Worship Musician Magazine May 2021 | Page 32

Once the Spanish version was complete , the idea of doing “ Yaweh ” in Portuguese was birthed . Again , another marketing Zoom call with the Adarga team , and the wheels were put in motion . One of their clients was Brazilian Worship artist Gabi Sampaio . We sent her the English version which she then translated into Portuguese . She then hopped on a Zoom meeting with Johnny and coached him while he recorded his Portuguese vocals . Gabi booked a studio in Brazil for her vocals and off they went to Andy for him to do the Portuguese BGV ’ s . The original plan was to have Gabi and Johnny film their portion of the song so we would have a video to go along with the release . Unfortunately , two days before Gabi was set to record her video , Brazil once again locked down due to an uptick in Covid cases . We are still going to release a performance video in Portuguese once the lock down is lifted and Gabi is able to film . In the meantime , our video and graphics wonderkid in Guatemala , Bito Marzariegos , created a beautiful lyric video for YouTube .

Now the English version needed to be tackled . Rather than use the same arrangement for the English version , we decided to make a more worship team friendly version . I had Johnny track acoustic guitars to a click track along with his lead vocals . We then sent them to Aaron and Matt Barbosa to build an acoustic track with piano and percussion . In keeping with the male / female collaboration theme , we reached out to Highlands Worship in Birmingham , Alabama . They have such a heart for worship and servicing the church with their own worship music . They graciously accepted the invitation to participate on Johnny ’ s English version . Becca Patti from their worship team joined Johnny for the duet . Again , we sent files back

Johnny Rez

and forth and then on to Aaron and Matt for final mixes .

With the three versions mixed and , in the can , the ideas of videos for all three came up . The Spanish version with Courtnie consisted of two separate video teams in two locations . Johnny ’ s video team in Miami and Courtnie ’ s team in North Carolina . Let me circle back to we don ’ t have the big machine of a major label to front us a typical video budget which would include travel and lodging . This video was done by a team of individuals who pulled resources and favors to create a beautiful visual to compliment the lyrical richness of Psalm

19 . What came out was a seamless music video that was beautifully edited by our secret weapon in Miami , David Liz .

For the English video we took a more acoustic performance approach . Johnny jumped on a plane to Birmingham and met the team at Highlands for the afternoon and with the generosity of their tech team , we were able to shoot a performance video of “ Yaweh ” featuring Johnny , Becca and the Highlands team . We sent the video footage to David in Miami to edit , and the English box is checked .

The last component of the threelanguage release was preparing the multitracks for our friends at Sequencias and Multitracks . Sequencias is the Spanish version of Multitracks that has been servicing the Spanish church in the U . S . as well as Latin America since 2015 . In my opinion , this has been the missing link for Spanish Christian Worship . Their investment into the Spanish church has opened the doors for so many new songs in Spanish as well as helping worship teams integrate new technology that for so long were only available in the English markets .

Having spent the last couple of months working on this release of “ Yaweh ”, I ’ m overwhelmed at the willingness of strangers to come along side in many capacities to help birth a song that hopefully will touch a few people and for four minutes and 30 seconds point them to God . I hope this outline encourages any artist who is reading and thinking of releasing their music to the world . Build your team and watch them fly !

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