MUSIC VIDEO – Jesus Give Us Love
JESUS GIVE US LOVE (Music Video)
From the album “The Living Creatures Project.”
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Production
5. Recording Living Creatures Project – Pt 2
The One in Which I Tell Tales of Hiding Songs in Dark Places and Recording Drum Tracks.
The other day my son, Angel told me he wrote a song and asked me if I wanted to hear it. I said I would love to hear it, but first I want you to write four more songs. Write four more songs, then play me the best of the five.
“Four more songs?” he had a look on his face like “You’ve never said that before.”
I explained my reasoning; when I write a song, at first I always think it’s the best song I’ve ever written and usually I have to write a couple more songs before I have any objectivity.
The Filter
It’s like our kids. When we have the first kid there is a magic filter that causes us to believe they are the most wonderful child in the world; they are the most beautiful (so beautiful we take nine photos every hour, and show the photos to anyone who will stand still long enough to see them), they are the most talented (everything reminds us of another amazing story of teething, sitting, crawling, walking or baby talk illustrating how our child is well above average.) The filter even works on other people; no matter what they say we only hear what the magic filter lets through. Someone could say our baby was a hideous little worm, but we would only hear, “Your baby is so adorable!” Once we have another child we start to see the first kid more objectively; the magic filter stops working, and we begin to see our kid for who they really are; a hideous little worm. Just kidding! Whether parents have another child or not, we eventually start to see our child in a more realistic light. Well, most parents anyway.
Songs have a magic filter, too.
If it wasn’t for this magic filter, most of us would never write a second song, and we would have hidden the first song in a dark place where no one would ever find it. This is where the child analogy completely breaks down, of course. Parents should never hide their children in dark places, no matter how awful they are.
I’m going to back slowly away from the “songs are like children” metaphor before someone gets hurt.
I needed to cut eight songs from the Living Creatures Project from the twenty I had started with. These had already been chosen from about a hundred songs, so it was really a matter of choosing songs that made a cohesive album rather than cutting the hideous worms. Songs like “Open Your Word,” “Christ the Word of God,” and “He is Risen” along with some renovated hymns will probably resurface on a project in the future.
Home Recording For Drummies.
We recorded the drums at Alan’s studio. He has the control room set up in a small bedroom, and he ran an audio snake across the attic to a larger bedroom he uses for the recording room; the place where he keeps his drums and music gear. The control room is dark with a black futon and a colorful disco light that reacts to sound. There is not a window between the control room and the recording room like you have probably seen on TV, which can make communication between the two rooms challenging.
Alan set up his vintage Ludwig kit and had it mic’d up before I arrived. I think it may have been left over from a previous session, which is fantastic because that means the bugs had been worked out. It also means that he already knows he likes the drum sounds. Best of all, it means I don’t have to stand around waiting for drums to be set up and listen to hours of mic placement tests, eq and compression settings and bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk – “I don’t think the kick mic is working.”
We ran everything through some crazy cool analog gear with old transistors and tubes to give everything a nice warm glow, but eventually the signal gets captured digitally on a MacPro running ProTools.
I sat in the control room and ran the software while Alan played drums in the other room. Before each song he would come into the control room and sit on the futon while we listened to the scratch-track. We would both play the drum parts by tapping our foot for the kick and slapping our legs for the rest of the kit; pretty much like two kids playing air-drums. I knew the basic drum parts I wanted for the songs, and this was a great way for us to get on the same page quickly.
Once we had a plan for what the drum part would be; where to play, where not to play, what the groove was going to be, where the fills are, what kind of fills, how busy or minimalist the drums should be, etc. then Alan would go into the recording room, put on headphones and start hammering away at the track.
I would record everything, because you never know when a happy accident might occur. Usually he would play a couple takes before he wanted to listen to a playback. Sometimes when you hear the playback it doesn’t come back through the speakers quite the way you thought it was going to sound, so you record again with slight modifications. The goal is for it to feel the same when you listen to it as it did when you were playing it. Typically by the third or fourth take we were ready to move to the next song.
If I remember right, I think it only took us three days to lay all the drum tracks. I think Alan is a genius drummer who knows how to play drums like a composer; he finds the perfect part to set up the song and make the arrangement come together. He is a bit of a minimalist but he has serious rock chops when he needs them. I’m pretty sure he can read minds.
It felt great to have the drum tracks finished. He made stereo mixes of them, and uploaded them to Dropbox so I could load them on my computer and work on guitar, bass and vocals at home.
