Deep to Deep - October 2004
| Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls (Psalm 42:7) |
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The October 2004 Deep to Deep meeting took place at Hither Green Baptist Church (Lewisham, South East London) on Saturday 23 October. Thanks to all who attended (eleven in all). Below are some photos from the day:
For once, I'd been reasonably organised with planning and so, between 11am and 3:30pm we squeezed in the following sections (plus lots of informal chatting and trying things out:
- Introductions - giving everyone a chance to introduce themselves share a current favourite worship song (some were widely known but others were new to most of us)
- Meditation - a few minutes to remind ourselves that neither our gear nor our bass playing is more important than living for our master, Jesus
- Blind listening - we ran a number of comparisons, with one or two people taking turns to set things up and everyone else sitting facing away from the equipment; not exactly scientific, but fun. We compared active and passive basses, and different cabinets and combos. One of the lessons was that the ears don't always give the same picture as the eyes! Also, it was clear that different equipment fits different applications, which is a good reason for taking as much of your own setup with you as you can when you go to buy something new and trying it with the kind of music you think you'll be making.
- "Distilled Inspiration" - we had a short discussion session before lunch to look at what things inspire or discourage us in our playing. I'll start a thread on the Worship Released discussion forum to summarise the ideas I picked up and to invite further comment.
- Ensemble Playing - After lunch, we assembled a number of small ensembles each of which played through one or two songs, giving people room to make suggestions about how to improve the way different parts worked together. Although multi-bass ensembles are pretty rare, a lot of the lessons also apply to working with other instruments, such as finding complementary tones, ranges and parts. I also enjoyed what I think was a Deep to Deep first - the first string broken at an event! Good job I packed a spare!
- Worship - we finished the afternoon by playing Amazing Grace together. Amazingly, we seemed to keep pretty much in time (we've done the same thing in the past and ended up petering out as everyone finds themselves at different points in the chord progression); a satisfying conclusion to a worthwhile day.