pursuing faithfulness to the Word of God and fullness of the Spirit of God
Archive for March, 2006
Song – See My Face No More
Mar 25th
In my lunch hours at work, I have been trying to improve my mixing abilities by revisiting old recording projects. It meant I didn’t have opportunity to re-record any parts, but I could change the effects, and fix any problems in the MIDI recordings. This song is the first one I recorded for Ali McLachlan, originally using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9, back in 2001. It’s based on Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.
You can listen to it or download it from my Soundclick page here.
Recording
Vocals:
The vocals were all by Ali McLachlan singing through a pair of my wife’s tights stretched over a coathanger into an old Toshiba microphone. Ali was a very easy vocalist to work with – most of his takes were spot on first time, and he always sang with full conviction. For the remix, I added some compression and EQ, and a bit more reverb.
Drums & Percussion
The drums were programmed and used sounds from my Korg X5D. I replaced the sounds with nskit7 samples, and improved the patterns to vary the velocities. I found some free conga samples on the internet for the outro.
Acoustic Guitar
I added some compression and reverb to the acoustic guitar part, as it was completely dry in the first version, which sounded a bit odd on the introduction.
Organ
The original organ sound was (I think) from my Korg X5D. I managed to recreate something close enough using the Organized Trio VSTi.
Bass
The bass guitar I used was a very cheap model in the shape of a Gibson SG. Its output completely lacks definition, and nearly nothing in the higher frequency range. A bit of compression and EQ helped things along a bit, but really I could have done with re-recording it. I also borrowed some notes from an earlier chorus to fix some duff ones in chorus two.
Electric Guitar
The electric guitar parts were left more or less unchanged from the original, except the levels were dropped a bit on the lead guitar.
Piano
I used samples of my P200 to replay this part, and fixed a couple of notes accidentally hit too hard.
Mastering
Again I found the Sonitus Multiband Compressor gave really nice results.
Lyrics
I’ll be gone on the rising tide with the gale at my back
Compelled by the will of God to walk a certain track.
Solemn prayers in the salted air, then part from the shore.
Tears shed and a farewell said, “You’ll see my face no more”.
Don’t break my heart,
Though it may be hard.
Let me play my part.
Don’t keep me from the will of God.
Come loosen your chords of love that bind me here with you.
There’s time to run and a time to hide, a time to follow through.
Rough or smooth, I never get to choose, I’m happy just to serve.
That he leads me in his will is far more than I deserve.
There are times of opposition
Hardships down the road I tread
But doubts and fears leave me no options
God’s way is the way ahead
I’m back in the old town now with the music to be faced.
If my vow is sealed anywhere, I’m sure this will be the place.
Wreck the peace with a chance to preach the gospel to the Jews.
Inner pain and a Roman chain, but with a life still left to lose.
Some Links
Mar 24th
Yet again, the general business of life as a father of three has kept me from posting much up here, so I’ll direct any visitors to some cool stuff I’ve come across this week.
- Mark Mould has started blogging. Mark has become a good friend over the last year or so as I discovered he shares my passion for theology, an appreciation for the Puritans (he’s reading the works of John Flavel at the moment), and a crazy enough sense of humour to be able to enjoy full faith.
- Jon Brombley has put some of his songs online at myspace. In fact, I’ve just noticed that Harun Kotch another friend from my church has some of his songs online too as well as some from his band Replenish.
- Mark Roberts has been working on an excellent series on the Da Vinci Code, with some very useful posts on the historical reliability of the New Testament
- Paul Schafer has created a great list of newfrontiers churches with audio sermons online.
- If you thought you would skip downloading sermons from Bethlehem Baptist Church while John Piper was on sabbatical, think again. He has a first rate lineup of stand-in preachers, including Wayne Grudem and Sam Storms.
- NT Scholar Andreas Kostenberger is blogging.
- And finally, Richard Collins has produced another podcast. I haven’t listened to it yet, but he’s always thought-provoking.
Ern Baxter – The Priestly Clothing
Mar 20th
A while ago I posted a link to Dan’s transcription of Ern Baxter’s classic “Life on Wings” series, and as a bonus added extra, converted my tape of the sermon to MP3 for download. That post has proved one of the most popular on my blog. I still get regular requests from people wanting MP3 copies of Ern’s sermons. I have posted out about 20 CDs now, but to be honest I do not really have the time to keep doing this. Sorry to those of you I have not replied to yet. It was also getting a little expensive, and though most people promised to reimburse postage costs, none actually did. So I’m waiting now until I can find somewhere I can host the files for free, and just let people download them.
