Gethsemane

This past Spring our young adults group did a study/discussion by Paul Miller called The Person of Jesus, particularly, the Passion. If you're not familiar with any of Paul Miller's work, you should check it out. Our discussions about Jesus' emotional state during those last 24 hours were so moving that I wanted to somehow seal those discussions into a piece of art that would help us remember it. Needless to say, when I now read the words "troubled in spirit" or "distressed" as they pertain to Jesus, they now carry a lot more weight.

This piece was originally intended to be solo piano, but as I was running through it one last time our electric player, Tom Lippincott, began to improvise over the chords. I'm usually not one to throw in a last minute change to a service we've been planning for months, but what he was playing was sooo good, I never hesitated.

The piece has 3 movements (1. Distress, 2. Sweat-drops of Blood, 3. "Is There Another Way?") and was recorded during the Good Friday service on 4/6/12.

Enjoy!

Worship Fuels Worship

Steven Curtis Chapman came out with a fantastic song back in 2003 called "Moment Made for Worshipping." It's probably one of his lesser known tunes, but it's one of my favorites and is particularly speaking to me now. Here's the 1st verse and chorus:

6:30 Monday morning
I'm here hiding in my bed
A song plays on my alarm clock
As I cover up my head
But somewhere in the distance
I remember yesterday
Singing, "Hallelujah!"
Full of wonder, awe and praise
But now I'm must wondering
Why I don't feel anything at all

This is a moment made for worshipping
'Cause this is a moment I'm alive
This is a moment I was made to sing
A song of living sacrifice
For every moment that I live and breathe
This is a moment made for worshipping

It's funny how I so often associate worship with music. I understand that tendency, though. Worship music was the means God used to save me - wonderful moments of transcendence and awe, and radical desire to surrender my heart. This was my life as a young Christian. But, as we all know, the music eventually stops and we go about our daily lives. As I've had to learn over and over again (and am re-learning now), worship is not merely singing and lifting hands, but is clearly defined for us in Romans 12:1 - "...present your bodies as a living sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship."

Steven Curtis was on to something. In his song lyric, he reveals that he's like the rest of us, that though we all want those wonderful moments of transcendence to last, they don't. But what he says next is the best of all - "these moments are made for worship!" These moments are opportunities! So if worship is like what Paul is describing in Romans 12, then here's how I worship throughout the week:

• Doing the dishes
• Taking out the trash
• Waking up early with my 11-month old
• Cleaning the showers
• Sweeping and mopping the floors
• Changing diapers
• Opening up my home for a Bible study
• Giving my wife a back rub
• Getting in bed earlier than I want
• Choosing not to browse Facebook when I could watch television with my wife
• Giving the baby a bath and putting her to bed
• Taking the dog to the vet

Do you see a common denominator here? All of these are acts of self-sacrifice. I don't list these to pump myself up, because it's often that I don't do them with the best of motives. But the point is this: Jesus modeled this by washing the disciples' feet, and by doing the same, by serving and sacrificing our wills and wants, we are worshipping Him! Is this not what Jesus meant when He said, "He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal"? Of course it is!

So to bring this full circle: I find in my own life that, when I am worshipping by sacrificing my wants and my life, my worship time at church is heightened. And the contrary is true when I'm not living this way. The reason Paul described worship as self-sacrifice is because that's how Jesus worshipped the Father. It's been modeled for us - the healings, the teaching, the patience with His disciples, the cross - what about Jesus' life was not self-sacrifice? Why should we lable worship as anything but self-sacrifice? And ultimately, the music portion in our church services is also an opportunity for self-sacrifice as well. It's in those times that the music and the lyrics can move us to surrender our wills, and hopefully, propel us to self-sacrifice during our week.

How I Practice Piano

I tried to quit piano lessons many times when I was a kid. I can remember playing basketball outside with my friends and hearing those dreadful words, "Rick, tell your friends goodbye. It's time to go to piano!" We'd hop in our white Astro van and drive 20 minutes across town. It's not that I didn't like playing piano; it's that I didn't always like what my teacher made me play - classical music. Beethoven, Bach, all that stuff. I wanted to play what I wanted, you know, stuff I heard on the radio. There was a specific time I remember making my last and final attempt to quit piano lessons. My mom saw that I was serious this time, so she called my teacher to prep him for what would be an un-motivated student at the next lesson. When the next lesson came around, he said something that would eventually propel me into my calling as a pianist: "Rick, if you can learn to play classical music, you'll be able to play whatever you want one day."

He was right.

Dont' get me wrong - I can't dish out a Bill Evans solo without any practice. I wouldn't be your first pick to sit down with a couple of locals and break out into a Latin samba. But I've got the tools and the foundation to figure it out. It might take me a year - but it's not beyond me. How? Because I studied classical music.

So when it comes to practicing piano, I work on two things: 1. My roots, and 2. developing new roots. What I mean is this: my roots is classical music. Since graduating college, I've seen that, in order to maintain the level I'm at now, I still need to practice classically. That includes reviewing my scales, playing through old Bach or Chopin pieces, and also learning new classical pieces.

