Once that was done, it was time to pack up camp.  To start with, everything was unplugged.  Then cables were coiled and separated into groups depending on which part of the house they needed to end up in.  Then the computer was taken upstairs, followed by all its related peripherals and cabling.  The guitars and keyboard were put back in their corner, in cases where appropriate.  The microphone was put back in its case, the pre-amp was put back in its bag, and all the remaining cables put back in their respective homes.

Of course, that left quite a lot of empty floor, which showed itself to be noticeably less empty than it should have been – but nothing a good hoover wouldn’t sort out.  So I hoovered the whole house (more or less), just for good measure.  After all, my Dad is coming round this evening and my wife is coming back tomorrow, so the house ought to look presentable for them, if only to prove that I can look after myself.  Furniture was put back in place, windows were opened to let in some fresh air, a mug of tea was brewed, and I finally sat down to watch Doctor Who in the evening.

So, all in all, a fantastic week.  I have missed my wife a lot, perhaps more than I expected to, and the occasional phone calls and Skype video calls have been lovely but at at the same time a reminder that they weren’t at home, which in some ways made it more difficult.  Still, the ultimate aim of giving me a nice quiet house to record in was achieved and much appreciated, and I look forward to editing all those track down at some point and creating some finalised tracks for the album.  And putting them into some sort of order.  And then designing some cover art.  And running off a load of CDs.  And working out how to sell them.  And investigating whether I can sell them online as well.  So still plenty to do!

I started off with a drum track, using drum loops, and then added guitars, bass and vocals.  I’ve given it a slightly edgier feel, and hopefully a more mature interpretation too.  It took a while to get right though.  A younger version of myself would have dismissed most rock music as being unsophisticated and requiring very little intelligence – after all, it’s just a case of turning the guitars up too loud and playing three chords…  But I’ve learnt in recent years that there is a definite art to creating a convincing ‘rock’ sound, and getting just the right sound from the guitar and amp combination is tricky stuff.  And of course if you then add in complex guitar solos as well, you can take it to a whole new level again.

Now, I’m not saying that my recording of Father God you reign would compare to a version recorded by Brian May, for instance, but it is pretty rocky, and I reckon it’s much better than the version I did for the Rooted album.  We’ll see once it’s been edited.

After that I drew my attention to The Lord watches over you, which is a song I tried to do with Rooted but never really got the hang of it.  Turns out it’s not really something for a band after all, which explains why I could never make it work.  So instead of featuring the guitar, which is how I wrote it, I’m using an electric piano and giving it a decidedly jazzy beat.  I had lots of fun experimenting with keyboard sounds, working out how to get the sound I wanted out of Logic Express’s software instruments and effects.  I actually ended up doubling up the part onto two voices, to give it a bit of depth and character, panned either side of central to give it a sense of space.

And then I had to think about percussion.  I had been quite impressed by the sound of the jazz drums software instrument on Logic Express which I used earlier in the week for another track, so I played around with that for this track too.  But not before recording some finger clicks!  It all started to take shape nicely, especially once the vocals were added.

As a finishing touch, I recorded some more piano, this time a ‘real’ sound rather than an electric one.  You just can’t have a jazzy track without some improvisation, so I went wild on the keys!  It needed two takes for me to be satisfied, although I’ll probably still tweak it later on – it’s recorded as a MIDI track so I can move notes around and take out some of the mistakes if I need to!  Not quite in the jazz mentality, but there we go.

So that’s 9 songs recorded in 5 days.  I’ve actually decided not to do the last one after all.  I wasn’t entirely convinced by it when I was writing it, if I’m honest, but I added it to my to-do list for this album just to fill it up.  But having done a whole week of recording, I don’t think I could make it work to the same standard as the rest of the tracks, and it doesn’t really fit with the general direction of the album as a whole.  So tomorrow I can focus on revisiting the other tracks and then packing up in good time.  I know I still have a guitar solo to add to Father God you reign, and I will probably re-record the other guitar parts too as I’m still not 100% happy with them – the timing is still out in places where I’ve rushed ahead of the beat a bit.  But overall, I think it’s been a very productive week!

I spent a fair amount of time on that, so it was a while before I got to start on the second song of the day, which was Too tired.  This song is written from the perspective of someone who has become disillusioned with the church, who has maybe been when they were younger but stopped going in their teens.  It tells a story of how the church doesn’t seem to hold anything of interest for them, and that God in general doesn’t seem to make much sense, so why bother believing at all.  I guess that’s something a lot of people can relate to.  However it then goes on to talk about how empty their life actually is, that something is missing, and finishes with an element of wonder and guilt that despite all the running, God is still there waiting.

