Sorry,  I haven’t kept up with my guitar journal lately, but I still keep on practicing the guitar.  Lately, it has been all about songs.

Two weeks ago, my mind was totally on this song “I Give You My Heart  (This Is My Desire).” My sister did a solo of this song few years back at church, but we never sang this song with the whole worship team. It has such a lovely melody and lyric. I heard the acoustic version and the rock version of this song, and I like them both. Last Sunday service, we sang this song to conclude the worship session and we did the acoustic style. Out of all the chosen songs for that worship session, I actually spent most of my time practicing the guitar for this  particular song. So I felt comfortable playing and singing this song, and giving my heart offering to God.

Last Saturday, the Youth group gathered at my house, and we had a worship night instead of  our regular Weekly Bible Study. We had great time  singing our favorite praise songs, and sharing testimonies. Mainly, Peter, my brother in law, was playing the guitar. I only played along with few songs that I could. The past week, I’ve been listening to the song “Before The Throne Of God Above“, the Shane and Shane version that I heard from the concert. I just loved this version of the song. During the week, there was one night I couldn’t sleep, so I was up late and practicing this song. I practiced along with the MP3, and had the capo at 4th fret since Shane sang this song pretty high. At the worship night, I had an opportunity to share my testimony for my new love in worshipping God. I then played and sang this song. No capo though! I ain’t no Shane! LOL! …. Nhan asked me to play the song “Stronger” by Hillsong United afterward. This is a great song too. I only heard it once or twice on YouTube, and maybe played it once or twice, so there wasn’t much practice. This was an out-of-the-blue request, so I think I didn’t the do the song justice. I felt It was very choppy the way I played. Sorry Nhan!

Also about two weeks ago, Nhan asked me to look in to the song “To The End Of The Earth” by Hillsong United. He introduces me to many of Hillsong United songs. I’m not a Hillsong fan, but certainly they do have very good songs.  Anyway, I looked up this song on YouTube to hear it since this song is very new for me. I tried to practice couple times and couldn’t get the beat or the timing right. Also, practicing songs that I don’t know well enough to sing along is pretty hard, so I put it off. After church service last week, Nhan tried to sing it so I could practice. We played couple times. He said it sounds fine, but I still didn’t feel comfortable with it yet. I hadn’t practiced this song again for the whole week. On Sunday, we had the service at the park to celebrate Mother’s Day. Nhan wanted to solo this song, and I meant to get there early to rehearse the song with him, but I was running late. So we had like a 1 minute rehearse at the start of service.  Talk about bad preparation, eh??! I was pretty nervous! But when the time for his solo, all of my nervousness just went away.  It was just God-focus, and worshipping. Praise the Lord! The timing, the chord switching, all that just came and flowed naturally. We sang. We worshipped. And the song just sounded much better (probably because it was played correctly, or the way intended … hahaha).

 

WHAT I’M WORKING ON

• Fingering and strength.
• Chords switching

Until next time!