This week’s blog is a guest post by Nathan Parker, Pastor of Worship and Media at FBC Seymour
We have a saying in the world of music and audio recording that is represented by the acronym “GIRATS”—Get It Right At The Source. It’s a mantra that music producers and recording engineers keep in mind throughout a session, a reminder that the quality of a recorded song is only as good as the inputs it begins with. While modern recording software tools like Autotune are amazing and can be used in a pinch, it’s easier to just start with a guitar or a voice with a pleasing tone quality that’s already in tune, and that plays or sings the right notes.
The commitment to GIRATS was on full display as some of my friends and I went into the studio last summer to record a few songs at Sweetwater Sound in Fort Wayne, IN. Walking into the tracking room of Studio A, a fantastic drum kit was already set up and tuned up with nearly a dozen microphones around it. Racks of guitars lined the walls, each chosen for their particular tone, and an isolation booth contained the speaker cabinets for the guitar amplifiers. Another isolation booth housed a grand piano and a couple of (very expensive!) microphones that would be used to record the final vocal tracks. Each musician’s station had its own set of headphones and a mixer with which to control the volume of each instrument in their headphones. The combination of headphones and isolation booths allowed the band to play together and hear each other, while each instrument was recorded on a separate track without picking up sound from the other instruments.
Even after the painstaking setup and isolation of instruments and microphones, before every “take” we got a reminder from Jason, our engineer, to tune the guitars, which would detune ever so slightly each time through a song. Many times during the process, we’d have to stop and start over because one of us made a mistake. Often we needed to play the song through at least 6 or 7 times to get everything right and capture the performance we were looking for. In the end, we were very pleased with the final recordings (which you can hear on your favorite streaming service!), but without the right inputs (quality instruments, in tune, playing the right notes), the final result would never have turned out as we hoped.
Every person or stream of information we allow into our lives
is an input of influence that will affect our attitudes and actions.
In life, just as in the recording studio, we must ruthlessly control our inputs. The Apostle Paul reminds us of this in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Every person or stream of information we allow into our lives is an input of influence that will affect our attitudes and actions. As Zig Ziglar once said, “Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.”
As we come into the new year, it is a great time to evaluate our sources. Who do you follow on social media? How reliable are they? Have you actually checked to see if what they say is true, or do you just believe them because you agree with them? How much time do you spend scrolling online each day? How often are you reading your Bible? What news sources do you read or watch, and how often? Are they increasing your joy and gratitude, or are they filling you with anger and anxiety? Are they fostering kindness and compassion, or do they make you callous and uncaring? Do they pass Paul’s litmus test of being true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy? And most importantly, are they causing you to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “love your neighbor as yourself”? (Mark 22:37-39) If not, then why are you wasting the minutes and hours of your one precious life with inputs that will never create the outputs that God is calling you to? Let’s make 2025 the year we ruthlessly control our inputs and work to Get It Right At The Source!