The chorus says this: “Am I too tired to let you revive me, am I too lonely to call you friend, am I too caught up in worldly ways to glorify the King of kings, to worship you the beginning and the end.”  It draws on the idea that we can become so concerned with running away from God and living our own lives that we don’t realise that he can help.

So I started work on an arrangement of that song, and after experimenting with a sort of hip-hop / R&B feel, eventually took inspiration from Evanescence.  Their song My Immortal is such a fantastic song, with a beautiful first section that is primarily piano, string and voice.  They could have left it just with that, but then they went right ahead and reprised the chorus with a full-on rock band interpretation, and it’s truly inspirational.  So I decided to take a similar approach with Too tired, worked up a nice piano part, and made sure I could do a passable rock guitar bit as well.

And then I had to put everything on hold because I had forgotten the time and I was late for an In Spirit rehearsal.  Normally my darling wife would have reminded me.  I’ll be glad when she’s back!  And once that was finished it was a bit late to start thinking about what to make for dinner, so I grabbed some fish and chips on my way home.

That left the remaining few hours of the evening to do a bit of recording for Too tired, but I kept it to just the instruments rather than singing, so that I could do it all through headphones without disturbing the neighbours.  I’ll have to do the singing tomorrow.  Needs a lot of refining, and potentially some re-recording, but there’s already a lot of potential there.

The ‘ethereal’ aspect was provided mainly by the piano, with the sustain pedal held down the whole time.  That adds a very interesting suspended sound to the notes, with them all merging into one another, but it works well in this case.  I also recorded some solo guitar bits too, which with the right settings sounds a bit like the music Marks & Spencer used in their sexy food adverts!

Next was The mystery of the cross, which I actually wrote several years ago.  The lyrics play on the contrasts present in Jesus’ crucifixion.  God the creator, destroyed.  God of love, despised.  God the healer, beaten.  Musically it’s quite simple, so the track is deliberately acoustic, and will be almost completely guitar and voice.  I recorded a couple of tracks of each so that I’ve got something to play with later.  I’m also planning on getting In Spirit to sing on this track – they’re a group of young people at our church who sing together at services sometimes.

And then, in a moment of boredom and curiosity, I added a female voice to the mix in the last chorus.  Not that I had a female voice around to record, mind.  I was actually using the Vocal Transformation filter in Logic Express to transpose my voice up an octave!  I also played around with the formant a bit, to make it sound less chipmunky and more like it was being sung by someone who naturally sings that high.  And to add a bit of realism into the mix, I also sang with a slightly Irish accent to give the impression that it was someone entirely different!  It won’t make it onto the final mix, but it was a fun experiment!

Finally, I started rehearsing Stranger than fiction, which I’ll be recording tomorrow.  It’s got a somewhat funny first line – “What if I told you the sky was green” – and I’m going to try to pick up on that in the style of music.  It’ll be quite quirky, in a way that’s actually surprisingly difficult to describe.  I’ve decided which guitar voice to use though (because I have loads to choose from), so hopefully I’ll make good headway with that tomorrow.

Come holy fire, Mystery of the cross

So after lunch I finished plugging all my rough-shod studio equipment together, warmed up the vocal cords, and started on the recording.  The first song I turned my attention to was Amazing Grace.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, Amazing Grace isn’t exactly a song I can claim complete authorship for; a certain John Newton is famous for that one.  However, not long ago I wrote a new tune for it, and since the original is well out of copyright, I’m all clear to record my own version.  I had recorded the piano part already, and put in some string parts (though at the moment they’re playing through a tinny software instrument until I can find some actual string players), so I just had to add the vocal parts.  I was deliberately keeping it fairly acoustic, so the arrangement was very simple, but it was a good place to start.

Next up it was time to fire up the guitar and make some noise.  Jesus your name is higher is a song I started writing last year at Spring Harvest, and put the finishing touches to a few months later.  It’s turned out to be quite a popular song already – I’ve introduced it at church and also at the camp training day at the weekend, and both times people said how appropriate and fitting it was.  I’ll have to post the lyrics online at some point, and hopefully the score too once I’ve written it.

Anyway, first up I reviewed what I’d recorded last time.  The first step is always recording a framework from which to record onto.  I had already recorded a guitar part, the tune and programmed in a drum track, so I started today by re-recording the guitar parts with a little more precision.  Next up was the bass part, which took only two takes to get a track I was happy with.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time to re-record the vocal parts, but it’s slowly coming together.  The important thing at the moment is to get everything recorded so that I can edit it all together later, which I can do even when Ellie and Samuel are back.

