Lego and Sawdust

For better or for worse, we introduced the kids to Rayman’s Raving Rabbids on the wii. A slightly irreverent game at times (burping contests, spitting accuracy contests, flatulence rockets…) it’s nonetheless a whole lot of fun. Or maybe it’s fun because of the burping contests, spitting accuracy contests and flatulence rockets. Whatever.

Anyway, the subgames my kids like best are the music ones. They play along to “Satisfaction”, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”. “Celebration” and “Funkytown” in the RRR version of Rock Band. I love it when my 10 year old walks around the house singing the guitar riffs from some of my favorite songs. They also love to follow the dance moves to songs like “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)”.

MrSnowy and MrsAsh were over, and the girls convinced us to do some dancing. The wives just watched and laughed and documented the occasion for posterity.

More of the dance is here.

I just bought, on the recommendation of a blog post (that’s now long gone from my browsing history…) an album by a Los Angeles band called Zehnder. Zehnder is made up of twins Tim and Tom Zehnder, cellist Adrienne Woods, drummer Mike Boggio and percussionist Emiliano Almeida.

General Review: I love this album. Great harmonies. Great arrangements. Strong lyrics. It’s music about God by Christians that aren’t just trying to fit into the Paul Baloche mold or the Casting Crowns mold, but are instead making their own art. This album is on my playlist all the time, and it gets better with every play. If this album had a bit firmer hand on the production tiller to weed out a few poor choices, it would have been darned near perfect.

Zehnders Overall Sound: A sparse and open acoustic sound. Single acoustic guitar and reggae-inspired bass are the predominant instruments with great percussion support and wonderful integration of cello and other instruments. The vocals are predominantly two voices in constant harmony as only twin brothers can do. Songwriting and arranging is a strength of Zehnder’s. No song is just “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus”, there are always twists that make listening interesting and appealing.

The reggae feel and high vocal harmonies of Spirit Born, I Believe, Rise Up and Holy God Creator of All Life will have you swearing that Synchronicity-era Sting is in the studio, but that makes me smile rather than being a distraction. It fits in so well, imagine an alternate universe where Sting and the boys went acoustic and created a Christian band rather than going 80′s new wave punk. (and yes, that’s incredibly high praise from me, the entire Police box set is also on my permanent playlist).

Highlights:

• Spirit Born – Great song. Try getting this out of your head. I dare you.
• Angels’ Song – Catchy and fun and deep all at the same time. This has made it into our regular Christmas playlist. Lyric Highlights: “Oh, sweet Mary, my love / I was so close to saying goodbye / To my life, my wife-to-be / Thank God I heard that song / And followed the dream… / And now we listen to the Angels’ song / We listen to the heart of their song / We put away our fear, put it all away / And find a way to sing along”
• I Believe - This song that shows the arranging talent these guys have. It’s a great song of struggle and doubt and faith. Lyric Highlights: “And oh the grief, to say goodbye / Sing out wailing through labored sigh / Swing white hot fury to black despair / Dare you to find your God in there / I believe, help my unbelief”
• Rise Up - Another great example of Zehnder’s ability to write a song about something that’s been done to death but bring a new perspective and fresh sound to it. Lyric Highlights: “At the moment of deepest grief / The powerless are lifted high / And carry truths beyond belief / Rise up, feel the change! / The Resurrection comes again!“.
• One Fluid Flow - An oddly structured, quirky, beautiful song full of monotonic harmony and incredible lyrics, this is the deepest song on the album. It contains my favorite lyric:
  Varied and wide is the landscape of this life,
  And naturally running through is the river of my faith,
  Yet why do I pour it out
  Into categories of people, place and time?
  They become little glass jars on a shelf,
  Full of the river’s water, but river no longer,
  
• What Wondrous Love is This – A celtic-influenced thick, deep interpretation of a beautiful classic hymn. It’s respectful and classy. but very uniquely Zehnder.
• Holy God, Creator of All Life - This song is the closest this album comes to getting everyone in the sanctuary/arena to sing along. It’s a simple plea for God to hear our prayers, but it completely avoids cheesiness and instead pours out sincere desire. You’ll be shouting along, I promise.