When I talk about developing new roots, I practice something that will stretch me to become better - jazz. Practicing jazz has multiple benefits for the classically trained pianist. One, it forces you to learn how to play chords in your left hand. This is especially useful if you don't have a guitar player strumming along on Sunday mornings. Playing left-hand chords makes up for the missing texture of the guitar. Second, it forces me to learn new scales and theory. Most of the time, hymns and worship tunes won't have very many jazz chords, but sometimes they do. In a few months, we're going to introduce a Bob Kauflin version of "And Can It Be." Though they're subtle, there are a few jazz chords in that song that might have taken me awhile to figure out had I not been studying jazz theory. Lastly, practicing jazz has trained me to hear "melody." If I'm writing a new song or doing a piano solo, learning to internally hear melody helps me be more creative in what I'm playing, and also in what I'm writing. I'm not aspiring to be the next Oscar Peterson, but I am aspiring to stretch my boundaries...

So I practice classical music to maintain my muscle memory and technique, and I practice jazz to expand my boundaries and become an all-around better player. All this can do is help me to be more creative when it comes to leading God's people in worship.

Can a Classically-Trained Pianist Learn to Play Chords?

Yesterday after church a middle-aged woman who was visiting our church approached me to express her enjoyment of the music. I told her thank you and that I was glad she was able to attend. She mentioned that she was a music teacher and piano player. She also mentioned something that I hear alot: "I really want to learn to play chords, but I'm stuck in my classical background." This is something I think about alot, so I thought it was time for me to blog about it.

Like this woman, I was also trained classically. I remember going through all the kiddie piano books with the art work of animals and children frolicking around. I remember graduating up to Bach, Mozart & Beethoven. I also remember the first time my teacher bought me a "pop" song to add to my repertoire. It was "A Whole New World" from the Aladdin movie. I stunk at it! By the time we got done with it, my teacher had written in every single beat (1, e, &, a, 2, e, &, a) and even drew lines to the notes that the beats went to. I could fly through my Beethoven, but when it came to syncopated pop music, I was not very good...at all.

Yet during that time of my life (age 5 - approx. 14), my ear was developing. My mom kept our car radio tuned to Magic 96 which was the adult contemporary station. They played anything that was 70s, 80s or 90s, so that included Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Hornsby, Richard Marx, Mark Cohn, Michael McDonald, Rod Stewart, Toni Braxton, All 4 One, Mariah Carey, etc. Although I didn't yet have a concept of chord theory, listening to these artists over and over and over began developing my ear for pop piano. As my interest in piano and music continued to grow, I started buying more pop song books (I still have alot of them at home, including Boyz II Men, Pop Chart Hits '96 Michael Jackson's "You Are Not Alone"...). Slowly but surely, I began to learn what it felt like to switch over from classical piano to pop piano.

Once into high school & college, my life as a Christian had come in to play, and I had opportunities to take part in worship bands. These guys required less and less of note-reading and more and more of chord reading, and they showed alot of patience with me. I began listening to "Christian pop", which had a very similar piano style to "secular pop," so the switch was pretty natural. Although I was still taking classical lessons, the technique and performance experience I gained from that aided me tremendously when it came to chords and church music (contrary to popular belief, classical music is made up of all chords - they're just broken up). The more opportunities I had to try out the things I was hearing on my cds and playing from my pop books, the more I started sounding like them.

So here's my observations from my own life as to how a classical pianist can also switch over to pop/contemporary Christian styles:

• listen to piano players that play the way you want to play.
• Play from the songbooks (Fernando Ortega, WOW Worship, others)
• Try it out, mess it up, try it out again.

I'm an advocate for chord playing AND note-reading, classical training AND pop training. Both are valuable and both have relevance in church music.

Playing Hymns Like Fernando

In my last post, I mentioned that I've been re-writing some hymns. In this post, I'd like to focus on hymns with timeless melodies. Consider the following:

Be Thou My Vision
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Come Thou Fount
Fairest Lord Jesus
Rock of Ages
Abide With Me: Fast Falls the Eventide
Amazing Grace

One of the cool challenges I've had in the churches I've worked in is seeking to preserve timeless hymns while playing them on the piano in a way that an 80-year-old and an 18-year-old can relate to them. Most hymns are written in choral format, so if you were to play them exactly as they are written, you'd be duplicating the vocal parts (i.e. soprano (melody), alto, tenor, bass). For my ears, I find this to be mechanical. Instead of duplicating the vocal parts, I like to use the piano as accompaniment, not as a vocal-part reinforcer.

Fernando Ortega has mastered this. If you're someone who really wants to learn to play hymns with a contemporary accompaniment style, but your ear doesn't seem to allow it, listen to Fernando. Check out his arrangements of "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," "Give Me Jesus", and "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence." Fernando's style is very simple, but his chord-voicings are lush. He's got some song books with the accompaniment written out exactly like you hear it on the recordings. Learn to play his songs note-for-note, and you've got yourself contemporary piano accompaniment!

Take caution! If you re-write the piano part, you'll need to tweak the vocal parts, too!