So that’s the first day sorted.  I’ve also got a list of all the songs I’m recording, and there’s 10 of them at the moment.  I’ve rehearsed most of them so I know what I’m going to be doing with them, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to do less planning and more recording.

“If you find a pair of shoes that fits, buy it in every colour.”

“One biscuit is never enough.”

All three of those phrases is in some way related to the way I spent yesterday evening.  You see, a couple of years or so ago I was mulling over which electric guitar to buy, and when my wife eventually stepped in and told me which one I’d chosen (she knows my mind better than I do most of the time) I ordered a shiny new Line 6 Variax 300.  What’s special about that guitar (and all the others that Line 6 do, in fairness) is electronically model a whole load of real guitars and pack them all into one all-singing-all-dancing guitar, with each guitar selectable from a handy volume-type knob.  The result is that I effectively have 25 guitars instead of just one.

Thankfully, restringing only needs doing once, and it takes regular strings too despite its complicated wizardry.  I did a little research and found which strings the guitar had from the factory, and ordered a set on the internet a couple of days ago.  Now, this is where I hang my head in shame and hope there are no ‘proper’ guitarists reading – this is the first time I’ve replaced the strings since I bought the guitar, almost two years ago.  Ouch.  Sure, I’ve not been playing it every day since then, but even so the strings were sure to be corroded and mucky and dead-sounding by now.  And they were.

The bottom strings weren’t too bad, if a little discoloured, but the thinner strings were almost black with grime, and were coated in dead skin and suchlike.  Not nice.  I replaced each string individually, one at a time, courtesy of a tutorial on changing guitar strings.  I could have worked it out for myself (I have changed guitar strings before, after all), but as this was the first time for this guitar, I thought it would be wise to take special precautions and do it “by the book”.

So now I have a newly restringed guitar sitting in the lounge.  I played it for a while last night, and it sounds much brighter, the way it’s supposed to sound.  It does beg the question, though, whether I should do the same with my bass guitar one day.  That’s never had a change of strings either, and I bought that several years ago.  Then there’s the cello, still on the same strings it had in the shop, over a decade ago.  If you ever meet a professional musician, don’t send them my way… I’d be too ashamed.

Many of you will know that I am a keen musician.  I blame this partly on my parents, who insisted on taking me to a brass band concert before I was even born.  I didn’t stand a chance.  Church helps too, there’s always music there.  And so it was that I started taking up musical instruments left right and centre, starting with the piano, moving on to cello, and not stopping thereafter.  The list isn’t exactly endless, but it’s fairly sizeable.  The main problem with this, though, is being able to afford the instruments themselves, which don’t come cheap, especially if you want something decent.  So for many years I have had to get by without certain things, in some cases just the accessories, but in some cases the instruments themselves.  I’ve never owned a saxophone, for instance, much as I’d love to.

My first bass guitar was a pink (probably used to be red, but faded in the sun) Squier with a warped neck, which made playing anything but open strings uncomfortable and bone-jarringly out of tune.  Still, for £100 it wasn’t bad, considering it came with a whopping 80 watt amp.  The bass was replaced several years ago, thankfully, with a wood body Aria (I’d give the actual model, but since it’s a “Research and Development” model I think it’s more of a one-off, so comparing it to the mass-produced model that resulted from it might not actually be particularly useful).  The Aria is a dream to play, and has a lovely warm tone to it.  The amp, however, was always pretty ropey, so it wasn’t a huge tragedy when it stopped working.  It was something electric, I know that much, and it just played a very loud humming noise while it was turned on.  So I left it turned off, gathering dust in the garage.  Until just before we moved, when I took it to the dump.  Sad, but somehow very therapeutic at the same time.

Imagine my joy, then, now that I have a working bass amp again.  After much research and reading of reviews, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a Laney RB2.  It’s only 30 watts, so it’s by far the smallest and least powerful bass amp I’ve ever used, but it should serve my purposes.  To be honest, I’ve always thought it odd that whenever I’ve played bass it’s been using a 60 or 80 watt amp, and never needed to turn it up beyond 2 or 3 on the volume dial.  Always seemed a waste to me.  So, a 30 watt amp it is, and it’ll be used properly too.  Sure, it’s not the most powerful box in the world, but it’s got a DI out so it can be plugged into a PA system, so it only really needs to be loud enough for me to hear myself on stage over the drums and the rest of the band.