TO BE CONTINUED…
First Article in this Series
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4. Recording Living Creatures Project – Pt 1
The One in Which I Speak of Remembering a Fantasy and Searching for a Sound.
The best experience I have ever had recording an album was the first Atomic Opera album “For Madmen Only.” We spent months in preproduction going to our rehearsal room at 9am and working on songs until 5pm. The rehearsal room was a converted public storage space in a suspicious part of Houston. I actually had nightmares where I imagined the owners kept the raw meat of dead animals under the floor of the office; I’m just saying the place was not glamorous.
We wrote half the “For Madmen Only” songs in that concrete box, and we also reworked the arrangements of our older songs. By the time we went into Rivendell Studios to record the album we were well rehearsed and the songs were as tight as we could make them.
Sam Taylor was in charge of the whole project as producer. He hired the renown Steve Ames as head engineer, and the always charming Brian Garcia as second engineer (there was also an intern engineer named Ryan Birsinger.) We had rodies, guitar techs, drum techs, catering, graphic designers, photographers, film crews and the marketing engine of Warner Brothers at our disposal. It was making a record the way a record is made in dreams. I thank God for that experience and all those great people; it was twenty years ago today.
Recording the Living Creatures Project was not anything like that.
My experience in the fantasy recording project of “For Madmen Only” gave me the experience and education to keep making records after the record companies faded away and became dust on the shelves of my memories. With a lot of help from my friends I produced two more Atomic Opera albums, a solo album and recently the Living Creatures Project.
In a previous article I talked about the preproduction and sitting down with several songwriting friends to break the songs apart and rebuild them as tightly as possible. Getting the songs right is very important. It doesn’t matter how the rest of a recording project goes if you don’t start with great songs. The lyrics and melodies need to be strong, and they need to stand alone without any recording gimmicks or trickery.
I had really enjoyed working with Sam Taylor and Steve Ames, so I knew I wanted to approach the Living Creatures Project as a collaboration in production. I asked my good friend Alan Doss if he would be interested in Co-producing the project.
Alan was also involved with Sam Taylor’s Wilde Silas Musicworks as the drummer for both The Awful Truth and The Galactic Cowboys. He had recorded some projects in collaboration with Sam and Steve and had gone on to produce several more projects in smaller studios. I believed if Alan helped me with the project it would have a really good chance of being something special.
Alan agreed to work on the project with me. We talked about how I wanted it to sound like our favorite rock albums from the 70s. We got together and listened to some old music; geeking-out on his gigantic vinyl LP collection and vintage stereo system. We listened to various albums making note of production ideas and the specific sound direction we would be aiming for.
SCRATCH-TRACKS
Then we turned our attention to the songs. I had narrowed them down to twenty I had written for worship at CrossPoint over the last ten years. We got together at my home studio and I played the songs for him on acoustic guitar. He listened and we talked about what worked, what still needed improvement, he made notes about where the melody could be cleaner, the lyrics could be more simple and musical, and where alternate chords or rhythm ideas might be needed. I listened to the ideas, used some of them and didn’t use others. He brought objectivity to songs I had been playing in church for years. You might think that would make it hard to accept input and allow change, but I don’t find that to be the case if I respect the person I’m working with. This is not the time to be insecure and defensive, and it is important that you keep an open mind. Alan was very helpful in the final tweaking of the songs.
We recorded the twenty songs at my home studio in simple scratch-track form. On past projects the scratch-tracks would be recordings of the whole band playing the songs together; which only works if you have a well rehearsed band and the space to record them. In this case I played acoustic guitar and sang the lead vocal while listening to a click. These tracks would be the foundation for all the other instruments and performances that will be layered o top, but these scratch-tracks will not actually be in the final mix of the song.
Nonetheless, the scratch-track needs to have as much of the energy, vibe and feel of the song as possible. It will be the guide and inspiration for all the layers of drums, bass, electric guitar, etc. that would be added later. Scratch-tracks are not the time to be self-critical or over analytical; it is the time to become as a child, making music with freedom and playing from your soul. It is very important to work with someone you trust and feel comfortable with if you are going to find this elusive place.
Once we had all twenty scratch-tracks recorded it was time to cut eight of them from the project.
TO BE CONTINUED…
First Article in this Series
Next Article
Enter your name and email, and you will immediately be sent a link to download some music. Including songs from The Living Creatures Project, Human Liturgy, Gospel Cola, Penguin Dust, Alpha & Oranges, For Madmen Only, and three never released bonus tracks. WHAT A DEAL! You will also get notification when there are new posts, songs, videos, etc.
