My earliest influences were watching my dad play guitar in church along with other family members. What I have found interesting is how various parts of church/gospel/spiritual etc music are influenced by other styles. High church hymns have a classical influence, Black Gospel has a R&B or jazz feel, Southern Gospel has country and western, the scripture songs from the 1960's/1970's were birthed from the folk rock hippie music, the 1980's saw an influence of Jewish/Hebrew sound sounds come in, and modern praise & worship / contemporary christian can be traced back to influences of pop/rock and other modern styles. That's not to forget about New Orleans and Dixie Land Jazz, Island, Reggae and many others.

I lead the music in a small church in the community that I live in and make use of all of those styles. Back in the 1990's I used an arranger since we didn't have any other musicians. And now I find it interesting how we in the arranger community have been doing what we do for so long and the younger generation is doing the same thing with Ableton Live and computers on stage.

I had a conversation with one person about the use of Ableton in a church setting and I made the comment that I had been using loops for years. They proceed to try and tell me it wasn't the same thing. LOL. I just stood there and smiled.

Joe