Genesis In The Making - Update 4

Another late night spent in the studio, another productive evening spent on the track. As Pendulum were one of the main inspirations for the track (in the musical sense), we decided to try out some electric guitar in the track. The majority of the Pendulum tracks contain and are built around the electric guitar, so we decided to give it a go.

Remembering that the aim for us as TP7 is to create music that people can listen to and love, whilst carrying the message about who we are and about God. The importance of this often gets put aside when we're working on the track, and sometimes we forget about the reality of it all. When we realise this, taking a break and praying often helps to just pull ourselves back on track, and helps to take the stress away as well!!

Brotherhood

"Life is only worth living if its worth sharing" .... A good friend of mine said this the other day and it got me thinking... what is "sharing life"? How often do we share our lives with the people around us? And how much of our lives do we have to share?

I searched a definition for the word "Brotherhood", and found this:

Brotherhood - Feelings of friendship, support and understanding between a community of people

Brotherhood is often spoken of throughout the Bible, and whether people know it or not, it happens to them everyday. It's about spending time with friends; going out for a drink or lunch with them; helping someone in their time of need. The best way to look at it is to see "Brotherhood" as a verb... an act. So to sum the quote up in one word, I would say "Brotherhood".

We share our lives with the people around us everyday. Meeting friends, speaking about what we did last weekend or what we have planned for the next one; it's something that we do subconsciously. But how much of our lives should we share?

I think that we are all guilty of not sharing our lives enough with the people around us. We have secrets that we don't want people to know, we lie about our feelings to the people closest to us, even if it is because we feel it's better for them not to know. Even those people that we would say we completely trust, we don't tell them everything.

Being part of a Church who's lifestyle is based around Brotherhood is great. The Church we (TP7) are part of (Jesus Fellowship Church) have taken on a lifestyle called "Community". Community within the Church is people living together in the same house as an "extended family", where they share their belongings, including all of their money, their cars and their food. In giving all of their own things to be shared amongst the people they live with, a sense of Brotherhood is automatically created. With that comes times where they meet together to eat, pray, worship and just to relax. The sense of Brotherhood in Church community is far stronger than that in the World, and it brings with it much stronger feeling of security... I certainly feel a lot more secure and stable when I'm with them.

Genesis In The Making - Update 3

So, after spending far too long in the studio on the track, and after some useful feedback from some friends, it seems the track has taken a new path. Still following the Drum and Bass theme, with a few extra vocal hooks and a different build structure, it's started to sound like a professional track! Writing this at 5.42 in the morning is proof of a long day producing, but its been great.

A small part of today was spent setting up the projector screen on a different wall so it was in the right place to use properly. It took me a few attempts to try and get the screen up and the screws in the right place (I tend not to plan these sort of things through properly...) but I got there eventually!

We gave our friend a version of the first take of our track, so that He could show us some techniques for mastering a track properly. It was slightly mind blowing, and a rather steep learning curve to understand how things work and to try and apply them to the track, but the results were pretty good.

Genesis In The Making - Update 2

The track came together a lot quicker than first anticipated, and it's very almost finished. It sounds much better than we could have originally hoped for, and definitely amplifies the feel that we were going for in terms the new creation, uplifting feeling the track gives. We put some vocals in the track, in a preaching style, and it definitely worked .. it gave the track a unique feel to it, and allowed us to give it something more towards the message side of the song and what it was meant to portray.

Recording the vocals was fun, trying to get it sounding right, and trying to read my own handwriting from the white board...

We're waiting now to sort out the mastering of the track, and go over the finishing few touches in terms of levels and EQ, but we hope to finish it by next week! 

Genesis In The Making - Update 1

So, after some brainstorming and throwing some ideas into Ableton (the software that we use), we finally came up with the foundations for the new track. As this will be our first track made together under the name "TP7", we thought it fit to find a suitable start point... And what better place to start than Genesis. Genesis speaks about the beginning of time, when God created the Earth, and the things on it. We wanted to keep the song uplifting and make the lead synths strong and prominent in the track, in order to give it the new life feel.

We started off writing a chord sequence, with some odd chord progressions in an attempt to stray from the generic chords. It can be easy writing simple chords that follow a normal, predictable pattern, but its nice to try and challenge yourself in making something different.

We decided on the first style being Drum and Bass because, for me at least, it's the genre I felt most at home making. The first album that I ever owned at the age of 11 was Pendulum - Hold Your Colour, so I felt completely in my zone when we started making it, and Tristan is a big fan of Drum and Bass too so it was good starting ground for us.

Brainstorming...

Brainstorming a track and working out where you think the track should go is a fun process, because it opens up your imagination and helps the flow of thought. When making a track that has a message behind it, you have to make sure you plan what the message is, and how you're going to portray it.

Story-boarding is a good way to do this, because it helps to visualise the path of the song and it's a simple guideline to work from. We have just started to story board ideas for a track, possibly on the theme of friendship and family, as this is one of the most important aspects of being part of a church and living a life with God involved.

Sometimes when it comes down to planning a song, finding inspiration can be difficult. As Christians however, we often spend a bit of time just praying, or talking to God and asking Him for inspiration. Doing this helps us to open our minds to what He wants us to do, and can often lead to a sudden wave of inspiration and ideas.

In The Beginning...

And so it begins; the first step to getting the music we make out there. But it's not just about the music...

Since we discovered the world of electronic music software it has been our aim to begin using it to portray who we are and carry a message about what we do. We wanted our music to have a lasting influence on people, to sit in the back of the listeners mind, and cause them to think over this aspect of their life.

So what is it that we want them to think about?

Religion has gained a bad name for itself in recent years. Only 100 years ago it was a person's obligation to go to church on Sunday and be a "Christian", and for some that's still the case. But times have changed and its no longer necessary to believe in a God or turn up to a church every Sunday. But being a Christian is not about turning up to a church... it's about a life lived with God, spreading His love to other people. Its about friendship and family; loving each other and sharing the life the He can give us.

So how do you communicate that?

Being Christians in a modern world means that to reach out to people requires the use of current mediums of communication. Music is probably one of the best mediums to communicate a feeling or message. I mean... who doesn't listen to music?

So we aim to bring music to the world that people will love and that people can enjoy, but which will also portray a message of love, of family and of brotherhood - which is what Church is. We want to show people that following Jesus is a life defined by love, joy, and family too!