mikeymo's place

It took me a couple of days to get around to writing this week's recap, firstly because I've been busy with the start of a new term at the school I work at, and secondly because the service itself blew me away. Let's start with the setlist:

Opening Song:

Beautiful One (Hughes)(D)

Main Set:

Everlasting God (Brown)(G)
Glory to God Forever (Beeching/Fee)(A)
God of this City (Bleakly/Boyd/Comfort/Jordan/Kernighan/McCann)(A)
Healer (Guglielmucci)(E)

Offering:

Let it Rise (Davis)(E)

Step 1: Assemble the setlist at the last minute with way less thought and prayer than usual
Step 2: Have a disasterous rehearsal
Step 3: Press it down, shake it together
Step 4: Watch the Holy Spirit go BOOM!

My rig this week

That's pretty much how it went. Everything kind of pivoted on "Everlasting God" this week. Brenton's song had been running through my head all week like an earworm that won't go away. Every quiet moment, every pause in conversation, every time I was alone with my thoughts: "Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord, wait upon the Lord, we will wait upon the Lord..." What was God telling me?

Rehearsal was an unmitigated mess. We couldn't get "Beautiful One" to sound like anything other than a cacaphony of instruments. We couldn't find a good key for Laura to sing "God of this City." I couldn't get a tone I liked on anything. Finally I said "Let's just start over." We deconstructed "Beautiful One" and came at it from another direction, which worked. We moved "Everlasting God" from pre-service to the first song. Things were looking up.

When I look back at the four songs in the main set, though, I realize how connected they are. Each speaks about God manifesting His strength in a different way. "You're the defender of the weak. You comfort those in need..." "Before the world was made, before You spoke it to be, you were the King of Kings, yeah you were..." "You're the God of this city, You're the King of these people, you're the Lord of this nation..." "Nothing is impossible for You, You hold the world in your hands..."

I've rarely felt so connected to worship and so led by the Spirt that I did Sunday morning, and the congregation responded. From the first note they were plugged in and raising hands. And it was good...

Sunday night we had our monthly united service with other local churches, down at Lighthouse Fellowship Church. After a great time of testimonies, song and worship, I closed out the service leading "Everlasting God" - wow, what a response! The room overflowed with joyful voices.

There was no setlist recap last week, because it was the weekend of our family retreat.  And while there was certainly worship - three services worth! - truth be told, I was way too exhausted to post anything.  But, this week I'm back on my game.

With Daniel out of the country on a mission trip to India and Dubai, we were short keys, which made for a very guitar-driven set.  Here ya go:

Opening Song:

Christ is Risen (Maher)(E)

Main Set:

Happy Day (Hughes/Cantelon)(A)
Blessed Be Your Name (Redman)(A)
Mighty to Save (Morgan/Fields)(A)
Came to My Rescue (Davies/Sampson/Thomas)(A)

Offering:

Our God (Myrin/Redman/Reeves/Tomlin)(G)

With Laura leading, we had to change keys for most of the songs, which we usually do in C.  So it was all A, all day.  Mighty to Save was the only one we did in our normal key.  I thought Christ is Risen sounded really nice, and it was a great choice for opening song.   Came to My Rescue seemed to really resonate with people today - I saw a lot of genuine worship during that song.  

Junior lead on Our God, which is the first time he's done that.  It was pretty good, although I personally like the higher key we usually do it in.  But worship set the tone for a really good service today, complete with Communion and a really timely message by Josh Miller on unity within the larger Christian community.

How was your service?  Check in at The Worship Community after you comment here.

We're about to go through another paradigm shift in the way we listen to and control our music collections: cloud-based storage.

This has been tried before. In fact, the concept goes all the way back to the late 90s, and the ill-fated Mp3.com website. The site's "My.Mp3.com" service allowed subscribers to store music on the company's servers and stream it wherever they were. The downfall of Mp3.com was that it took a "digital fingerprint" of the music you owned, and then streamed you it's own copy. The site was sued by UMG Recordings (of course) and shut down the service.

Fast-forward to 2011, where there are several new cloud-based music sevices getting off the ground, using three very diverse business models. First off is Amazon, with their new Cloud Player. Amazon offers 5Gb of storage free, with the option to upgrade to 20Gb for $20/yr. Music purchased on Amazon does not count toward storage limits, and purchased music can be "deposited" directly into the music locker. Non-Amazon music has to be manually uploaded through a web interface, and music can be played back through any web browser and up to 8 (non-Apple) mobile devices.

Apple offers a completely different type of service with iCloud. iCloud syncs with iTunes, has no web-player available, and has no streaming; music must be downloaded to the iOS device you are using. On the other hand, iTunes will - like Mp3.com - figure out what music you have, and replace it with it's own high-quality AAC version, which means no time-consuming uploads. Like Amazon, 5Gb storage is included for free. Unlike Amazon, if you wish to sync music you didn't purchase through iTunes, you'll have to pony up $25/yr for the privilidge. That does boost you to unlimited storage, however.

The 800-lb gorillia in the room, of course, is Google. Music Beta gives you free storage of up to 20,000 songs. You can upload your own music for free, and you can stream it on any web browser or 8 (non-Apple) mobile devices.

The interesting thing about Google and Amazon's approach is that they are not licensing anything from any record labels, instead relying on two legal precedents: first, the "Safe Harbor" provision of the DCMA, which makes remote storage of this type fair use. Since they are creating unique copies of your uploaded music at your request, they feel fair use applies. The second is CNN vs. CVC, in which the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Cablevision's remote DVR technology does not violate copyright. OF course, this has the suits over at the RIAA in a snit, so expect a flurry of lawsuits. Apple, on the other hand, has worked out licensing agreements with several major labels, hence their "deduplication" strategy. It will be interesting to see if Amazon and Google have shot themselves in the foot, or if Apple has wasted millions of dollars on uneeded licenses.

In the end, the service you choose depends largely on your hardware. If you use an iOS device, you are limited to iCloud. If you use and Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile or desktop, pick one of the others. I plan on checking them both out and reporting back in a future post. But I'm curious as to people's general opinion of cloud-based music, so if you have a thought, put it in the comments.

This week's set was a little more low-key than last week's Klampertpalooza, but it was still a great service on a beautiful day.  I was on drumming duty this weekend - always a blast.

Opening:

Give Us Clean Hands (Hall)(G)

Main Set:

One Way (Houston)(B)
Freedom (Bushard)(B)
Hosanna/Healer (Fraser/Guglielmucci)(B)

Offering

All Around (Coffield/Houghton/Lindsey)(A)

Check out other recaps at The Worship Community