junho park

I have a few minutes to spare while my Ubuntu workspace is being patched up with some security updates so I thought I’d share a little blurp or two about RimuHosting which is the hosting service I’m using to host www.junhopark.com as well as www.moodyshoerepair.com (my parents’ shoe repair business located in Joliet, IL–go check ‘em out if you need shoe repair done!  I can almost guarantee you once you go get your shoes repaired, you’ll be thinking to yourself why did I not think of this before??).

Anyhow, sometime last year, I was looking all over the web (and I mean all over) for a hosting service that could handle Java web hosting.  I googled like crazy and it appeared that they were either too expensive and/or got horrible reviews.  I was discouraged.  And then somehow (I forget how…) I stumbled upon RimuHosting, which has definitely met my needs.  And since RimuHosting’s been good to me, I thought I’d share some highlights of their service in this post:

1) They offer a VPS (Virtual Private Server).  You can read a nice summary about it here on Wikipedia but what it basically boils down to is that on a single server, there are multiple “virtual servers” which runs its own operating system and and can runs independently from the other virtual servers.  It can even be rebooted independently.  End result: It’s sorta like having your own server but at a price that is actually affordable to an average joe like myself.  So… what all this means is that via RimuHosting, you can have yourself a virtual server and you can do what you want with it.  Read about all the things you can do with RimuHosting’s virtual private server here.

2) Their price:  I’m subscribed to their lowest-costing plan at $19.95/month, which I think is quite reasonable for the services I receive.  I get 160 MB of memory (puny, I know–but works for me) and 3.94 GB of disk space (note that your OS and related files will take up a pretty big chunk).  You can always pay them more money to get more memory.

3) Their support:  Those guys have been top-notch.  I haven’t had to use their support in awhile, but in the beginning when I was just getting started with them, I had to make use of their support on a number of occasions.  And those guys were lightning-fast with their responses.  Very impressive.  All support communications were done via web forms and/or emails but the response time was great each and every single time.

For Java hosting, I’ve read over and over again online that it’s a very bad idea to go with shared hosting and so the only obvious choice for me was to go with a VPS.  Simply being able to reboot the darn server has been such a huge plus for me as opposed to a shared hosting plan which I had been using for a number of years before RimuHosting.

Okay, Ubuntu has finished updating.  Now onto installing Chrome on this thing and enjoy faster browsing.

-Junho

Almost every Sunday morning, I am needed to provide live background music, either on the guitar or the piano, at church worship services.  Usually this takes place during the offertory and times of corporate prayers. Since I’ve been doing this almost every Sunday for the last 12 years or so, it comes very naturally to me. It helps that improvising comes very naturally to me. Put some sheet music in front of my eyes and I will freeze up (reason why I disliked piano lessons so much…) but take them away from me and I can sit at the piano and play whatever comes to my head for hours… literally. I understand, however, that for a lot of musicians, it doesn’t come as naturally. They could be extremely skilled instrumentalists, but without the guidance of sheet music or chord charts, a lot of people tend to have a difficult time providing live background music, especially ones that would work well at worship services.

So with that said, I thought I would provide some tips on this very topic. I gave a seminar on this topic at my church to our keyboardists and they found it helpful. Hopefully it’ll be of some help to you as well–especially if you’re having to provide live background music during church services.

[ I. Support the Plot ]

Can you imagine watching a movie without any background music whatsoever?  Just how incredibly dull would that be?  Sound tracks in music are powerful in the ways in which they support the plot.  I’ll bet that a good number of movie sound tracks echo in your heads whenever you think about a movie.  For instance, I remember that one scene in ‘Forrest Gump’ where Forrest runs for the first time in his life and I heard that sound track come on… I remember just how incredibly powerful that scene was.  Without that music in the background, it would not have been nearly as powerful or emotion-provoking.  And that’s just one example I can provide among countless many.

With that said, when you’re in the position to provide live background music during a church service, determine what the plot is.  If you’re asked to play the piano during a corporate prayer time immediately following a sermon centered on the crucifixion of Christ and your pastor is asking the congregation to meditate on Christ’s suffering, the last thing you’ll want to do is to play some kind of a happy-sounding music.  On the other hand, if this is Easter Sunday and your pastor just preached a message on the resurrected Christ and His victory over death, you’d probably want to play something that sounds uplifting.

And remember to change up your music if the “plot” changes.  Whenever I’m playing background tunes while someone is leading the congregation through various prayer topics, I listen carefully to what the person is saying.  For instance, it is very possible that following a sermon that focuses on the cross, the preacher will ask the congregation to first meditate on the cross, repent of their sins, and then give thanks to God for His grace, followed by giving praises to God for His victory over sin and death.  Well, the plot just changed multiple times right there.  It would be a good idea for your background music to support the changing plot.

[ II. Don't Become the Main Attraction ]

When you’re providing live background music during a church service, remember that your music is not to be main attraction.  As stated above, it should support whatever is taking place without attracting unnecessary attention.  Here are some tips that will help your music (and you) to stay in the background:

• Be generic: Try to avoid playing melodies that your congregants may recognize; otherwise, they may start to follow your playing instead of focusing on whatever else they’re supposed to focus on.  And when that happens, you’ve just become the main attraction.  There have been numerous times where I was praying alongside other congregants and the keyboardist started to play very familiar tunes–such as ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’.  Well, things like that make it nearly impossible for me to pray.  I probably suffer from it more than most other folks being that I’m so music-minded, but still… I can’t imagine how familiar tunes like that would not draw people’s attention.
• Be simple: Play simple things.  Don’t play so many different notes.  You’re not playing at a piano recital and you’ve got no one to impress when there’s worship going on.  :)
• Repetition: Be repetitious in your playing.  While you don’t have to stick to playing the exact same notes every x measures, it might not be a bad idea to stick to some sort of a basic chord progression.  When we hear music that is repetitious, we tend have an easier time letting it fade away into background.

[ III. Volume Control ]

When you watch a movie (or a TV show or a play, etc.), note how when the background music is playing in scenes where there are dialogues being exchanged between the characters, the volume of the music is lot lower than when the music is being played in scenes where this is not the case.  This obviously allows the audience to make out what the characters are saying.  In the same way, when you’re having to play an instrument in the background during a church service and someone is speaking over your playing, you should soften your playing whenever this person is speaking.  Don’t just turn that volume knob on your keyboard (or depend on your sound person to lower your volume for you) but actually soften your playing.  When the person is done speaking, well, you can then play louder.  Go with the flow.

Well, if you’re having to provide live background music at church (or in various other settings) I hope this post has been of help to you.

Support the plot, stay in the background, and watch your volume!

-Junho

Links to my music have been fixed in the music page.

Yet another rendition of junhopark.com is done… at last!  I decided to forsake my old Blogger posts since it’s been quite awhile since my last blog update and I didn’t want a huge gap showing up on this site between my last blog post and new ones which I’ll be posting (hopefully with some sort of regularity).

I’m glad to finally have something up and running.  I chose to go with WordPress this time around.  We’ll see how much I like this.  So far, I’ve been pretty impressed by it, at least compared to Blogger.

Anyhow, time to sleep.  I promised myself I’d be in bed by 10 pm tonight but…