felt just the privilege of being entrusted with what felt like , “ Okay , God always knew about this timing . So let ’ s take this entrustment and try and keep it as pure and sacred and as it can be ”. And actually , yeah , it was a wonderful night .
So , the reason we went back to Vegas this time was because my Music Director Leonard and his wife Genise , they live in Vegas and on the previous recording in Orange County they asked me , “ Is it okay if we bring 60 people down from Las Vegas to be in the crowd ?” And I was like , “ Yeah , that would be amazing ”. They said , “ We ’ ve got these singers who would love to come ”. And I was just so touched . They would drive four or five hours , be part of our whole worship recording and then drive four or five hours back .
So this time around I thought , you know what , if you can bring 60 of your singers from the city , how many could you get together if we came to you , could you get 250 worship singers from around the city ?” And the answer was “ yes ”. They had a long time ago started a unity choir between all the churches in Vegas so they can very quickly get everyone on the same page . It ’ s actually a very beautiful thing , lots of different expressions and streams of the church getting together . And it ’ s breaking down walls and it ’ s making sure they do some life and ministry together . So based on that , I thought , let ’ s do it in Vegas . It ’ s not somewhere anyone would expect us to go to record a worship album . So that part of it kind of inspired me too , and we found this place , the Beverly Theater , which is a brand new venue . And so we decided , “ Wow , that would be amazing ”.
And one of the key things about the record was we decided let ’ s go pretty minimal on electric guitars . And we had three keyboard players , Leonard Jarman , Quentin Trotter , also LJ from Elevation Worship . And so we were in keyboard heaven , and it was just such a beautiful night because almost everyone in the room was a worship singer and the sound in that place was just beautiful .
Matt Redman - Better Is One Day / Facedown ( Live )
[ WM ] I was going to comment on that a little later , but I saw that not only do you have the popular Nord keyboard , but you had two other keyboard stations . Now the synth sounds since 20 years ago , when you first came out to now , the quality is so much better . On several of the songs though you can hear it , it ’ s apparent . And there is a lack of guitars . I ’ ll tell you that because I ’ m a guitar guy . ( laughing )
[ Matt ] Yeah , well the , funnily enough , the producer Steve Marcia is an electric guitar player and he kept pushing me , “ Are you sure ?” And I was like , “ Yeah ”. Honestly , the reason was partly to have a bit of a sonic difference . But the other reason was let ’ s just create so much space in terms of frequency , bandwidth for the voices . We got all these singers in the room , and we had some key moments where we wanted people to sing out or there ’ s a special moment at the end of the “ Better is One Day / Facedown ” medley where we sing the two songs over each other in the round ( like we did back in the seventies or something ). And so , we thought , “ Yeah , let ’ s make space for the vocals . That ’ ll be really great ”.
[ WM ] It is so well done . Who did the actual vocal arranging ?
[ Matt ] We had these three fantastic gospel
Matt Redman - 10,000 Reasons ( Bless The Lord ) Live singers called Onaje Jefferson , Charlin Neal , Ebony Gammage , and I mean there were times where I looked around because I couldn ’ t believe there was only three people singing . We had this beautiful flow at the end of 10,000 Reasons , it was a gospel music flow . And I literally looked around because I thought that can ’ t just be three people . That ’ s insane . But their flow , their blend is amazing . And then obviously , there ’ s a lot of other very talented worship leaders and singers spread all around that room . So at times it became a very glorious sound .
[ WM ] Well , “ Better is One Day ”, which is one of my favorites . It ’ s seven minutes long and a couple other songs are six or seven minutes long . What was your thought process about re-imagining these older songs ? What ’ s the premise you were going by ?
[ Matt ] So the idea was the way of freshening up some of these things . I don ’ t want to over reimagine these things . I don ’ t want to do anything that ’ s overly clever or trying where we link two songs together . So at one point in the album , we have the song “ Never Once ” and it goes into the chorus of “ You Never Let Go ”, and then back into “ Never Once ”. They ’ re both in the same key , the same tempo and about the same theme . So , it just felt like such a win to do that . My favorite one of them on the album is what you mentioned , “ Better is One Day ” into “ Facedown ”. In “ Better is One Day ” we don ’ t ever get to the bridge and instead we jump into the bridge of “ Facedown ” and then we get to the chorus of “ Facedown ”. And then when they end the song , we reprise it . We have all the men in the room singing the bridge of “ Facedown ” and then completely over the top of that we have all the women in the room singing the chorus of “ Better is One Day ”. And I couldn ’ t believe how well it fit . And then we switched it up , so the men went to the chorus of “ Better is One Day ” and the women went to the bridge of “ Facedown ”. They ’ re both songs about reverence and presence and they could be sung in the same tempo and the same key . It was really lovely uniting them together .
20 June 2024 Subscribe for Free ...