Serving The Song

Due to some major back issues I’ve been going through, there have been few posts on worship.vintage21.com lately. Thanks to all who have prayed, brought meals, watched our girls, and even mowed our lawn! The beauty of difficult times is that it provides an opportunity for the Church, the Body of Christ, to share the love of Christ, and my wife and I are more in love with God as a result.

This blog deals with worship of God, and almost specifically with theology of corporate worship. Because music is a gift from God and an integral part of our corporate worship, on occasion we’ll look at musical issues, and today is one of those days.

Years ago I read a quote from Charles Mingus that stuck with me: “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” Most of the music I would call brilliant is in fact simple. Amazing musicians and producers have figured out how to boil a song down to its essence, and  add only what is necessary in presenting the song. Several bands that stick out in my head who display such taste are Elbow, Radiohead (OK Computer), The Cardigans (Gran Turismo), Daniel Lanois, Feist, Spoon, and Tom Petty. Oh, and Paul Denman, who plays bass for Sade. @TaylorRobertsok is a huge fan, and has turned me on to the  brilliant simplicity of such a capable bassist.

One of my favorite bassists is Colin Greenwood from Radiohead, and his work on OK Computer should be a chapter in any book titled “How To Play The Bass Perfectly”. The taste, sense of groove and use of space he displays is mind-blowing. His basslines are written and executed perfectly, and almost always stick with me long after listening. To illustrate this point, let’s look at “Karma Police”.

For the first two and a half minutes, Colin lays down a simple foundation, rarely departing from the beat of the kick drum. It’s almost like he’s playing along with the song for the first time, following the root on a chord chart. And why not? There is a piano and acoustic guitar filling up much of the space, and Thom Yorke’s lyrics do not leave much room in the verses.

At 2:30, the band introduces a new part where Yorke sings “For a minute there, I lost myself”. It’s a heightened section of the song; the dryness of the effects on the verse are replaced with reverb on the vocals, the piano and guitar play even more, and several elements are added in the background. Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway continue to keep it simple, but THEN at 2:59 Greenwood does this walking bassline that immediately grabs the listener’s attention. But he only plays it once before going back to the normal groove based in the root of each chord. Almost forty seconds later Greenwood plays the walking part again, and carries it out through the remainder of the song.

Yesterday, had you asked me to hum the bassline from “Karma Police”, I would have immediately hummed that walking part; it’s gold. Never would I have guessed that he only plays it a few times in the song. It’s what stuck with me over the past thirteen years, and in that time I’ve found myself humming the bass part as opposed to Yorke’s amazing melody.

The point is this: the temptation for most would be to put that walking bassline all over the song, and it speaks of Greenwood’s taste that he restrained from doing so. It’s an awesome part, why wouldn’t we saturate the song with it? Why play the simple root when you have such a powerful part? In the end, it’s a memorable, powerful bassline because he only plays it sporadically. Instead of focusing on his bassline, he serves the song well. For a band as talented and at times complicated as Radiohead, this makes such a choice even more brilliant.

Sadly, this approach of “serving the song” is not commonplace in most churches. Too often the case is that each player is listening only to himself or herself, and when a “cool” riff is created, it’s overplayed out of excitement for creating such a good part. Oftentimes, it’s understandable – a rotating group of musicians are playing a new set of songs with people they haven’t played together with in weeks or months, if ever. This is one of the reasons we operate out of a band model at Vintage21, but regardless it comes down to the person leading the band and the individual musicians. No matter what context you play in, challenge yourself constantly whether or not what you’re playing is necessary or simply a distraction. In looking for sites to link to the artists above, I came across an interview with Paul Denman. The quote below captures well what our outlook should be:

“Early on, being young and eager, I was more outfront— slapping and taking solos live. Robin Millar and Mike Pela, our producer and engineer at the time, liked what I was doing, and they encouraged me to step forward and try ideas. However, I hadn’t really learned how to hear a song or listen to what the others were doing; that came with time and maturity. As the years rolled on, I started to get more into dub and reggae, using off-beats and playing less, and it fit with Sade’s melodies really well. I’m always listening to the melody; I won’t play anything without the melody in my head, because I don’t want to get in the way with some insignificant fill. Now, I’d rather play one note for three minutes than trample on somebody’s feet with two. You eventually learn to find your pocket, and sometimes that pocket is filled with space.” – Paul Denman

What are your thoughts on overplaying in music? Are there other artists you would characterize as serving the song well?