The real test will come at the end of this month, when I take the amp to camp.  It’ll only be used in a relatively small theatre, seating around 80 people, so hopefully 30 watts should be enough.  We’ll see.  It sounds promising in the lounge at least, which is encouraging.  It’s got a fairly good tone to it, assuming you whack the gain knob up a bit, and while the built-in compressor isn’t quite as powerful as it could be it does work and gives a nice bit of punch to the sound.  The EQ controls are good too, and allow me to play around with sounds and tones a bit more, which is very nice indeed.

So, that’s the amp.  There is more though.  I may be in demand again as a musician, now that we’ve settled on a church.  Yes, that’s right, after several weeks of ‘church hunting’ my wife and I have finally decided that St Paul’s Shepton Mallet will be our church.  On Sunday we ended up going to three services, confirming our choice.  First up was the 9:25 Parish Communion service, which was fairly traditional (includes sung liturgy and a procession and everything).  Not quite my usual worship style, but that’s no bad thing – variety in worship is always a good thing in my opinion.  After a quick tea break we were off to the 11am service, which was very relaxed and informal, and featured a few worship songs, a ’sharing’ time where people talked about what had been going on that week, and then a group discussion time.  Very different indeed.  But quite similar in feel to some of the Anglican Chaplaincy services we did, so not entirely unfamiliar.  Then in the evening we went to the 6pm youth service, which was led by the young people.  Apparently they do that every month, and thoroughly enjoy it.  It’s amazing, it’s an evening service that actually works, and people want to come!  How refreshing.  The music was good, and the sermon (preached by an 11-year-old) was surprisingly inspiring.

Discussions after each of those services inevitably revealed my collection of music instruments, and Ellie’s drama background, and we were both pleased to hear that they were in need of what we could offer.  Eyes widened in excitement when I said I could play drums and guitar, and Ellie’s dramatic heritage was greeted by one person physically jumping up and down.  I think they like us.  We certainly like them.  We’ve already been invited to a birthday party, so that’s got to be a good thing.

Finally, I would like to announce that I’ve finally got myself onto Second Life.  Yes, yes, I know, that’s so last year, but it always takes me a year or two to accept new technology, which is why everyone else was on Facebook before me.  I’m still trying to get to grips with how it works, and while I’ve found some interesting places I’ve yet to actually get into a conversation with anyone.  Not least because I’ve struggled to find anyone there at all.  Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places.  Or maybe it’s because everyone who plays is in America and is therefore asleep when I’m online.  Anyway, if you happen to be on Second Life, let me know and maybe we can meet up and laugh at each other’s avatars.

Introduction

This year Ellie and I were both leaders on a Christian youth camp (a CYFA Ventures camp) for 14-18 year olds, at a boarding school near Southampton called Stanbridge Earls.  We’ve both been before, but this was the first time we’d been as a married couple, so that was a nice novelty!

Our week was actually started off a few days earlier than everyone else, as we went to Southampton University for my brother’s graduation.  It was lovely to see him, and all our family, and generally hang out in Soton for a bit.  Photos will be up on a gallery somewhere in due course I expect.  Ellie and I then stayed a couple of nights at a guest house in Soton, visiting the New Forest on the Friday before going off to camp on the Saturday morning.

Saturday

We arrived at Stanbridge Earls with plenty of time to spare.  In fact, that’s a bit of an understatement – we got there a full half an hour before we were technically allowed on site.  So we drove around for a bit before venturing through the gates to find a couple of the other leaders who had already arrived.  All the leaders met up at around 10am, had a quick business meeting and a catch-up, and then promptly got to work setting up the site for our camp.  Ellie and I were both hard at work in the theatre, which is where the morning and evening meetings were held throughout the week (like mini church services).  Ellie was up in the lighting box finding her way around all the knobs and buttons, and I was generally setting up the stage with a few other people, placing instruments and helping plug various cables in the right places.

It was actually really nice to be back on camp again.  Wandering around the site it was all so familiar, even though it’s been 2 years since I was last there.  It was as if I’d never been away.  Camp is a bubble, completely cut off and separate from the rest of reality.  And it’s quite a nice bubble, too.

We had a good number of kids this year, around 50 in total, which meant that there was a chance of getting to know most of them over the course of the week.  They arrived in dribs and drabs and congregated in the dining hall, and mid-morning we were given our first activity – the Members’ Challenge.  It was essentially a quiz that we had to do in our dorm groups that took us all over the site to retrieve various things, answer certain questions, or have our photos taken in various poses.  It was good fun, and helped us bond with our dorm right from the start.

