Music To Pray By

Episodios

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  Music To Pray By Podcast 94 19.09.2026 31m

  I finished Podcast 94 right at the beginning of the week. I’m trying to get a little ahead so I can shift my full focus to the Hallowed Be Your Name album. It feels good to have this week’s podcast ready and waiting instead of still working on it at the last minute. A few pictures from the LED bar work I’m hoping to have the final version of the LED bar ready for Podcast 95. The plan is to try it on a few live streams before then, so I can see how it behaves on camera and make any last adjustments. These are some pictures from the test fits and troubleshooting. There’s been a lot of checking the fit, measuring clearances, and seeing where the light actually goes. The pictures below are the work in progress, not the finished installation. Prototype LED boards fitted into a black printed holder. Checking light spill during a prototype LED test fit. Testing the LED rail beneath the piano keys. Measuring the clearance around the LED prototype. Piano music whenever you need it I first mentioned the continuous streams in the Podcast 77 post, but they’re worth another mention. Music To Pray By runs 24/7 on Twitch and Rumble, replaying the live worship piano sessions. I’ve been glad to see those channels grow. If you want some inspiration for prayer, you can just turn the music on. You don’t have to search through the live streams or pick a particular podcast first. Leave it playing while you pray, or come back to it whenever you have a little time. A prayer from Psalm 70 I’ll leave you with a recent Pray the Bible Short, A Prayer of the Poor and Needy, from Psalm 70. It’s a prayer for God’s help when we know we need Him. Watch the Psalm 70 prayer on YouTube. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 94 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 93 11.09.2026 33m

  Tuesday evening I had a business dinner, which is why I didn’t stream Wednesday morning. I also have a business trip to Denver on the 29th and Dallas on the 1st, so I will not be live streaming the week of the 28th. That week is a good time to announce a change in the streaming schedule. The plan is to stream seven weeks, then take a week off. The week of the 28th happens to land right there, because it will have been seven straight weeks. I also took Monday off for Labor Day, and that will stay. I will not stream on major holidays. I think this will help with burnout, and it should let the podcasts catch up a little with the live streams. Podcast 93 is made from live streams I did in June, specifically the June 19 and June 22 mornings. Even with the week off, I’ll probably still have a backlog, which should be fine. It also gives me time to focus on the albums. Pray the Bible: A Prayer for Your Light and Truth I’ll close with Psalm 43 and A Prayer for Your Light and Truth, with music from Podcast 92. Take a couple of minutes to pray along. If the video doesn’t load, watch the Short on YouTube. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 93 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 92 05.09.2026 29m

  The biggest change for Podcast 92 is one you’ll be able to see: the podcast videos are now in 4K. That’s four times the pixels of the old 1080p videos. I’m hoping they look four times better too, especially if you’re watching on a bigger screen! Getting the picture right I’ve spent quite a few weeks working on what you see while the piano plays. Podcast 86 was the first finished episode with Piano VFX layered over the real piano footage. By Podcast 88, I was adjusting the effects song by song in Final Cut Pro to keep them lined up with the keys. Then came the LED strip, which adds actual light to the piano as it plays. I’ve also started using an OBSBOT video conferencing camera in the setup, along with a new lens on the Canon so I can shoot in 4K. Getting the framing and lighting right has taken some experimenting. In this episode Four Selahs from the June 16–18 live streams. These timestamps match the video version. 0:00 Selah in G — from 6-16-2026 Song 6 4:22 Selah in B — from 6-17-2026 Songs 4–6 17:09 Selah in G — from 6-18-2026 Songs 3–4 25:11 Selah in B — from 6-18-2026 Song 5 The morning I forgot Logic If you joined the August 27 live stream and couldn’t hear anything, that one was on me. I forgot to open Logic, so there was no audio going out. I went ahead and played the Disklavier’s MIDI recording back completely raw, without the usual editing, so there would at least be something to listen to. I believe I also ran into Internet trouble toward the end. The good news is that the MIDI was captured. The original pieces from that morning will likely turn up in a future podcast, even though the live itself didn’t go as planned. One more print, hopefully the last I’m still tweaking the lighting around the current LED strip while construction of its replacement moves along. Today I finished what should be the final print for the new setup. After all the test pieces and small adjustments, I’m hoping to start putting it together this coming week. I won’t call it finished until it’s built and working, but I’m ready to get there. Hallowed Be Your Name I now have enough songs to move ahead with Hallowed Be Your Name. Before I start on the album, I want to get two or three more podcasts produced so I can give it some time without falling behind here. I expect the album will take a good two or three weeks of work. My hope is to have it finished by mid-October. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m looking forward to finally working on it. Twenty-two years at the keys The Connection Church just celebrated its 22nd anniversary. It’s crazy to think I’ve been there playing keys since the beginning. I’m truly grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to be part of it all these years. Here’s to 22 more! Pray the Bible: A Prayer to the God Who Keeps Forever I’ll close with Psalm 146 and A Prayer to the God Who Keeps Forever, with music from Podcast 91. After thinking back over twenty-two years at church, a prayer about God’s faithfulness feels like a good place to end. Take a couple of minutes to pray along. If the video doesn’t load, watch the Short on YouTube. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 92 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 91 29.08.2026 29m