REVIEW: The Living Creatures Project
Review of The Living Creatures Project:
By Ella Granger Hearrean
Frank Hart turns listeners into believers with his album, The Living Creatures Project. Hart, the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the rock band Atomic Opera, penned this long-awaited release as the worship leader at CrossPoint Community Church in Katy, Texas. He delivers the same soulful flavor here as he does in a smoky pub on a Saturday night and in church on Sunday morning. He is a master of uniting his music, his faith, and his worlds into one faithful experience that rocks to the core.
The album is somewhat bookended by the soothing rock-a-bye “Jesus Give Us Love” and the disarming keyboard chords in “In Jesus’ Name Believe,” but the tracks between them pack a punch. In the permeating rock song “Christ Before Me,” Hart layers his low, haunting voice over a long, mystic guitar ride. “Three Days of Darkness” dares to journey from the depths of doubt to the heights of assurance: It begins in eerie stillness and slowly swells before it bursts wide open to the triumphant claps and chants of the Salvation Army Harbor Light Choir.
The real star of the album is Hart’s longest track, “Almighty God.” Its heavy, bold, relentless beat defines the crossroads of rock and blues, hope and agony. It is universally intimate, delicately powerful, and humbly majestic. Anyone who has tasted God’s sweet relief from despair will recognize it in “Almighty God.”
By the time the album recedes into its final track, “Blessed to be a Blessing,” listeners will surely recognize the blessing of Frank Hart and The Living Creatures Project.
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NEW MUSIC – The Living Creatures Project
THE
LIVING CREATURES
PROJECT
Sample Track: Christ Before Me
Modern Worship. Classic Rock. This is an album of twelve songs that were inspired by working on the frontline of the Great Commission.
They are MANLY worship songs that will appeal to both men who follow Jesus and the women who love them. Musically, this is not a jing-jangely, strum-dumily, business as usual worship album; it takes its direction from the classic pioneers of rock music.
Frank has written a series of BLOGS about this album, the recording process, the songs and behind the scenes.
Frank is the frontman for the hard rock band Atomic Opera, he is also the music director at CrossPoint Church; this music is what happens when those two worlds collide. Ancient truth. Modern Sound. WORSHIP OUT LOUD.
Fans of classic rock and followers of Jesus will want to check this out.
Purchase and hear previews at these fine retailers:
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Living Creatures CD Release Concert
A Project 10 Years in the Making!
A studio recording of original music written for worship at CrossPoint.
It’s time to bring the Living Creatures Project to LIFE! (SEE VIDEO)
For one night only, the musicians who played on the album will be performing the project in its complete entirety. This is a special event celebrating the CD’s official release. It will be a powerful evening of modern worship and classic rock.
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3. Living Creatures SongSmithing
The one in which I recall noble tales of brilliant people helping refine songs.
If you look at the credits on the Living Creatures Project you will find “all words and music by Frank Hart.” This might lead you believe I created all the lyrics and musical arrangements by myself in a hermetically sealed vacuum. The truth is I had a lot of help from some very generous and talented friends shaping the final version of these songs. Songwriting abhors a vacuum.
The original list for this project had twenty potential songs. Those twenty were chosen from about ninety that I had written for congregational use during worship at CrossPoint. Sometimes people tell me they have written a song and they want me to do something with it. You know, like listen to it, record it, play it in church or something. I usually ask them how many other songs they have written. “Just this one. God gave it to me.”
Sometimes I think God might give people songs because He doesn’t want them anymore. Kind of like re-gifting.
People usually think their most recent song is their best, but it seldom is. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone. It makes sense to be excited about the newest song I have written, but I have been doing this long enough to know I will feel differently about it once it has rested a little. I will feel differently about it once I have written a couple more songs. Most people have to write a lot of songs before they can tell the difference between the keepers and the stinkers. My advice is to refrain from doing anything with a song until you have written one or two newer songs, then if you still like it maybe it’s a keeper.
So, I chose twenty from ninety, but I only wanted twelve songs on the final album.
I contacted a few friends who I believe are great songwriters and asked if they would be willing to go through the songs with me. I wanted to do it live and in person, and I wanted their spontaneous real-time feedback. Although I had recorded demos of all these songs, I wanted to sit in a room and play the songs on acoustic guitar while they looked at a lyric sheet and made notes. This would put all the songs on an equal footing, it would also remove the variables of recording quality and production choices. I wanted them to judge the song in its most simple form; lyric, melody and basic shape. Not whether or not they liked the snare drum sound.
I gave them lyric sheets and asked them to make notes on any parts of the songs that seemed weak, awkward, throwaway, cliche’, confusing, trite, needs to go somewhere else, etc.; basically anything that stuck out in a bad way.