Then after dinner we had our evening meeting, for which Sam led worship on guitar, I played my funky electric guitar, Tom played bass, and Sarah played drums.  There were some people singing too, but they varied through the week and I can’t remember who sang when, so I’ll just thank them all and assume that someone was singing!  The music was good and loud this year, with both Sam and I having pretty solid guitar setups – Sam had brought his new electric guitar as well as his acoustic, and was using a Line6 Spider II amp with a pedal box, and I was using my Line6 Variax guitar (that essentially gives me around 26 guitars in one) plugged into my Line6 Spider III amp.  It was a bit mushy that first night, with both of us trying to find a good balance between who was playing and with what level of distortion.  The kids seemed really into it right from the start, which was good.

The evening was rounded off with a quiz that Richard had sorted out.  And then bed.  And it was surprising just how much we needed it after just one day.

Sunday

Somehow I was too busy to notice that it was Sunday and I should have been at church.  Then again, every day that week felt a little bit like a Sunday, with all the God-centred stuff and worship twice a day.  Good stuff.  Sam and I alternated leading worship this year, so Sunday was my turn to lead both morning and evening sessions.  I don’t think I did a huge amount else that day, apart from sorting out music and stuff.  I should really have been socialising with my dorm, but there was just far too much other stuff that needed doing.  Ah well, we live and learn.

In the evening we had a “Night Hike and Campfire”, which was essentially a crowd of 80 people stumbling through the darkness, through the trees and bushes (at least I think that’s what they were), and eventually finding ourselves at the big camp fire where the ALs had hot chocolate prepared.  Oh, I ought to mention what the ALs are – Assistant Leaders.  Lucy and Anna (twins) and Laura were members last year, but were old enough this year to be ALs instead, and did a fantastic job of doing all those jobs that no one else wanted to do, like cleaning and serving hot chocolate and typing up songs at short notice and generally doing loads of stuff behind the scenes.  They were a fantastic team, their matching T-shirts were awesome, and they really helped make the week a success.  Hats off to you girls.

Monday

The major activity on Monday was so big it had to be split into two parts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  The Mini-Olympics basically involved a whole series of games that we did in our Bible study groups (which was half of one dorm group combined with half of another of the opposite gender).  My team was stunningly average, and despite some heroic triumphs and some embarrassing defeats we actually ended up coming somewhere smack bang in the middle.  Can’t complain.

It was the evening that really saw things come alive though, with the Murder Mystery that PJ had created.  Yes, created, not an off-the-shelf jobbie.  Completely engineered himself.  And it was awesome.  Set at the turn of the century, the plot revolved around a young lady who had been bitten by a vampire, and the teams had to run around the site interacting with various members of the household to try and find out who the vampire was and how to stop him.  I was a butler called Hinton, and spent all my time in the dining room polishing cutlery and polishing my shoes.  Others weren’t so lucky – Will was a crazed madman running around in the woods smelling people and shouting random things in the darkness, in the pouring rain.  It was really well received though, and all the members pulled together and enjoyed it greatly.

Tuesday

Tuesday I played a lot of music.  And I mean a serious amount of music.  I was leading worship in the morning, then the morning activity I was leading the members’ band, in the afternoon we did Junk Funk and then I was leading worship again in the evening.

Okay, let’s just explain what some of those are, because unless you were there you’re unlikely to understand the significance.  The members’ band is where we get all the members who play instruments and try and get them co-ordinated into a band, with the aim of having them lead the worship for the Thursday evening meeting.  My job was to organise them all, which turned out to be a job and a half, simply because there were 6 drummers, at least 5 guitarists, and a whole gaggle of singers.  We managed to make some sense of it all eventually though, and played through a couple of songs.  I decided it was best to leave the final decisions until the next rehearsal, and just whet everyone’s toes for now.