  Podcast 91 is here with six new Selahs. School officially started this week. The kids are back, and we are trying to settle into the rhythm of another school year. The morning streams have helped keep at least one part of the week steady. In This Episode 0:00 Selah in D — from 6-11-2026 Song 5 3:40 Selah in D — from 6-11-2026 Song 6 8:31 Selah in B — from 6-15-2026 Song 2 14:19 Selah in D — from 6-15-2026 Song 3 20:10 Selah in D — from 6-16-2026 Song 2 25:43 Selah in D — from 6-16-2026 Song 3 Carlen, Jesus MOB, and a Hot Mix As this post goes up, Carlen Charleston and I are spending the day together making music. I mentioned last week that he was coming over. Our last Jesus MOB album was produced more than twenty years ago, so it is good just to have an old friend back in the room. We are experimenting with AI as part of the collaboration and seeing whether it gives us a starting point for something new. I do not know whether we will finish with a hot mix or spend most of the day catching up, but I am glad we made the time. Hopefully something good comes from it. The LED Rail Is Finally Taking Shape After a lot of measuring, test prints, and revisions, I now have printed mounts and bar sections that work. That gets the temporary metal ends out of the picture and gives me a real foundation to build on. Now I am working on cartridge spacing. Each section has to aim its LEDs at the correct piano keys, and a few millimeters is enough to make the alignment look wrong from the overhead camera. The first section is working well enough to keep, so I am moving through the keyboard a section at a time. Pray the Bible: A Prayer Before the Throne This week’s Pray the Bible Short comes from last week’s podcast music. It is built around Revelation 7: a multitude before the throne, and the Lamb who shepherds them. If the embed is not loading, the direct link is youtube.com/shorts/qMtvT1TpJvw. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 91 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 90 22.08.2026 32m

  Twenty weeks in. Podcast 90 is here. This week was mostly the light bar. In This Episode 0:00 Selah in A — from 6-8-2026 Song 6 6:16 Selah in B — from 6-9-2026 Song 2 10:48 Selah in A — from 6-9-2026 Song 4 15:21 Selah in C — from 6-9-2026 Song 5 24:47 Selah in F — from 6-10-2026 Song 4 27:48 Selah in G — from 6-11-2026 Song 3 A Printer, Printed Mounts, and a Dark Bar I got a 3D printer this week so I can keep improving the LED bar. The next step is printed mounts that sit in the piano’s existing fallboard supports, instead of the angle iron pieces I had been using. Those metal ends worked, but I was never comfortable leaving that kind of hardware that close to the piano, even though I had felt tape on the ends. I also added a second LED strip. Fitting that, plus printing and reprinting the mounts, took longer than I expected. The bar was out of commission for the first two live streams this week. I am still iterating. The goal is the same as last week: a removable rail that shows more of the movement in the music, without attaching anything to the finish or the keys. When it is on, it adds a really cool dynamic while I play. Carlen Next Weekend Carlen Charleston with Jesus MOB is coming over next weekend to record. I have a lot to get ready so Podcast 91 and the shorts stay on schedule. A Journal for My Boys I have also started using AI to help me keep a journal for my boys. I talk it out. It writes it down. I keep the original recording and only clean up the obvious speech-to-text mistakes. That has made it easier to actually do it, instead of waiting until I have a free hour to sit and type. Pray the Bible: A Prayer When God Feels Far This week’s Pray the Bible Short comes from last podcast. It is Psalm 13: an honest lament that turns back to trust. It went up yesterday from the Podcast 89 music. If the embed is not loading, the direct link is youtube.com/shorts/vr6JFXVHMVw. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 90 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 89 15.08.2026 30m

