So, What Have You Been Doing Lately?

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I have been crazy busy the past few weeks immersing myself in the world of praise band leading and contemporary music and worship.  Our regular piano player has been recovering from an injury and we lost our music director a month ago to another church so that has left me to keep things going along with our bass player and guitar player.  Do to a few other changes we have gone from a 6 player band down to a three player band in a matter of weeks.  I also have been recovering from an amazing cold virus and continuing my music ministry job search.

I think that saying that I am stressed out right now is a major understatement.  I am however having a ton of fun with the whole experience of praise band leading and I know that it is stretching me in ways I could have only imagined before.  I am putting all of my music knowledge to good use and getting some practical application time.  I'm far from perfect but now I know what it takes to make things work.

So, I thought I would share a couple of the resources I have been learning from in the past couple days.  I hope these tools will help you on your musical journey.   

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I've been watching a fantastically helpful video called Keyboard Transitions: Playing Modern Keys In A Guitar World by Steve Padilla from WorshipTraining.com that you can access after signing up for a free membership.  There are more great free videos and webinars available once you sign up.  I have participated in a live webinar and have watched several other great videos and highly recommend it.  I am contemplating an all access pass when I can work it into the budget.

I've been researching online music degree programs as I do some future goal setting.  I am quite amazed at how many options are out there.  I have always wanted to learn more about music production and now there's an online degree for that.  Who knew?

I've been reading informative music ministry articles from the Musicademy Blog that has helped me be a more confident worship leader.  The most recently article I read this week covers good microphone technique.  This is a must to have in your RSS feed reader.  

I also stumbled upon the blog Turning the Word: Thoughts from Pastor Lisa.  I am excited about spending my Summer in the Psalms and possible using this outline for music devotions next fall.

On top of all that online learning I have been processing tons of music while planning set lists for this month and the next and using resources like Song Select from CCLI to get the perfect keys.


Well, I better get back to practicing!  So, tell us what you have been doing lately in the comments.