The entire album is interspersed with short clips that tie the set together and make it an album, not just a bunch of songs. I love this decision, it shows a mindset that wants to present a body of artwork, not just radio hits. In between various songs are a 10 second clip of a cello quartet playing the theme from Angel’s Song, a hand-drum improvisation, and a choirboy’s vocal solo from Angel’s Song. The album concludes with my kids’ favorite track, Up Via Westinghouse. On the cover of the album is an elevator, so this last track is a hilarious marimba lounge-jazz elevator muzak version of Spirit Born.

Lowlights:

• Justice Jam – Zehnder sings the (admittedly nice) chorus and a group called “Street Poets” rap the verses. Sorry Zehnder, but I deleted this song. I tried to like it, I played it dozens of times, I tried to reconcile it with the rest of the album, but I couldn’t. I’m not against hip-hop/rap, but this is just poor. The lyrics are forced, the rhymes are weak, the delivery is amateur. It brings nothing to the table and it ruins the cohesion of the rest of the album. It breaks the album in half and destroys the flow of a great set of songs. Lyric highlights: “To not get bothered, followed, beaten or clobbered / By police for being the wrong color / Not guilty, your honor, my post traumatic slave disorder / Got me thinking freedom is far-fetched like President Obama“. Heh.
• Breathe In Breath Out – I saw a website that described this song as very “Emergent”. It calls eastern sounds and ideas into the concept of peace. I have to admit some unease about the concepts expressed in “Shalom, salaam, namaste / ancient the paths, we find a new way “. Namaste is a Hindu greeting (the palms together at chest level), and Salaam is the arabic root for the Hebrew Shalom. I can understand the need for peace, but without any further knowledge of the band, I get wary of Syncretism. It’s a beautiful song that still makes the playlist, but (while trying not to be knee-jerk) I still sometimes get little warning lights when I hear it.
• On Promise Road – My least favorite song on the album, once I deleted Justice Jam. It’s as high a quality as the rest, but it seems manufactured somehow. It’s missing the unique Zehnder treatment. The lyrics are pretty bland and there’s nothing to make this song stand out for me at all except the 30 seconds of unaccompanied hand-drumming at the end.

Overall album rating: 8.5 out of 10. (Minus Justice Jam: 9/10)

I strongly recommend you check this one out.

The CD is available for $14.99, or MP3 download for $9.99 here. Samples of every song on the album are available on the download page, and the band website offers samples of some of the songs, as well as a free full mp3 of the song Spirit Born here. The video for Spirit Born is here.

I just read a comment on a site about music. The content of the post was about how much the author hates the stereotypical “Christian guy with a guitar at a party”. It was an okay post, but the real gem was a comment in the ensuing discussion. It hit home and made me, a lifelong bass player, laugh out loud. I *so* relate.

I started playing bass in high school so I could play with the youth group worship band.

It’s the only instrument that you can suck at and still be allowed to play with real musicians.

Here’s how to replace a guitar string so it won’t slip and also won’t have a huge ball of extra string wrapped around the tuning peg.

I play guitar with a pretty heavy hand, so I’ve replaced an awful lot of strings. Over time, I’ve found a method that consistently works for me. I hate having 20 winds of string around the tuning pegs, but having only a few winds means that they can slip when you are getting the string up to tension. So, without further ado, How To Replace a Guitar String, as demonstrated on my Ovation 6 and 12-Strings.

First, an important basic: The tuners on the top of the headstock turn counterclockwise to tighten the string, and the tuners on the bottom wind it up clockwise. The strings all run together between the two rows of tuners. This is important. If you wind the strings the wrong way, they will have to bend around the other tuners to get where they are going, and you’ll break them easily, and have tuning problems.

