¿What's Your Favorite Kind of Music?

So I'm not usually good at questions about favorites with very few exceptions (favorite color? - Green). Anyways, for how much I like music, I realized how poorly I can categorize what I like.

For a while I thought I liked music that I would love to be able to play (I like a lot of acoustic guitar music), but then I realized it's the other way around. I love to learn to play music that I appreciate, so I'm back to starts on what I like.

So I realized as to style it's this. I love when music could be played by one person in a field, or a group of friends sitting around a fire. Maybe the album adds more but the essence of the song can be fully captured in that simple arrangement and setting, because that perfect screaming guitar solo, or that blazing kick drum doesn't really make a song good, they are just signs of gifted musicians, not gifted artists. The appreciation of the simple is in large because what I appreciate in content.

In the content there has to be something about the song that catches my attention. The words should have a real connection to the ponderings of the artist. Ideally it's either something I've been thinking about, or it challenges me to think about.

Secondly, I like when songs paint a picture and use the music and the lyrics together to make you feel just what it's showing you.

Look at these lyrics in Cannons by Phil Wickham:

The chorus goes like this:

Singing you are holy, great and mighty,

the moon and the starts declare who you are.

I'm so unworthy, but still you love me,

Forever my heart will sing of how great you are.

Definitely true and good, but also very cliché. Ordinarily this would bore me (unless God had just been speaking to me about my unworthiness or something of the like, suddenly making the song personal). What Phil does though that makes me appreciate the song is he paints a picture through the verse that leads into the chorus and makes it many times more powerful. Here it is:

(verse 2, though verse 1 is good too)

Beautiful and free, the song of galaxies,

Reaching far beyond the Milky Way.

Let's join in with the sound,

Come on, Let's sing it out,

As the music of the universe plays

and then continue up to the chorus.

...Find the song here.

That's cool, thats what I like. It's so much bigger. I can visualize a symphonic roar filling the galaxy, all excited about God. The illustration is verse 1 is beautiful as well. There are so many songs especially on Christian radio in particular that speak vague truth in a vague impersonal way. It's like they thought of a tune they liked and had to fill it with some words. Art shouldn't be about being catchy, it's about expressing.

Now I just need to find more music that fits. Feel free to recommend. I'm bad at searching out music. (and these posts are getting long)

Amazing Worship -::- Amazing Music

What's the difference?

The first is clearly more "spiritual" than the latter, but what does that genuine spiritual experience look like in our lives, especially when everything we experience gets filtered through our physical bodies. Also, to clarify I'm using a very narrow definition of worship here, referring to praising God through song whether it be as a church or individually. Worship entails significantly more than that but that was the aspect of worship providing the confusion for me.

There have been plenty of times I can point to in the past 10 years where as worship concluded I had this feeling that worship was awesome, but then I realized that that "awesome worship" feeling came at times when I just heard music I loved and the mix was perfect and the mood was set just right. Not that worship can't happen in those places, but I began to wonder if my worship experience was really just manipulating my mind and emotions through music, a beautiful tool that ties so closely into our hearts that it carries a lot of power, regardless of "spiritual" content.

The last few months have been a battle to get to the bottom of this. How do I know when I'm enjoying God's presence or deep and worship versus just enjoying an awesome groove??? As soon as a that uncertainty in my worship surfaced my worship dried up, and I could hardly participate in worship or music at all.

Frustrating to not know the difference between God and music. Were all those times just resting in the presence of God, really just times of being massaged by a rhythm that hit the spot?

So here's what I'm thinking. Worship can manifest in any time, any place, and can be expressed through so many mediums. One of the most awesome settings is in a community of people who have devoted all they are to Jesus Christ. So we gather and use music, as a powerful mode of expression to worship our Lord. A great idea in principle but here's where I started messing it up.

I roll in Sunday morning and I "arrive at worship," or I pull out my guitar to do a worship song. As I waltz into that worship setting I enjoy some music and then it's done and I wonder if I really encountered God or not. Now here's what needs to change.

I need to go through my days recognizing God everywhere. There are times when I see him inspire people to awesome things. There are times when he opens up opportunities for me to represent him clearly. He gives revelations of how good he is, and how he's blessed me. I need to think on those things, to dwell on those things, and to let those things build up. When the goodness of God begins to overwhelm me (which should really happen on a much more regular basis), I can use music, in my room or corporately, to express that joy, and that passion, and that thanksgiving. The music just becomes the best medium for expressing the emotions within, and not a medium for attempting to manipulate them into feeling like God is good. God makes himself good. The music doesn't do that. Music just happens because God IS Good.