  Nineteen weeks in. Podcast 89 is here. Six new Selahs this week, along with the first finished look at a project I have been wanting to build for a while. In This Episode 0:00 Selah in F — from 6-4-2026 Song 2 4:36 Selah in E — from 6-4-2026 Song 4 10:49 Selah in B — from 6-4-2026 Song 5 18:21 Selah in D — from 6-5-2026 Song 2 22:48 Selah in E — from 6-5-2026 Song 4 26:03 Selah in A — from 6-8-2026 Song 3 Williamsburg and Home Again Our family vacation to Williamsburg, Virginia, was awesome. It was good to get away, spend that time together, and come home with plenty of memories. I could easily turn the trip into a much longer post, but for now I will just say that I am grateful we were able to go. A New Light Across the Keys The biggest visual change this week is the new LED rail across the piano. It is a removable aluminum bar that uses the piano’s existing fallboard supports, so nothing is glued to the finish or keys. A Raspberry Pi listens to the MIDI performance and drives individually addressable lights across the keyboard. The goal is not just to add color, but to let the overhead camera show more of the movement and shape inside the music. The piano opened up while I fitted the removable aluminum rail. A look at some of the power, data, and LED work behind the new light bar. This is the first working version, not the last one. I already have ideas for matte-black 3D-printed clips and baffles that will hide the emitters and focus more of the light onto the keys. I am also leaving room for a second strip once I rebuild the power path for it properly. The current result is exciting, but there is still plenty of room to make it cleaner and better. Finding the Rhythm Again Getting back into the rhythm of the morning live streams after vacation has been harder than I expected. If a few extra flubbed notes have slipped through this week, I apologize. I am settling back in, and next week should be better. Pray the Bible: A Prayer for Direction This week’s Pray the Bible Short comes from Psalm 25. It has been one of the more-watched prayers in the series, and it is a fitting one for any season when the next step is not completely clear. If the embed is not loading, the direct link is youtube.com/shorts/JLsfFKj5Tzk. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 89 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 88 08.08.2026 31m

  Eighteen weeks in. Podcast 88 is here. Four Selahs this week, drawn from three morning streams. By the time this posts, we should be home from our family trip, unpacking slowly and recovering from a very full couple of weeks. In This Episode Four spontaneous pieces from June 1 through June 3. The timestamps will match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in G — from the 6-1-2026 stream, Song 4 16:13 Selah in C — from the 6-2-2026 stream, Song 3 21:16 Selah in F — from the 6-2-2026 stream, Song 5 24:20 Selah in C — from the 6-3-2026 stream, Song 2 Home Again If everything went according to plan, we made it home yesterday. After living out of suitcases and covering a lot of miles, this weekend is mostly about resting, unpacking, and settling back into normal life. This is the extra episode I worked to finish before we left so the weekly rhythm could continue while we were away. I expect the trip will show up here again once I have had time to sort through it. There are stories to tell and probably a few pictures worth sharing. I will include some of those details in a podcast a couple of weeks from now. Still Wrestling with Piano VFX I tried quite a few things while producing this episode to improve Piano VFX. One known MIDI timing problem has been addressed, but a longer render still develops enough drift that the falling notes do not stay locked to the real keys all the way through the performance. For now, the reliable answer is manual. I split the VFX layer by song in Final Cut Pro and use its Retime controls to bring each section back into alignment. It works, but it adds another two or three hours to production. I am still deciding whether that weekly cost is worth it. I do like the finished look, especially now that the camera is directly over the keyboard. I also used my agent to help create a new set of effects for this episode. They feel more natural around the notes and piano than the flame effects used in the previous two podcasts. That part was fun, and it is one reason I keep working on the visual side even when the timing problem makes me wonder whether I should stop. A Disklavier Fix That Worked There was another improvement this week that will be less obvious on screen. After listening tests on the Disklavier, I refined the MIDI workflow so it changes release velocity only for tight repeated notes while the sustain pedal is down. The rest of the performance stays untouched. It is a small adjustment, but the repeated notes respond more cleanly and the original playing still sounds like me. This Week’s TCC Worship Short To close, here is At The Altar Pt4 from the June 7 TCC Sunday service. Take a minute and let the worship draw you back toward His presence. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtube.com/shorts/cPmdTpngo14. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 88 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 87 01.08.2026 33m