Anyway, Dan has an incredible gift for transcribing sermons. I have done this once or twice and let me tell you, it takes a long time. His latest project is a transcription of Ern’s Sermon series on the High Priestly Clothing, which he preached at the Anglia Bible Week in 1983. I was there (7 years old at the time), and those Bible weeks I will always remember as times when God moved powerfully in my own life. There was a great sense of excitement in the church whenever Ern came over to speak.
Anyway, you can download the transcriptions in Word document format here.
I actually have all the tapes from the 1983 Anglia Bible Week in MP3 format. If you ask really nicely, and are prepared to be patient, perhaps I will be able to get copies of these to you.
- Tape 1 – The Gospel of the Kingdom (Stanley Jebb)
- Tape 2 – From God’s Perspective (Howard Carter)
- Tape 3 – Kingdom of Priests (Ern Baxter)
- Tape 4 – The Kingdom Church (Howard Carter)
- Tape 5 – The Linen Breeches (Ern Baxter)
- Tape 6 – The Coat of Fine Linen (Ern Baxter)
- Tape 7 – Victory Through Surrender (Howard Carter)
- Tape 8 – The Robe of the Ephod (Ern Baxter)
- Tape 9 – The Ephod (Ern Baxter)
- Tape 10 – The People of Truth (Howard Carter)
- Tape 11 – Strange Fire (Ern Baxter)
Update: I am afraid I am no longer able to provide these sermons, but if you would like access to a wealth of Ern Baxter sermons, please visit Broken Bread Teaching.
Song – Don’t Look At Me
Mar 16th
Here’s a recording of a song I wrote towards the end of last year. It is themed on John the Baptist, and was inspired by reading the early chapters of John’s gospel and Bruce Milne’s BST commentary on John. I love the way that John the Baptist so humbly pointed away from himself and directed all attention to Jesus.
It can be downloaded or streamed from my SoundClick site here.
The Lyrics
Don’t look at me, there’s nothing to see
I’m just a voice in the wilderness, crying “Get yourself ready”
Don’t stick with me, I’ve got nothing more to say
I’m just a friend of the bridegroom – it’s not my wedding day
Don’t trust in me, but listen to God’s word
I saw a dove descend from heaven, and this is what I heard
“This is my Son, my beloved One”
Listen to him, listen to him
This is the One, God’s Anointed One,
Come follow him, come follow him
Verse 2
Come and repent, and be baptised with fire
Don’t be content drinking water, when you could be drinking wine
Come to the light, come and see his glory
Don’t miss the most important person, in the whole of history
Come and believe, grasp the promise of new life
This is the one the prophets spoke about; he’s right before your eyes
Chorus 2
This is the Lamb, taking the sin of man
Have faith in him, have faith in him
This is the Word, creator of the world
Come worship him, come worship him
The mission of my life’s complete:
I’ve seen and testified
Now my ministry can fade away
But but let him be glorified
Recording
Recording was done in SONAR 5, and this was the first track I made since purchasing Project5 which gave me the use of the Dimension sampler.
Vocals – Unfortunately its me again singing. I needed to make use of the SONAR take comping features to piece together sections that sounded OK. Quite a lot of compression was needed as well as some gain automation to get the levels a bit more even. I used a Sonitus EQ and Kjaerhus Classic Reverb, and of course my Kjaerhus GUP-1 which is my favourite compressor.
Choir – The ‘aah’ choir after the bridge is made up of 5 of me, plus the GM choir from Hypersonic (due to the fact that my lowest and highest harmony parts both sounded rather ropey).
Acoustic Guitar – I still struggle to get a good recorded sound out of my Yamaha APX-4. I recorded both with my Senheisser Evolution e845 mic and direct using the pickup. I went with the direct sound in the end, with a bit of EQ and Reverb added.
Piano – I made use of my very own sampled piano library played back through Dimension during the recording process, so I didn’t need to keep turning on my P200 and adjusting the levels every time I wanted to work on the song. I found the SONAR’s nudge feature to be invaluable for cleaning up the timing of the piano without making it sound quantised. Before mixdown, I sent the MIDI back to the P200 and recorded the output, with the reverb from the piano on. I needed to cut some low frequencies as well to help it cut through the mix.