Junk Funk was a joint leadership thing between myself and Sarah, who is a trained and very talented percussionist (she can play pretty much anything that you hit).  The idea was to get a whole load of junk, give it to the members and get them to play as a percussion band in some form.  A bit like Stomp, if you’ve heard them.  Now, Sarah and I come from very different percussion backgrounds – Sarah is very highly trained, and has a passion for Brazillian and Latin rhythms, and is very organised.  I have no training whatsoever, a general appreciation for anything rhythmical, and prefer planned spontenaity to prescriptive pre-planning.  In actual fact the combination of those two approaches worked out really well.  We had a huge number of kids come along, most of whom were very rhythmic (which made our job a lot easier).  Sarah started off by teaching people a few call and response things from her Samba training, which we used at various points during the session to control everyone.  Everyone seemed to pick these up quickly, so I then led the planned spontenaity (which I don’t think Sarah had come across before), which basically involved starting everyone off with a beat and told them to get creative with it.  Before very long there was a multitude of beats going on, all very musical, and all I did to control it was wave my hands around to tell people to get quieter or louder, or which section should be playing at any given time.  It was lots of fun, and they made a wonderful sound!  The only problem was that in some ways they were a little over-enthusiastic – there were a couple of kitchen items that got a little bashed out of shape over the course of the session, and by the time we eventually finished everyone’s ears were ringing!  All good fun though, and definitely one to do next year.

The evening meeting on Tuesday was argubly one of the more powerful ones of the week, with a really stirring talk by Jennie followed by some quite touching worship afterwards.  There were a number of people in tears by the end of the meeting.  That’s by no means a bad thing, of course, and showed a good level of maturity from the members to be able to take on board the tough message.  All in all it was quite a draining day – musically, emotionally and spiritually.

Wednesday

Half way through the week, and by this point most of us were running low on energy.  In the morning Sam, Sarah and I led a Worship Workshop, which actually only attracted 4 members, but we had a good session talking about how to play effectively as a band, what constituted worship, and how to lead worship.  It was a bit of a fly-past tour of the topic rather than an in-depth study, but I think it was enough to at least whet the appetites of those who attended.  Judging by the musical ability of some of the peeps in the members’ band and the spiritual and emotional maturity already demonstrated, I can see there being a whole new generation of worship leaders just waiting to be put on stage!  With God’s annointing I am sure they will go far.

The afternoon I think I managed to take some time out to relax a bit.  At least, I think that’s what I did.  It’s all so long ago (already) and the week was so packed with stuff that figuring out what I did when is a bit of a challenge.  Thankfully though I managed to pace myself better this year – two years ago when I last came I pushed myself a little too hard and crashed quite spectacularly on the Thursday.  This year I managed to alay my guilt and spend some quality time sitting on a sofa doing very little.  Not wasting time, savouring it.

That evening we had the formal meal, for which everyone dressed up in black and white – and bling – and had a lovely meal.  For a change, all the members were served by the leaders (rather than the job being assigned to specific dorm groups).  The food, it has to be said, was lovely, just as it had been the whole week – hats off to the cooks!  After the meal we all headed down to the theatre for the Stanbridge Earls version of “Britain’s Got Talent”; there were a number of acts, though many of them (including the Monty Python sketch Ellie and I had rehearsed) were cut short due to lack of time and lack of talent.  A little frustrating for those groups who had been rehearsing for hours, but never mind.

Thursday

Another relatively easy start to the day, with nothing specific planned for the morning except leading worship.  It was the afternoon and evening, though, that got my pulse racing again, with the second of the two afternoon activity sessions (the one just before dinner, which was followed immediately by the evening meeting) being the second members’ band rehearsal.  Everyone managed to make it to that rehearsal (the previous time several people had been on an off-site activity so couldn’t make it), so there were a lot of people to try to co-ordinate.  Rather than dictating to them what they were going to play and how, I had decided to let them have a say in it all, so the first part of the session involved everyone discussing which songs we wanted to do, taking into account the theme of the talk that night, and then the complicated task of working out who was going to play at what point.  I think there was a little disappointment by some of the drummers, all of whom really wanted to play but not all of whom could play at once!  We finally managed to get that all sorted though, and managed to go through the songs a couple of times.  The main problem I had was keeping a tight reign on their enthusiasm – there were three fantastic guitarists all playing at the same time, and I kept having to tell them to scale it down and not all play at once!  It was quite heavy and stodgy at times.  Thankfully I think the message got through eventually and they managed to put their egos aside for the meeting, and it all worked really well.

Oh, and the evening session saw all the boys camped out in the theatre watching Finding Nemo.  Quality.

Friday

Aahh!!  Our last full day of camp!  Where has the week gone??!  It was a bit of a shock to the system actually, realising that camp was nearly over.  We had grown so used to functioning on no energy, relying on God’s strength to get us through the day, and it felt quite odd to be thinking about going back into the real world again.

In the morning I helped with the scone-making, and in the afternoon we all ate them with jam and clotted cream in our dorm groups (a traditional Friday activity on camp), before a leaders vs. members game of rounders.  Which the leaders won.  Regardless of the score, which attested otherwise.

