and saying I’m sorry. It’s loving my kids and being available to them, trying to be a good friend to my neighbors, trying to be a good son to my parents.

IM.com: As someone who’s been doing this for a while, how do you
prevent worship from becoming a kind of old hat to you?

Baloche: I think it is so easy for people like us to become jaded and cynical. We just hear Christian music all the time, and you have to guard your heart from being too familiar with it, even as a worship leader. So I encourage people to ask themselves “What are the things that inspire you in the Lord?” Do more of that. What is it? I tend to get oversaturated with noise, and I just need quiet. As a worship leader, I can’t be encouraging people to go anywhere that I’m not going myself. If you do it for any length of time it becomes more work. God can become like a job. But each day, when I wake up, I say, “I am going to get up today, try and be led by Him and by his spirit, and try to love others in his name.” That’s the best thing I can strive for.

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