I have coached bands for well over a decade. Here is some advice bands can never hear enough.

This reader asks a big question, and I won't be able to answer it in one post, but I can start.

I stewed and shelved the song for a while. After my passions cooled, I started to look at the song again and noticed some flaws.

They are the first to get there, and the last to leave. They deserve appreciation. But just a few clunkers can give the rest a bad name.

Whenever I talk to an expert in their field, I wonder what books have influenced them.

The choice of snare drum can change the emotion of the entire kit. Let's have a listen.

The bass is perhaps the most important, and the least noticed, instrument in the band.

There is no perfect kick drum sound. There are just tradeoffs that fit for every genre and song. That’s the fun of being an engineer.

You have a singer who is going to take the lead on one song, but isn’t strong on harmony for the other songs. What do you do?

What inexperienced players don’t realize is that a full sound comes from a sense of space, not when everyone plays what they want.

When we listen casually to a song on the radio, we tend to experience it like a novice experiences a football game. We miss the strategy.

I chose 50 songs that feel good. Every week I'll spend my practice time dissecting each song.

By having us live together rather than separating ourselves, the strong learn to nurture, and the weak can be strengthened.

Even if our team was hobbled for the whole year, it would be better than breaking the trust of our team by instituting a double standard.

My writing improved greatly when I stopped trying to write my songs. I became a pass-through for the good things God wanted to say.

Creativity, like any other human endeavor, is a divine act, because it begins with receiving from the Lord.

The more each church cultivates a community who hears from God for themselves, the clearer picture we will have of God’s heart and mind.

Dinnertime was sacred in my family. That was how we shared appreciation and talked about our day.

I've had hundreds of students. Some flamed out, some made respectable progress, and some were so dedicated that they became great musicians.

That is the heart of discipleship. It isn’t knowledge transfer. It is modeling behavior.