The evening meeting’s talk was given by Rachel, who I’m not sure had actually been to camp before this year, but who really got stuck in and active, despite having had both her legs broken in a car accident only a few months ago.  Her talk was one of the best of the week, touched on some really tough issues, had some funny moments and some tear-jerkers.  It’s been a while since a talk aimed at young people has brought me to tears.  It seemed to have a big impact on others too, so it was definitely well received by all.

After that our dorm had an extended time of Bible study.  Earlier in the week we had looked at the topic of relationships and going out, which our dorm group really got into and had more to say – the hour session we had just wasn’t long enough, so we scheduled this additional discussion to run through any more questions they had.  It was really encouraging to find that they all had so many questions, and how maturely and sensibly they discussed the issues, especially given they were the youngest age group at camp.  We all talked long into the night, going over a whole load of tough issues, and there were a fair few challenges that we all had to address, both leaders and members.  It was well worth doing though, and everyone seemed to get a lot out of it (we even had members of someone else’s dorm joining in).  It meant a late night for them all, but I think it was worth it.  There is no substitute for thinking.

Saturday

Yes, it finally came, the last morning of camp.  Everyone packed up and had breakfast, and after the morning meeting everyone dispersed and went home, some by car, some by train, some by boat.  It was sad to say all those goodbyes, and there were many tears shed and e-mail addresses exchanged.  Then, once all the members were dealt with, we leaders set to work taking everything down again, ready for the next group who were arriving that afternoon.  I spent most of my time in the theatre again, packing up instruments, folding up microphone stands, boxing up speakers, loading up cars, coiling up cables.  As with setting up at the beginning of camp, it was surprising how the big things were the easy ones to get set up and put away again – it was all the small things that caused the problems.  There were boxes that just wouldn’t contain another small item, there were odd bits and pieces here and there that just wouldn’t fit into people’s cars again, there were missing items, excess items that shouldn’t have been there, and a lot of tidying up to do everywhere.  We managed to get it all done though, and finally managed to get all the leaders off-site to meet up at the pub down the road for lunch and a fond farewell.

In conclusion

Wow, what an awesome week.  God was really present with us the whole time, for which we were all very grateful, and lots of fun was had too in the various activities we all endulged in.  My electric guitar has never seen so much use in all the time I’ve had it, but it stood up to the punishment admirably.  I managed to lose my Bible (and other bits and pieces) several times during the week, but Ellie was always there to find them for me (and put me to shame in the process).  We all went home very tired, but also very satisfied that God had been at work through us all in teaching and inspiring the members who came.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take any photos, but people on Facebook will probably already have seen the photos put up by various people who did manage to get snappy.

And next year?  Well, Ellie and I will definitely be going back as leaders, and since Sam plans to abscond to Australia I shall probably (it has yet to be confirmed for definite) end up co-ordinating all the music next year.  That means I’ll need an assistant, so that I’m not leading every meeting.  I’ll also need to think about songs to take with us, and equipment that we’ve so far relied on Sam bringing, like projectors and computers and cables and stuff.  All good fun!  Roll on SE09!!

For those who have not heard me raving about this guitar before, allow me to quickly explain what makes this guitar so different from most others you may have seen. At first glance it looks like any other electric guitar, with the red body and white pick-guard and traditional cutaway body shape. But take a second look and you’ll find something missing – the pickups. Rather than it being one guitar, this is lots of guitars in one, thanks to some clever modelling and a selector knob. Think of it a bit like the voices on a keyboard – hit the right setting and you’ll create a completely different sound. The Variax 300 has several guitars built-in, including a variety of electric guitars, some semi-acoustics, a handful of acoustics, and some fun instruments too (banjo and sitar, to name but two). It truly is one of the most versatile guitars I’ve come across.

Straight out of the box, the guitar was out of tune, but that’s no surprise. The action wasn’t bad, and the bridge adjusters weren’t all level so I’m guessing a certain amount of work was done in the factory to set up the intonation. Of course, it being a clever bit of kit, you can’t just plug it straight into an amp and start playing, you’ve got to find another power socket for the guitar transformer, which is a little box that sits on the floor. A special lead (which is supplied) plugs from the guitar to one side of the box, and a conventional jack-to-jack lead plugs from there to the amp. The special lead looks much like a normal jack-to-jack lead, except that it has an extra contact point on it for carrying power to the guitar.