I enjoy getting feedback on my songs from people I respect. I know some people are very protective of their songs and uncomfortable opening themselves up to criticism. That’s understandable, but I have found that I grow the most when I allow myself to be challenged.
I listened to their observations and wrote them down, I didn’t argue with them or defend my original ideas. I wanted to be able to take their suggestions and work on the songs later; looking at the places in the songs where they had made observations and deciding whether changes were actually needed or not. Sometimes I made the changes and sometimes I thought they were best left alone.
This process helped me to see the songs with a fresh perspective, it helped me to gain a little bit of objectivity.
I’ve been fortunate to have many people help find the weak spots in my writing. Sam Taylor, the producer of For Madmen Only, was very helpful in this role when we were working on Atomic Opera material. Allison Smythe, who is a great writer, poet and friend, helped me with many songs by holding up a mirror and forcing me to see my lyrics from her perspective. Dug Pinnick, Kemper Crabb, Johnny Simmons, Jonathan Marshall and other friends have also helped me find the weak spots in my songs over the years.
For The Living Creatures Project I contacted Wayne Watson, Aaron Senseman, Kip Fox and Alan Doss to help me look at the songs. I also spent an afternoon with Nick Taylor and Blake Flattley at my church office going over the songs. Here are a few things I remember from the sessions:
I first heard of Wayne Watson when I bought his album with the song “New Lives for Old” in my Bible college days. I recently met him while working on a Michael Selph record. He came over to my studio to help Michael and I look at the songs and produce the vocals. We hit it off and had such a great time working on Michael’s songs that I asked if he would be willing to help me with the new project I was working on. Wayne came over to my CrossPoint office one afternoon and I played the songs for him. One contribution I remember him making was on “Christ Before Me.” Wayne made the suggestion to cut “Christ” from the fourth line of each stanza.
Christ before me
Christ behind me
Christ in my thoughts and
(Christ) on my tongue
Good call Wayne!
I have known Aaron Senseman for a long time. He is one of the funniest people I have ever met. He is also a great songwriter and has written songs for Caedmon’s Call, his congregation where he is a worship leader (a church also called Crosspoint – without a capitol “P”) and his own projects. We also did a songwriting workshop together once, so I knew he had some solid ideas about how to put together a tune. He came over to my CrossPoint office one afternoon and gave me feedback while I played the songs for him.
Kip Fox is a good friend and one of my favorite worship songwriters. We use several of his songs at CrossPoint, including “This Dust,” “We Respond,” and “Free to Worship.” He lives in Arizona so we had to do our session by Skype, which worked adequately for our purposes. His feedback was very helpful to the clarity of each song. One of the many suggestions he made was in “Jesus Has Overcome the World.” The chorus used to have a line that he thought was confusing:
Father the hour has come
To glorify Your Son
And through Your Son we glorify You
Father You sent Your Son
From where He was with You
Where He was glorified
Before the world was new
The line was changed to:
From heaven to be the One
Nick Taylor is a worship leader at CrossPoint, a wonderful guitar player and good friend. He has also written some great songs (that are mostly secret so far). Blake Flattley is a worship leader and singer songwriter who was the frontman for The Orange Effect and has released a few solo projects. I spent an afternoon playing the songs for them and going over the lyrics and melodies with a fine toothed comb, looking for whatever bugged them.
Alan Doss is a long time friend and musical collaborator. I asked him to co-produce the project, we also recorded the drum tracks, mixed and mastered at his studio. I’ll talk more about the recording and mixing process in the next article, but I want to include him here for his contribution to the song’s essentials. Alan was great at pointing out lyrics that sounded unmusical, he also has a keen instinct for when parts of a song should be repeated more, less, or need some harmonic variety. One example is in the song “Jesus, Give us Love.” The chorus used to happen after the second verse and then a double chorus after the fourth verse. Alan said, “I think you should do all the verses and save the chorus for the end. Once you start singing that chorus I just don’t want to go back to the verses, I want to keep singing the chorus.” So that’s what we did. I couldn’t have done this project without him.
I owe the musical clarity of the arrangements and lyrics to these guys, they were willing to lend me their talent and insight. Seeing the songs from their perspective allowed me to have enough distance to be able to choose the twelve songs that fit together for this project. Thank you, friends!
If you are curious what the album actually sounds like, you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon or CDBaby.
If you want to listen to an all instrumental version of the album; no lyrics, singing, melody or harmony, you can find that version on NoiseTrade.
