PreSonus 22VSL Winner!!
Tell us about your church and where you lead worship
I am the Youth Worship Pastor at White River Christian Church in Noblesville, Indiana. WRCC is an amazing body of believers who have an incredible desire and drive to be the hands and feet of Jesus. My wife Susan and I actually started attending White River before I worked at the church. The primary reason was because we saw how the people were focused on getting outside of the church walls to reach the community and the world with the Gospel. WRCC has a strong desire to partner with other churches within the Indianapolis area to reach the lost. It’s obvious that White River does not want to be a church focused inwardly.
Also, it’s a huge blessing to work at a church where risk taking is encouraged, and where we are even allowed to fail if necessary. We all know this is super rad for a worship leader, because being successful within the music field requires a lot of trial and error. It’s amazing to have leadership and a congregation that understands that finding out how we best worship through music takes a little practice. We may not get it right 100% of the time but we try to worship like David did all the time.
How long have you been using loops in worship?
In 2005 I graduated from Huntington University in Indiana. Right out of college I began touring with a 4 piece Christian band as the drummer. We didn’t always have the capability to create a full sound in our concerts since we were only a 4 piece, so I started messing with loops as a way to add to the experience. After that I was hooked. Now I love building loops for everything!
I began leading worship at WRCC in 2009 and since then I have really been drawn to the beats and sounds that have come out of the Euro-Dance and Dubstep genres. I still love the full band thing but I think it’s totally rad to incorporate a sick dubstep or dance loop underneath what we would consider our typical contemporary worship sound.
Do you write original music?
Yes, I do write original music. I really love entering into God’s presence with songs that are from our hearts. Not to say there is anything wrong with singing praises written by other popular worship leaders, but I do believe we need to push ourselves to write songs of worship that have come out of the fire of life that we, as a local body, have been going through together. Our bands at WRCC are extremely talented and I try to incorporate their input and thoughts as much as possible when writing. It’s a cool blessing to hear the whole church singing songs that have come from the hearts of the White River body of believers.
If so, where can we hear it?
Go to www.noisetrade.com/singlovesing to download a couple songs for free. Hopefully I’ll be posting another song to this webpage in a few weeks. Right now we don’t have a ton of stuff that’s been laid down in the studio. However, in the next year I really want to see us focus our efforts and resources into tracking. We probably have at least two dozen originals in our corporate worship catalog that we are currently singing as a congregation. Once we get these recorded they will always be available for free download. My desire is to write songs that lead people into God’s presence and then give the tunes away to as many people as possible.
What does your loop building process look like?
To make my loops I work primarily in LogicPro. Along with an endless array of software sounds, I try use a wide variety of random instruments that I’ve acquired at garage sales, weird music stores, etc as well as a couple different cool music creation apps that I’ve found for my iPad. (Check out Electro Beats by David Guetta and the iKaossilator apps in the app store. They are pretty sick!)
When I build loops I try to think outside the box and use a mix of different sounds and beats. I know the band will bring the ‘normal‘ sound that we are used to hearing in worship but the loops can really add the “I don’t know what” that takes the song to the next level.
Some of the external gear I use to build loops include Native Instrument’s Maschine Groove Production Studio, Arturia’s Analog Factory Synth, and my mother-in-laws Schoenhut toy piano from the 60’s. Just kidding… but seriously I do use that sometimes. It’s pretty awesome! 🙂