  Seventeen weeks in. Podcast 87 is up. Seven Selahs this week, pulled from four morning streams — with a new view over the piano and a family vacation beginning in the background. In This Episode Seven spontaneous pieces, drawn from May 28 through June 2. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in D — from the 5-28-2026 stream, Song 4 4:37 Selah in D — from the 5-29-2026 stream, Song 3 9:34 Selah in E — from the 6-1-2026 stream, Song 3 13:12 Selah in B — from the 5-29-2026 stream, Song 5 21:41 Selah in G — from the 6-1-2026 stream, Song 5 23:35 Selah in A — from the 6-2-2026 stream, Song 1 28:50 Selah in E — from the 6-2-2026 stream, Song 2 A New View Over the Piano I changed the camera arrangement again this week, moving the main view much closer to a true overhead shot. It gives the keyboard more room in the frame while opening up the inside of the Yamaha C7 behind it. The new camera, lighting, and microphone arrangement around the piano. One small change turned out to matter: I had to remove the keyboard cover. Its front lip was hiding the tops of the keys from the higher camera, and the obstruction became especially noticeable once I added the falling notes. With the cover gone, the whole keyboard reads cleanly from above. The finished overhead view with the full keyboard visible. More Time for the Reason I Stream The new angle fits Piano VFX much better. The falling notes have a clear path into the real keyboard, and the piano itself stays at the center of the picture. It also makes the daily streams easier in a way I did not expect. Only my hands are in the shot now, so I do not have to spend part of the morning getting camera-ready. That gives me a little more time with God before the stream and a little less time thinking about the camera. I am happy with that trade. On the Road to Williamsburg If everything is going to plan, this episode is posting while we are waking up in Roanoke and getting ready for the last stretch to Williamsburg. We have a shorter drive today, with Natural Bridge and a stop in historic Lexington along the way before checking in at Historic Powhatan later this afternoon. After two long travel days, I am looking forward to slowing down with Yoko and the boys. Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens, and even a family movie are on the plan before we turn west for home. I staged this episode ahead so the weekly rhythm could continue while we are away. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close, a prayer from Jude: A Prayer Kept from Stumbling. It is a good reminder that God is able to keep us and bring us into His presence with joy. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/EtomQXAfuiA. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 87 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 86 25.07.2026 32m

  Sixteen weeks in. Podcast 86 is up. Seven Selahs this week, pulled from four morning streams — and another busy week of changes behind the scenes. In This Episode Seven spontaneous pieces, drawn from May 25 through May 28. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 5-25-2026 stream, Song 6 5:07 Selah in E — from the 5-26-2026 stream, Song 1 10:07 Selah in C — from the 5-26-2026 stream, Song 2 19:01 Selah in F — from the 5-26-2026 stream, Song 5 21:21 Selah in B — from the 5-27-2026 stream, Song 4 22:51 Selah in A — from the 5-27-2026 stream, Song 5 28:22 Selah in C — from the 5-28-2026 stream, Song 2 Moving Beyond a One-Provider Workflow A lot of this week was spent moving the systems I use behind the scenes away from Claude Desktop and Cowork and into Hermes. I’ve depended on Claude Desktop for quite a while, but I don’t want one company’s app to be where every project, automation, and bit of context has to live. With Hermes, the work stays put while I can use different models for different jobs. Claude is still available when it’s the right fit; it just doesn’t have to hold the whole system anymore. If one service is busy, changes direction, or simply isn’t the best tool for a particular job, I can keep working without moving everything again. Putting Grok 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.6 to Work The timing was interesting: Grok 4.5 and ChatGPT 5.6 both arrived right as I was doing the migration. I didn’t just test them with a few demo prompts; both of them spent the week doing actual work. Grok’s long context and habit of following a thread all the way down made it useful for untangling the history and moving pieces. ChatGPT 5.6 has been especially strong on structured coding and exact operational work — the kind where I want it to slow down, check assumptions, and verify what it changed. They definitely feel different, but I can switch between them without rebuilding the desk around them. That’s the part I’ve liked most. A New Look for the Podcast Video This is the first episode where the new Piano VFX treatment made it all the way into the finished video. The real piano footage is still underneath it; I layered the falling notes and key effects over that footage in Final Cut Pro so the movement follows what I’m actually playing. Getting there took some experimentation. The effect had to sit with the real instrument instead of covering it, and the dark background, keyboard mask, and edges all needed careful compositing. I’m happy with where it landed, and this is the visual direction I plan to carry into the podcast videos and clips I share across YouTube, Facebook, and X. Almost Vacation Time By the time this posts, we’ll be less than a week from family vacation. I’m wrapping up the last plans, getting work staged ahead, and trying to leave enough margin that the ministry rhythm can keep going while we’re away. This Week’s Worship Moment To close — a quieter live worship moment from TCC’s June 7 service: At The Altar, Part 3. The steadier side view sits above the Meta-glasses view from the keys, so you can watch the same moment from both perspectives. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/pmFNNaU-ZMw. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 86 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 85 18.07.2026 33m

