Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

A bigger band means playing less

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If you took piano lessons, you learned that the piano is the whole orchestra. Your teacher made you play legato until it was sweet as strings. You hammered counterpoints out as bright as trumpets. You laid down the bass while adding percussive elements as well. You may have even learned how to voice individual instruments within a hand, so that the melody would sing out above the accompaniment.

So what happens when you start playing with other instruments? Hopefully you are adjusting your groove. Hopefully you’re not playing the same way you did before. Because if you are, there isn’t any room left! You are the whole orchestra when playing solo, however, when playing with a bassist, you really shouldn’t double his parts. He is going to be a lot better at laying down that low end and voicing it with respect to what you are playing than you will ever be. And that bassist is going to be able to groove against what you are playing in time, creating a more compelling momentum. When playing with an acoustic guitarist, you really shouldn’t be doubling the rhythm. You’re never going to get a feel as good as he will get, partially because you don’t really have upstrokes/downstrokes the way he has strumming. Likewise, when playing with a string section, or playing with a percussion section, or playing with a guitar, or playing with a choir… each new element that is introduced means you need to play less – or it just becomes a big mess.

Not doing this is how you get the “Wall of Sound” that is the bane of every sound tech’s existence. “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

What is production?

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At some point, churches understood that the ability to write and/or preach a compelling, moving, life-changing, visionary sermon did not equate with the ability to manage a church. So the paradigm of “Teaching Pastor” was born. Those that could preach would preach. Those that would manage would manage – so far so good.

Music (or Worship) Pastors face an equivalent dilemma that hasn’t yet been sorted out. They are often hired on the ability to lead worship and sound great singing a solo. This is a very analogous skill to preaching a great sermon. But does this mean they know how to manage (or produce) a band? Again, maybe, or again, maybe not.

The focus for churches remains on the extroverted worship leader, and resources today are worship-leader-centric. That is all fine and good, but may not actually be a good match. The giant blind spot in this is that the extroverted worship leader also needs to know how to produce a band, or we need to look elsewhere for the introverted producer – that magical person who doesn’t live in the limelight, but who is responsible for everything working and sounding so much better. If that person is one and the same, great. This blog is for you! If you’re not the worship leader though, and have a passion for building your band, this is for you too.

Producing music or a record means pulling together the right people and then getting them to play to their strengths in order to best serve the song. In a live setting it also means connecting with your audience in real time, so a dynamic flexibility and sensitivity to the Spirit is in order.

It begins with fundamentals and it builds. I hope this can be a real resource for you in building your band.

In the beginning

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2014-02-20 11.19.10Two moments I will never forget are: 1) when I saw my wife dressed in white at the end of the aisle, and 2) when the hospital told us we could take our newborn daughter home. I don’t know what I was expecting, but walking out of that hospital and placing my tiny daughter into her car seat was at once terrifying and wonderful. Four years have passed, and I am overwhelmed by the privilege of being a daddy (to the tutu girl in the batman shirt).

One thing that changed when my daughter Nyah was born is that I struggled to find the time to play music live. I love playing live. Let me back up: I love sound. And I love creating something in the moment, something ephemeral, informed by the Spirit. Something that can only be experienced once (so I hope you were there last Sunday!)

Ever since Nyah was born on July 3rd, 2010, I stopped playing out. And we’ve added a son to our family now as well, so my time is even more in demand with these amazing souls now present in my life. Life is beautiful and full, yet I’ve missed playing out. I’ve missed producing. Sound is an important part of my life, and so this is my effort to stay connected to producing, to playing, to sound, to connecting with that conversation and that community. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that this blog’s birthday is July 3rd – the birthdate of my first child, and all the posts will go out at 2:14am Eastern, the minute of her birth.