Drums – This was my most ambitious drum setup to date. I used six instances of Dimension each loaded with the nskit_7 free samples, and used a drum map to send kick, snare, toms, hats, ride and crashes to their own instance, to be compressed and EQed separately. I used another instance of Kjaerhus Classic Reverb for the drums. The drum patterns themselves were programmed based on some ideas I played on my acoustic kit. I’ve now sold that kit and replaced it with an electronic one which I can record MIDI from, so hopefully future drum tracks will benefit from some increased realism.
Electric Guitar – I used my Behringer V-Amp 2 for providing amp simulations for all the guitar parts. I did also make some unprocessed recordings, but found that my software amp sims were quite processor intensive and didn’t produce as good results. I spent so long trying out different ideas for the guitar solo that I ended up with a blister on one of my fingers, and so I never got a chance to attempt to improve on the recorded take of my final idea.
Bass – Bass was just my Yamaha RBX-270 DIed with some compression. I think it cuts through the mix quite nicely.
Synth – I used an arpegiatted patch from Hypersonic in the outro.
Mastering – I used Voxengo’s excellent free Span plugin to help me with my EQing the various tracks. For final mastering I used the Sonitus Multi-Band compressor for the first time which I have to say I am very impressed with.
Some Links
Mar 9th
As you may have noticed, since having my third child I have not had much time for blogging. But that doesn’t mean I’ve spent all my time changing nappies. There’s a book review, and two home studio recordings on their way, and I’m spending a lot of time at the moment preparing for a talk I’m doing on Sunday.
In the meantime, I thought I would direct any readers disappointed with the lack of action here to some other blogs I have enjoyed in recent weeks.
- Ger Jones asks some interesting questions about Restorationist views on Sanctification
- Dave Skipper writes a excellent post about musicians and pride
- Scot McKnight fears that “church borging” may become prevalent
- Richard Collins has started podcasting – well worth a listen
- And finally, Dan has been prolifically blogging on all things Ern Baxter, with a bit of Lloyd-Jones, Owen and Coates thrown in for good measure.
Book Review – TNTC Romans (F F Bruce)
Mar 13th
Posted by Mark Heath in Book Reviews
1 comment
In the introduction, Bruce warns against modernizing Paul, insisting rather that a man of Paul’s calibre must be allowed to speak for himself. He also discusses the evidence concerning whether chapters 15 and 16 formed part of the original letter. He sees no compelling reason to doubt that chapter 16 could have been written to the Roman church. There are some useful definitions of terms such as flesh, spirit and law. The introduction ends with a very brief paraphrase of the whole letter, which is a great way of explaining what the main themes and argument of the book are.
The brevity of the commentary means that some controversial issues are not discussed at all, while others (such as the “New Perspective”) are mentioned only in passing. He does however take the time to reject the idea that the wrath of God is merely “impersonal”. He shows how Paul is concerned to demonstrate that God can justify the ungodly whilke remaining righteous himself.
He views the “I” of Romans 7 as basically autobiographical, but through it Paul is speaking of universal human experience. It describes the conflict of living in the overlap of the old age and the age to come. It speaks of life under the law without the aid of the Spirit. It also paints a picture of fighting under our own resources – and fighting a losing battle. In these broad terms he manages to encompass pretty much every view of Rom 7 I have come across.
He suggests that to be “in Christ” essentially means to be in the church – the body of Christ, and to “put on Christ” is to emulate his character. He discusses the relationship between glory and suffering in a number of places. Suffering is viewed as the normal Christian experience, and glory is not the compensation, but the outcome of that suffering.
Chapter 9 is not a parenthesis but a theodicy, and it is here that he briefly mentions Sanders and covenantal nomism. Bruce prefers to think of Paul as opposing salvation by works, but adds that he would be equally opposed to seeking salvation by the ‘old’ covenant.
Chapters 12 onwards are introduced as the ethical outworking of the doctrine of earlier chapters, and Bruce points out the similarities with Jesus’ teaching. He speaks of Paul being so free that he was not “in bondage to his emancipation” (i.e. he was free to do the things he was free not to do).
This is not by any means an exhaustive commentary on Romans, but it is an instructive one, and will shed fresh light on different passages. It is probably still a bit heavy-going for the general reader who is not accustomed to using commentaries, but those who want to get a better grasp of Romans without having to read a massive volume may like to give this a try. I still prefer Stott’s commentary for readability and Moo’s for comprehensiveness, but am glad I took the time to read this one too.