I'm converting some old cassette music tapes to .mp3 format.
One cassette is an album of original gospel songs I recorded with friends back in 1985.
This was a dream team of local artists who teamed up with me for the studio project.
Pat played flute, sax and clarinet. Jimmy on drums. Joe and Ed on keyboards. Jack on lead guitar and Larry on bass. Our combined expertise spanned jazz, fusion, rock, folk and sacred music. Their unique perspectives and talents pushed my simple acoustic guitar arrangements to an entirely new (and improved!) level.
Lesson number one for studio recording is to tune your instruments to a standard tone.
You may have heard orchestra's play that "A" tone as the violins tune before a concert.
Back then I just had a pitch pipe for one guitar string, and then I'd tune my other strings from there. But that wasn't efficient with all the other instrumentalists having to tune as well.
Larry the bass player had a new-fangled electronic "tuner" so we could play a note and a light came on to say you were in tune. Simple.
So before recording the ten basic song tracks we all tuned to Larry's box.
Eight hours of studio time later we were ready to begin the much longer process of adding solo instrument and vocal harmony tracks. About this time, the keyboard players convinced me that we needed a full "acoustic" sounding piano...not just the synthesized keyboard we'd planned to add on separate tracks. The studio's piano needed repair - but no problem, one of the guys had a 77 key upright that we could "carry in." We all had day-jobs of course, so it was another Saturday before we could haul in the upright and set up to record again.
One problem. The piano sounded "out of tune" as they started playing it with our recorded tracks.
Argh. A quick call to a piano tuner and some negotiations with the recording studio owner (since I was paying by the hour...).
Good news and bad news once the piano tuner arrive. Good news, the piano was in tune.
Bad news, our recording was slightly out of tune...enough to clash with the piano.
Why? Larry the bass player's tuner had not been properly calibrated to the music standard of "440 Hz for middle C."
We all tuned to Larry's box - we were in tune with each other - and we were all wrong. Since that day, for the last 25 years, I've been in the habit of asking fellow musicians, "are you tuned to 440?" And I carry my own tuner - set to the standard "440" of course.
The Bible is our spiritual calibration to "440." Sometimes we can start running with spiritual ideas that "sound right" amongst a small group of friends, family or even fellowships. But if these ideas clash with the bible...if you're not in tune with what Jesus said...then something is "off."
In our case, we had to either re-tune the piano to be "wrong" and in tune with our recording....or we could start over with the "right" tuning. We had drifted off the mark and impacted everyone involved.
You can't re-tune the Bible. God's Word is the standard. If our beliefs shift out of tune, we need to somehow come back - or start anew. The Holy Spirit within you will often sense the "dis-chord."
Malachi 3:6 "For I am the LORD, I do not change"
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
What do you believe?
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