Vertically Rising

!

Lol, most of you who read this have no idea to what that title in green letters means. =P It’s a guitar! hehe, big surprise right? Well I was at guitar center today picking up some Hot Rods (drum sticks) for the youth dept. and I stopped into the acoustic guitar room for abit. Now this Chet Atkins technically isn’t an acoustic guitar…but sorta is. It’s a hollow-body, meaning that the inside is hollow (erm…duh). It has no sound hole, and holes up against feedback very well. Two very good rythm guitarist play these, and man, it’s a nice guitar! (oh, the two guitarist who play them are David Crowder, and Dave Matthews, heh, each respectively hold there own in the music worlds). =P
Anyways, the Chet that I saw was on sale for 899$ because it was used. Wow, it was nice, a nice sunburst finish, that I’ve only seen on a few Chets (David Crowder has one with a sunburst finish). It had a few small dings in it, but man, it was still nice. The strings stunk on it though, very old. I was talking to the clerk and he said that it would be released to sell in 5 days (in used equipment, they hold on to it for 30 days for police check). I could put it on layaway, but it would be 250$ down, and I would have 30 days. Hrm….could be a challenge….hehe, wonder if I should do it, haha.

current mood: listless

Hrm, after a talk with Lisa today, I think I’ll release a few of my songs/poems on this LiveJournal thingy. Enjoy, give your responses to me on AIM (WarbladeX) or leave a comment. =) Oh and of course these are as always a work on progress and never finished till I say so. =)

“Beauty of the Cross”

I’ll meet You at the cross, Lord
Because that’s where You want me to be
You were brusied and beaten
It was here You died and set me free

Let me dwell on the beauty of the cross
The cross on which You died.
Let me come before You humbly
Just to bow and worship at the foot of the cross
Just to worship at the cross

Copyright Randall Wong, written 3/9/01.

current mood: artistic

I may head out to Berean later today and check out Vineyard’s Burn Service’s latest cd, Never Looking Back. I truely enjoyed their first two releases “Your Love Reaches Me” and “The Burn Service”. Great cds with some awesome guitar and youth oriented stuff. =) Prolly see if that accompiment track is over at Berean also, not sure if it would be though.
Reading through some Live Journals of Chris Day and I really want to get back to recording! Ahh well, guess I’ll still have to wait a few days until everything settles down and I get the mixer back. That’ll be fun though. I should set some kinda release date for our CD….so that we don’t get it out later than expected, lol. Won’t set it yet, but I’ll talk to the crew and we’ll find a date and let ya know about it.
Ahhh, “Sanctuary” night is coming up in a day! We still gotta practice, doh! God will be with us though, and it’ll be a blast. Mel and Pabs are working on the message, so it should be good to go with the worship.

current mood: thoughtful

Well looks like the days of Napster may be over. I tried looking for some stuff today and nothing showed up on ALL of my searches. So either Napster just isn’t working anymore, or they’re blocking a whole lotta stuff. Blah, oh well. I found some really good mp3s of worship stuff that Steve Fee and Candi Pearson did in their Big Stuf Band or Exit 10. Sounds really good, EXCELLENT version of the song Hungry. Probably the best I’ve heard of it (sorry to SF, but this beats it out with the harmonies and layering they did, and it’s live, hehe).

Been trying to find this one Charlie Hall song too. Found out it’s called “Beautiful of Heaven”. The song goes:

“O Beautiful of heaven, O Soveriegn God transcendant
There is no one more majestic, myterious
There is no one more magnificent

There is no other god but You
There is no other more beautiful (x2)

So set my mind upon You wholly, Peel my fingers from the earthly
Inject boldness in my confession, As i proclaim this awesome truth

Holy God, fire of love, come o torch, burn me up
Set the coal on my mouth, I’m unclean, burn me out
Lift the knife, rip my robe, I lift my eyes, cleanse my soul
Take my life, my offering, till I am lost in the king of kings”

I really like it, but the song isn’t on any CDs yet, ahh well. I’ll just have to wait for Charlie’s next cd.

Did I ever tell everyone that I met Charlie Hall before? It was at the Worship Together conference out in San Diego a few months ago. Pretty funny, I was just sitting down waiting for the first main session to start, and I was sitting off on the side since we got in kinda late. All the speakers and worship leaders were up on the side pews going up the side of the sanctuary, and Charlie just kinda walked around a lil bit and I waved to him. He waved back and walked over and introduced himself, was pretty funny. =P Also talked with him a little bit after one of his workshop sessions he led on Veils of the Heart.

What else is going on? Not sure what my big trip will be for summer. Maybe NY, maybe FL? who knows, guess only time (well, and money) will tell, lol. Crap, if I wanna go anywhere, I better get tickets soon, prices for Southwest airlines go up May 24th, bleh!

Still sick, and it sucks, but ahh well (that’s what I’ve been saying to everyone today, heh). Oh well, I’ll live, sorta. hehehe. Might go visit Pathway again on Sunday, not sure. They really want me for their worship team, but may still be a couple of months till I move over there. Would be really cool though if I did do stuff there. =) Oh, and emailed some girl named Teena for some alternative worship band in the SF Bay Area today. She left a message on the Worship Together site and asked for musicians. rawk!, hehehe. Hope we can plan something. =)

current mood: okay
current music: Artist – Exit 10 – One Pure and Holy Passion

Brent brought up a good point today in a reply that Musicianfriend sells then (at 539$, eeeep) but with a 45-day return policy. Course I would have to pay the shipping back…but I think I’ll wait until summer to buy one, ahhhh. Then all next year it’ll be doing camps and such and ministry to pay it off? lol. Anyways, it was kind of funny that Brent mentioned Musician’s Friend, cuz I just bought some stuff from them today and it was delivered today. Bought two more keyser capos, a 10$ (nice thou) tamborine, and a LuteHole Soundhole cover. www.kyser.com and www.lutehole.com
LuteHole’s are really cool. They fit into your soundhole and block out most of the feedback that happens when you have monitors facing you and your guitar coming through the monitor. Extremely helpful for myself, because I love the sound of my Taylor’s OnBoard Blender system, where it uses an internal mic, but it’s a big hassel to try and get to work with monitors. Now I can do it easily, ahhhhh. The only problem was that I messed up the order and got a darker colored LuteHole. I wanted the maple, but I forgot to change which one I wanted on the site, and ordered a Cherry Wood, which is about the color of Claro Walnut or Cedar.
Looks like no updates for a few days while I’m up in San Francisco for church this weekend, unless I log on via my parent’s computer. Have fun reading more of this stuff.

current mood: cheerful
current music: Steve Fee and Candi – Wonderful Cross

Ohhhhhhmygosh, I want one of these Avalon U5 DI Boxes. Shane Barnard uses one and it makes soooooooo much of a difference. I want to try to go to Guitar Center tommorrow and check out how it sounds and everything. The retail cost on it is 595$!!!! Maybe one day when I’m rich I’ll get one, lol. Or all of you reading this can someday get me one for my birthday…it’ll just take like…..40 of you chipping in like 20$ each….like that’ll ever happen, hahah. Oh well I can always dream.
AACF went well today, small meeting since everything’s gearing up for the Finals….oops, I said the F word…lol. But small intimate time.

current mood: envious