Once we’re plugged in, the fun starts. Changing between guitars is quick and easy, even if the markings and names on the knob are a little confusing to begin with – to avoid copyright complications the Fender Stratocaster sound isn’t listed by that name at all, although everything is neatly explain in the manual (but who ever looks at that??). The tones seem pretty realistic, and gives plenty of scope for creating interesting sounds. The pickup selector switch actually does a variety of things depending on which guitar you have selected – sometimes it’ll do what you would expect in swapping between pickup combinations, but in some cases it switches between guitars as well; the acoustic setting on the guitar selector knob gives you five guitars depending on which pickup position you use, including three 6-strings and two 12-strings.

One of the consequences of not using traditional pickups is that lack of noise – regardless of which guitar you select, there is no discernible hiss or background hum, which is pretty impressive. The downside is that when playing through a heavily distorted amp setting there is no guitar resonance to hide your mistakes. I’ve also found that the strings don’t seem to ring on for very long, making those soaring guitar solos a little more difficult to produce. That may be resolved by a different choice of string, but I have to admit this is one of the guitars biggest failings for me.

Another small gripe is that when playing vigourously my strumming hand hits the volume knob, which is just slightly too near the strings for comfort. I’m sure this can be avoided with practice, but it’s a shame Line 6 didn’t pick up on this during development.

Something else worth pointing out is how it feels to play. Although it may sound like a Fender or a Gibson or an Epiphone or a banjo, it won’t necessarily feel like any of them when you’re playing. There is sadly no vibrato built into the bridge, and bending notes somehow seems to deaden the note, which is rather frustrating. Nonetheless, it’s a guitar that promises fun in bucketloads, and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wishes they had a room full of guitars but can only afford one!

Until this morning I had my heart set on the Yamaha RGX A2, which is a futuristic looking white guitar with some fantastic design elements and quirky features, including an LED in the volume knob and tuning pegs that are round rather than flat. In terms of looks, this guitar is awesome, right up my street. However, it is about £250, and having played it in the shop this morning it didn’t quite feel that much. Sure, it was fun to play, and allowed me to create some really cool rocky tones, but because it only has two humbucker pickups it’s rather limited in tonal variety, which is a shame.

I then picked up a Yamaha Pacifica. These are legendary guitars, loved the world over by amateur and beginner guitarist for their reliability and flexibility. With a more traditional Strat-inspired body and layout, and with a combination of humbucker and coil pickups, it has a lot more tonal variety than the RGX A2, and also has the benefit of a vibrato (sometimes called a Tremelo or Trem) bar. That makes playing punchy rock solos a little more interesting! In terms of completeness, then, the Pacifica is actually more suitable for me than the RGX A2, in that it’s able to play a wider range of styles. It might not have such good looks, but it is likely to be more reliable, and comes in much cheaper at around £140. Of course, it’s still a beginner’s guitar at the end of the day, and has Yamaha written on the headstock. Yamaha make motorbikes and cheap keyboards, remember. Do I really want to be playing a beginner’s guitar? Not really. I’m far from being professional, but I wouldn’t consider myself a novice either.

That brings me back to the Line 6 Variax 300 that I found a few months ago. Line 6 traditionally make guitar accessories and amps, but have recently turned their hand to guitars, bringing out a range of digital guitars – rather than having normal pickups it has a clever electronic bit of wizardry that models a bunch of other guitars. At the flick of a switch you can make it sound exactly like a Fender Strat, or a Gretsch, or a Guild acoustic guitar, or a banjo… how’s that for flexibility! Apparently some of the acoustic sounds aren’t perfect through a normal guitar amp, but through a PA system it sounds awesome. To beat it all, it comes in at an affordable £250, which is the same as the RGX A2. Those who know me will know that I don’t like to be limited to one style of music, but rather I prefer to explore all sorts of different sounds, from rock to jazz to classical to quiet acoustic to funk to pop to whatever, and in that sense this guitar is pretty much perfect for my needs. Sure, it’s perhaps not as attractive as the RGX A2, and the internal electrics are a little more tricky to replace if they go wrong, but for studio recording and playing at church this would be a fantastic choice.

So there we go, I’ll be buying the Variax 300 then. In fact, I’ve also got my eye on a Line 6 Spider III 15 amp to go with it, which has some fun features too. With all of that in mind, it should be a while before I get bored of that setup and need to invest in effects pedals, which is even better! The only down side is that I’ll have to buy the guitar and amp on the internet, as none of the local guitar shops stock them, but maybe that’s a good thing – it means I’ll have bought it before I play it, which means I’m less likely to start thinking about rethinking my decision…