Download Sample Tracks for FREE.
CLICK TO READ THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THIS SERIES.
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2. Living Creatures Name and Musical Direction
The one in which we tell about the name and musical direction of Living Creatures.
I have been a “professional worship leader” at CrossPoint for the past ten years, but I have been leading music in church since I was fourteen years old. This year marks thirty-six years of music ministry. Even when I was touring and recording with Atomic Opera full-time I volunteered to help with the music at whatever church I was attending.
For a couple years I played with Kemper Crabb at St John the Divine’s contemporary service. I like to name things, and while I was in the band we referred to the band as “Kemper Crabb and Four Living Creatures.” This was particularly clever because there was usually more than four of us.
It was a reference to the Four Living Creatures who are mentioned in Revelation and Ezekiel. They are a class of heavenly beings who surround and uphold the throne of God as He is being worshiped and praised by all of creation. They are alert and knowledgeable, and their description is fantastic; the head of a lion, an eagle, a man and a bull, they have wings, and eyes all over in front and behind.
Revelation 4:8 (NIV)
Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”
In my way of thinking, they are like worship leaders. They surround God with worship and praise, and look strange while doing so; obviously some kind of freak musicians.
I had been the music director at CrossPoint for about seven years when I started thinking about recording the songs I had written since leading this ministry. I tried to think of a name for the project that I liked better than Living Creatures, but I kept coming back to it. I finally gave up and called Kemper. I asked if he was still using the name Living Creatures, and he said he wasn’t. He said I was free to use the name, especially since it was my idea in the first place. Kemper rocks, in case you don’t know.
The Musical Direction of the Living Creatures Project.
I believe sacred music should be indigenous to the congregation; the music used in worship should reflect the cultural musical language of the people in the congregation. One way to figure out a congregation’s musical culture is to walk into successful shops and restaurants near the church. For example, if you were to visit the many restaurants, clubs, grocery stores, and retail shops within a five mile radius of CrossPoint Church you would hear a fairly limited scope of musical directions. There would be a lot of classic rock, a lot of pop, a little country and very little else. This is the indigenous musical culture of our general population.
It is also the musical language I am most familiar with. I grew up listening to what is now considered classic rock, and I have stayed current with modern rock and pop along the way. The music of CrossPoint reflects this leaning toward classic rock, blues based, pop music.
When I listen to the entire catalogue of my favorite artists who have been around for a long time, I always think the albums they recorded in the 70s sound the best. I like instruments to sound like they would sound if I was in the room with them. I am not a fan of bright, obvious reverb and a lot of the digital production that took over in the 80s, nor am I a fan of the “brick wall” smashed dynamics that marks most of the recordings from the 90s and current.
I wanted the Living Creatures Project to sound like it was recorded, mixed and mastered in 1978.
My good friend Alan Doss is also a huge fan of old-school, analogue recordings. He has one of the largest vinyl LP collections I have ever seen and a perfectly balanced and tuned system to play them. Listening to records at his studio is like having warm oil poured into your soul.
Alan is a wonderful musician, and he has the ears and the skill to arrange and record music on a world class level. He was the drummer and producer for the Galactic Cowboys and I have been playing music and recording with him since we were going to school in Springfield Missouri nearly thirty years ago.
I called Alan and told him what I wanted to do, and asked if he would be interested in helping me. I wanted to record the songs I had written for CrossPoint and make it sound like our favorite albums. I wanted to use vintage amps, vintage drums, old mic-pres, tube microphones, Fender Rhodes, Hammond Leslie organ, mellotron strings, and make the whole thing sound like we were fourteen years old sitting in our bedrooms wearing headphones.
And that is exactly what we did.
If you are curious what it actually sounds like, you can find it on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon or CDBaby.
If you want to listen to an all instrumental version of the album; no lyrics, singing, melody or harmony, you can find that version on NoiseTrade.
1. Behind The Living Creatures Project
The one in which we tell stories of how things came into being.
A solo album is a misleading name. I did not make the Living Creatures Project all by myself. There were many amazing and cool people who came into my life at just the right moments in time to hand me a precious piece of this fragile puzzle I was hoping to put together. Making a record is like putting a crazy jigsaw together, but one where there is not a picture on the box; there isn’t even a box. In fact, the pieces are spread out all over your life and you will spend most of your time looking for them while trying to remember what it is you are building.
Then God sends people to hand you the important corner pieces, and remind you of what you are making.
This is the first in a series of articles where we will meet the people behind the Living Creatures Project, find out where the project came from, learn where the songs came from, and other behind the scenes explorations.