A Pretty Good Day

As I am winding down tonight, I can't help but think that it's been a pretty good day. The temperatures in lovely China Grove remained reasonable for early September and my air conditioning was able to keep up. I was given a reprieve on some work that I was doing that made me want to pull my hair out. I enjoyed some pretty good food. I got to spend some time talking and praying with my pastor. I got to blog. And I got to play my guitar.

I haven't played my guitar so much in a long time. I have been trying to learn some new stuff, and that always necessitates a little practice. I haven't had to work this hard at anything (on guitar) in quite a while, though, so it is really rewarding.

I remember all those days back in college when I had my guitar out all the time trying to learn how to play. Somewhere along the way I guess I decided that I played pretty well and there wasn't any point in working at it so hard. Kind of a bummer making that decision. I might have been really good if I had kept pushing forward.

I suppose after a while you get to the point where no one is really teaching you anything any more. If you have ever played guitar with people who can play, you will agree that they rarely do much teaching, but they do a whole lot of playing. This is especially problematic if you are trying to share one guitar during the "lesson."

Anyway, last year (I think) sometime I bought an instructional DVD for worship guitar. I messed with it a little bit, but really didn't take the time to really learn the things that I didn't already know. Well, I did manage to learn the first pentatonic scale form and worked through the others, but never worked at learning the other forms.

For the past few days I have been working on the second form. It is from the devil! It has been really hard to teach my fingers to do that, but I think that they are slowly being driven into submission. It is amazing how out of shape the muscles in my hand and arm have gotten - even with the regular playing I am doing for church. Of course, the truth may be that since I have never really learned scales that I have never worked these muscles this way.

Oh well! Whatever the case is, I have made a concerted effort to take my playing up a notch. I have never ventured out on lead much, but I am hoping that learning these scales will be a path towards learning how to do that more and learning how to play electric guitar. I play acoustic pretty exclusively.

It should also help me when I am playing bass. I have pretty well always done that by ear, but knowing the scales should take me up quite a few notches there too if I can ever get an opportunity to use my bassing.

Playing last night I came up with a possible new song. It uses the same chord progression as the verse of Blessed Be Your Name, but has a much different tune. I think that the lyric will be a fusion of the Doxology and Gloria Patri

I heard a worship leader named Ashlie Rice use Doxology in her worship set. It was really cool. I have wanted to use it myself, but I didn't want to just copy it from her. She is hopefully going to be coming to our church in a couple of weeks and will hopefully be leading worship some in my place. I hope she will do it then so that she will get the credit for coming up with the idea if I do it in the future.

I guess I've never really mentioned it in this forum before, but I do lead worship at my church. I've been doing it now for 2 years... I think. It is either 2 or 3. This is definitely the longest time that I have been responsible for leading worship for a church. In the past it got really weighty, but it hasn't been too bad this time around. I have had a real grace for it. Not to mention that I really enjoy hanging around with all of the characters in my band. We have a couple vocalists and a piano/keyboard player, a bass player, and me on guitar. It would be nice to have some percussion, but that would also add a whole new set of challenges that we don't have to deal with right now.

Another thing that I never mentioned here is that I started seminary last fall. Well, kind of. I took my first class in the fall of last year. Subsequent financial challenges and a season in God's crucible have put that pursuit on hold for the time being, but I am really looking forward to getting back to my studies. I go to Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. It is an excellent school. I can't wait to get back. I'll have to devote a post to the story of how I ended up bagging the real estate business and going to seminary some time soon.

Anyway, I guess that is enough for now. Suffice it to say that it has been a very good day.