London Day Prep - The Marquee

So as London day draws nearer, and with only 2 opportunities to experiment new sounds before hand, the race is on to start bringing together some new tracks to raise the (metaphorical) roof in the streets of London!

We've started to bring together some tracks, most remixes with 1 or 2 new songs. We're very lucky to have the opportunity before London day to introduce the songs to our Church at the Marquee Festival Weekend that our Church has 3 times a year. We have the chance 2 or 3 weeks before London day to have what you might call a "dress rehearsal", to get everyone pumped up and ready for The big march through London!

The Marquee Festival weekends are great weekends for our Church, because it brings the whole Church together for the weekend to Celebrate God and to be together. They're full of inspirational videos for future events, as well as bible study and the word of God from the Leaders, which helps to direct our Church in the right direction.

Trying to create music that reaches out to all kinds of people of all ages can be difficult! You've got to reach out to the kids, to the teenagers and to the slightly older people in our congregation (although there's still a lot of life in those guys!!). We try to find the middle ground - a song people can dance and worship to. That way, everyone can get involved, and of course it celebrates our love for God! The marquee is a great experimenting ground for new ideas, as people are often inspired over the whole weekend, and are always up for new things!

A few weeks ago, Lindsey West AKA - Lz7  came to the local Northampton congregation, and shared His story with us. It was amazing to hear that in his first week of being born, Noel Stanton (The founder of our Church) prophesied that He would reach out to people and share the word of God. Low and behold, He's making music to the thousands, spreading the love of God to countries all over the world! He's a real inspiration to everyone, and especially to TP7, as that's what we are trying to do!

All Things Church

Hey guys, sorry for the delay in the next post... apparently University takes up more of my time than I thought it would. Anyway, this post will hopefully enlighten you a little more on what our church does and what it's about.

Throughout the year, our church (The Jesus Fellowship) hold events throughout the country, where the whole of the church meet up to hang out, worship and celebrate God. The first event of the year happens in Birmingham. There are also events that happen in London, Sheffield and Northampton, and are fairly large events. For more info, check out www.jesus.org.uk for some info... we'd love to see you there!

During these events, and not excluding the one in Birmingham, there's often a lot of what you might call "Dramas" or "Sketches", where people will do certain things in order to portray a message. For example, some people may get together and do a dance, or sing a song, or they might do a short drama where scenarios are acted out which demonstrate maybe our need for God, or what love is. There can be all sorts of things that are shown through all sorts of different mediums, and this time, we were asked to do some music for one of them.

As Birmingham's event drew closer and closer, we were asked to do a piece of backing music for one of drama's that was going to take place during the evening. We found out soon after that the main theme of Birmingham's event was "Light", and so we had to make a fairly large track that helped to represent light breaking through, filling the darkness and lighting the whole place. It was a pretty big ask, considering it had to be around 10 minutes long and we had just under 2 weeks to do it! In a normal situation, that would be very difficult to do, especially with the fact we weren't able to do it during the week because of University and Work.

We started listening to tracks for inspiration, tracks that were massive, with large drops and even bigger builds. One of the main inspirations for the musical style of the track was a guy named Arkasia, who's music is beyond massive! The drops he makes are always huge, but because he is classically trained, he incorporates an orchestral feel to his music, which is what we wanted to do.

Eventually we came up with the baseline of chords for the track, and spent countless late nights until early hours of the morning making it. In fact, we were still adding final touches a few hours before it was meant to show! The pressure was really on during the last 2 weeks, but we definitely had God on our side, giving us both patience and energy to do what was needed in the track.

After all the hard work, it came to using the track in the drama, and we prayed that what we made would achieve the desired effect of the drama and help emphasise the message that was being said. I think it's fair to say that God was definitely in the building that day! When the music played and the drama happened, there was a sense of awe throughout the hall as people watched what was happening on the stage, and listened to the music being played. We could see that people were really appreciating what was happening, and it definitely worked!

And of course, a day spent in a hall filled with over a 1000 people and the love of God wouldn't be complete without a celebration!

The hardest thing to remember when making tracks like this is that, although we can enjoy making the track, and add various characteristics to the track that make it ours, the music is actually there to emphasise what is happening on the stage, and isn't the main part. But after all the hard work, it definitely worked really well and I'm certain people were touched by the whole drama.

 In terms of the whole event, it was a really good, God-filled experience. The worship was great and the hall was definitely filled with God's presence. These events are what really emphasises the fact that church isn't a building with a steeple, but rather it's the people that join together in worshipping God. "Hate Religion, Love Jesus" ... probably the best way to describe what church should be. The events that we go to are not religious, but are there purely to be together and love God. Everyone and anyone can love Jesus!

The next event we are looking forward to is our London Day March, where the whole of our church march through the centre of London, right to Trafalgar Square, where we spend the afternoon showing the people around what our church is and that demonstrating the love of God to all of them. And to make the whole thing better, TP7 are in charge of the music for the whole march, which means back to the Lab for the next 5 months!!

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.