(Click any image to go to a larger version)

<a href="http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/2727067_pD5gz/1#292398181_nMpB2"

So, lets string the guitar. First, cut off the old strings. Use wire cutters and cut them just above the bridge. Sliding the whole string out through the hole in the bridge wears things down, takes longer, and sounds terrible. If your guitar uses white plastic pins to keep the strings in the bridge, cutting the strings lets you reach into the sound hole to help remove the pins. Unwind the strings from the tuning pegs, coil them and discard them. Do that now, because if you forget you’ll poke yourself with them later.

I always start with the bass strings. Insert the string through the bridge. Pull it through gently until the ball end sits neatly. I always line up the ball ends so it looks pretty, but I’m retentive that way.

Turn the hole in the tuning peg until you can place the string straight through it. Insert the end of the string through the tuning peg and tug it straight, but not tight. Check that the ball end is still sitting properly in the bridge and that the string is sitting in the correct slot in the nut.

Trick number one: Tug the string straight, place your finger on the string at the nut, then slide your finger back to the first fret. This should pull the string back enough to give you some slack over the body.

This is just the right amount of slack to wind around the tuning peg a couple of times. Experiment, the bass strings need one fret, the higher strings sometimes need one and a half, it’s entirely up to your preferences once you see how this works. It’s important that you hold the string at the first fret during the next couple of steps to keep the string going where it’s supposed to.

Next, turn the tuning knob so that the tuning peg makes about a quarter turn, like this:

This quarter turn helps make sure you see which way to do the next step. It doesn’t work right if you wind the string the wrong way around the post.

Trick number two: The lock. It might make more sense for you to just do it and see what’s happening than it will when you read it. Bear with me, it’s quite a simple concept when you see it.

Loop the string backwards around the tuning peg and under the string. This is the OPPOSITE direction that the string winds up to be tightened. (That’s why the quarter turn helps, you can easily see which way the string winds).

Tug the string end fairly tight and bend it upwards under the string going down the fretboard. This bent-upwards piece will be held tightly in place by the string once it gets wound a little tighter, which prevents the string from slipping. Even if you only have a half turn of string around the tuning peg, it grabs itself and won’t pull out.

Still holding the string slightly taut against the fretboard, turn the tuning knob to tighten the string.

Keep tightening until it is near the correct pitch. It should look something like this:

Using your handy wire cutters, trim off the extra string as close as you can to the tuning peg. It’s okay if your wire cutters don’t have grinder marks on them like mine do.

And voila! You can see in this picture how the string grabs and holds itself.

That’s all there is to it. Lather rinse and repeat 5 more times (or 11 more times if you have a 12 string, or 3 more times if you have a bass) and you’re done!

Let me know in the comments if you’d like anything clarified.

We’ve always had thoughts of starting a family band. The Family von Page. The thought of sitting down in the evening and playing and singing with our kids has been a dream our entire time as parents

We have a goal that our kids will play instruments. We don’t want them to be virtuosos. We have stated as our goal that we’d like them to be able to pick up a hymn book (melody line and a few harmony lines) and sight read it. Whether that’s on piano or guitar or whatever doesn’t really matter. We’d like them to be able to open a book of Christmas carols and sing at a party. We wish for them to be fluent enough in music to be able to enjoy it without being frustrated by it.

I’ve been in bands most of my life. I played bass in some bar rock bands through university, and I’ve been leading and playing in worship bands on the acoustic guitar for years now, so I lose sight sometimes just how tough it is to start on a new instrument.

I just picked up a cheap Applecreek mountain dulcimer. I have a some idea how to play it, but not much. So now, as I plunk my way through “Mary Had A Little Lamb” all over again, I can finally empathize with the frustration my kids feel at their lessons, and also with the joy that fills them to bursting when they finally get to “…white as snooooooow.” without any mistakes.

If you will excuse me, I’m off to go work on “Three Blind Mice.”

–MrPages