Hair Cut - (and a social tip)

So I finally cut my hair which is the most interesting recent event so I'll write about it, both the intent and what actually happened.

So... I wanted short, stylish, respectable, not boring. Difficult combination I dare say, especially with curly hair. I decided to go kind of fringe (see this looking at the second set of pics), kind of caesar (with hair sweeping forward) and kind of faux hawk... all at the same time. I decided against leaving the blond rattail.

Mom cut it and it more or less went according to plan, and I like it. Exception being the fringe only half worked. Bangs are kind of too short. But I'll try again in a month and we'll get better I reckon. Good start though.

Also note I'll be seeing Prisca this weekend so if she's any sort of real photo major there will be documentation coming soon.

PS As a general rule that I've had reason to think about recently, "your hair looks so much better that way" or any compliment that compares the current appearance to past appearance isn't really a compliment, especially if the person liked their previous appearance... a rule I will always remember to apply especially when dealing with women who tend to read lots of extra details into your words...

Board building days 7&8

Here comes the top of the board! I'm saying days 7&8 because I'm not really documenting the days of... polyurethane in the morning, flip board, more in afternoon, flip, again before bed, again morning.... that I've been doing all week. I've built up a super thick layer on the bottom and sides, and some on top as well. Finally a 3 foot roll of grip tape came in. It's like a big sand paper sticker, so I drew the pattern on the backing and cut it out with an exacto knife, peeled off the backing and stuck it on.

I then rough cut the main piece and taped it in place. I removed small pieces of backing at a time to make sure it stayed placed well since it's super sticky.
Then I used a rasp to begin grinding the edges. You can see the shape of the board begin to appear.
Then I cleaned it up with the exacto knife.
Now I'm just putting more polyurethane (I'm sick of that stuff) on the exposed wood which will help keep the edges of the tape from peeling up as well. Hopefully it's done tonight! I plan to do a photo shoot with it at some point with some of my Argentina paraphernalia that inspired it. Maybe some mad photoshopping when I get around to it.

later,

Board Building days 5 & 6

So these pics are in reverse order... I hate blogger sometimes. I finished glueing the "guarda pampa" design together, and stripped the paper guide off the back. I then pulled of a strip of plywood down the middle with a chisel as seen in the last picture. I clamped and glued the pattern in the gap (super tedious to provide compression to the whole thing), and then sanded it all flat. I added a strip of cherry around the whole border. I added the first layer of polyurethane which also makes the colors richer and glossier. Many more layers to go. I just ordered the grip tape so I expect to be done by next saturday.

Board Building days 3 & 4

Now I had to take my pieces of walnut cut to size and line them up before sanding them like mad to make them all identical. I then did the same with some birch. I'm hoping I made enough to finish the pattern I want to make. After way to much sanding, measuring, and sanding again I was satisfied and started gluing the pieced together. Once I have a big block I'll glue it to the board as one unit. I realized they weren't all actually the same size but I think it looks alright so far anyway. We'll see what happens. I don't really know what to expect so I'll be optimistic and careful =)

Board Building day 2

So after cutting a paper guide in the shape of the board, I traced it onto the wood and cut it out with a jigsaw. It looks like I did it in a dump but that's our driveway and we're having construction done so it's kind of a wreck.

Here's the corner of it. you can see how nicely those layers glued together leaving only one board where there was 4 before.
After sanding the edges I used a chisel to cut out the shape of the trucks, just deep enough so they will sit in the board instead of on top of it. I chisels the one side too far so had to glue some scrap wood in to fill... but there will be grip tape on top so the cosmetic blunder won't be visible.
I put in the screw holes and the a big hole in the middle to put the jigsaw in as a prepare to cut out the traced section below.
And there we have it. It's hard to make the cuts smooth... oh well.
Here it is assembled and ready to test run. Turns out when I turn, the wheel bites into the wood so I had to do some more cutting but now we're good. This whole process went twice as fast as with my last board. I reckon I'll do more today and tomorrow so we should have more posts up pretty quick.