  Fifteen weeks in. Podcast 85 is up. Six Selahs this week, pulled from the morning streams as always — and a behind-the-scenes update I’m genuinely excited about, for the curious among you. In This Episode Six spontaneous pieces, drawn from two mornings — May 21 and May 25. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in B — from the 5-21-2026 stream, Song 1 5:05 Selah in F — from the 5-21-2026 stream, Song 4 9:23 Selah in D — from the 5-21-2026 stream, Song 6 16:51 Selah in D — from the 5-25-2026 stream, Song 3 22:07 Selah in C — from the 5-25-2026 stream, Song 4 28:12 Selah in C — from the 5-25-2026 stream, Song 5 Teaching a Machine to Hear Tempo Here’s the update. When I play live, I breathe with the music — speeding up, pulling back, sitting in a moment. That’s the life of it, but it’s also the hardest part to clean up afterward. The editing software (Logic’s Smart Tempo) tries to map all that ebb and flow onto a grid so the notes line up, and it gets it mostly right — which means I spend a lot of quiet hours nudging the rest of it back by hand. So this past week I ran an experiment. I took 56 of my own past edits — every Selah from the last dozen-plus podcasts — and had the AI I use behind the scenes (Anthropic’s Fable) study them, to learn how I actually hear and correct the timing, and try doing that first pass itself instead of Smart Tempo. Fun fact: this very episode was one of its test cases. The result honestly surprised me. Through the middle of a song, it now matches my hand-editing almost note for note. Where it still stumbles is the big turns — the moments where the music changes feel entirely — and one wrong guess there throws off everything after it. So it’s not ready to take the wheel yet; I’ve set it on the shelf for now, and it keeps learning a little more from every episode I edit by hand. But the day a computer can hear a ritardando the way a human does is closer than I expected, and that’s a fun thing to watch unfold. A Quick Heads-Up The back half of July is busy — student camp the week of the 25th (I’ll be helping lead worship), and family vacation right after. This is one of the episodes I recorded ahead so the music and the prayer keep coming while I’m away. If you don’t hear from me for a couple weeks, that’s why — but the Selahs will still be landing each Saturday. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close — a Pray the Bible short, and a favorite: 1 John 4. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God. There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/hs665uSujKU. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 85 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 84 11.07.2026 30m

  Fourteen weeks in. Podcast 84 is up. Five Selahs this week, gathered from the morning streams as always. A short note on why this one exists already, and a little about what’s coming. In This Episode Five spontaneous pieces, drawn from two mornings — May 19 and May 20. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in B — from the 5-19-2026 stream, Song 7 5:30 Selah in B — from the 5-20-2026 stream, Song 1 10:54 Selah in G — from the 5-20-2026 stream, Song 2 15:16 Selah in G — from the 5-20-2026 stream, Song 3 22:52 Selah in D — from the 5-20-2026 stream, Song 5 Working Ahead Full transparency: I recorded this episode back-to-back with last week’s, in one sitting. The reason is simple — the back half of July is full. Our family vacation is at the end of the month, and right before it comes Youth Camp. Getting two episodes done at once puts me two weeks ahead, so the prayer and the music keep flowing even while I’m away from the studio. It felt like good stewardship of the time God’s given. YNG Summer Camp Speaking of camp — our student ministry’s YNG Summer Camp is coming up (July 25–29 at Twin Oaks Ranch), four days of worship, fellowship, and teaching for 6th through 12th graders. I get to help lead worship while we’re out there, and honestly it’s one of the highlights of my year — there’s nothing quite like a room full of students meeting God for themselves. It is always, always a blessing. If you’ve got a student, you can find the details on our church’s Summer at Connection page. Please keep the camp in your prayers — for safe travels, for open hearts, and for lives changed. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close — a Pray the Bible short for a busy season: Isaiah 26. You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. A good one to carry into the weeks ahead. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/Dsk4aAPuW4Q. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 84 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 83 04.07.2026 30m

  Thirteen weeks in, and this one lands on the Fourth of July. Podcast 83 is up. The usual gathering of live worship piano from the morning streams — five Selahs this week — and a few things on my heart for this particular weekend. In This Episode Five spontaneous pieces, drawn from three mornings — May 15, 18, and 19. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 5-15-2026 stream, Song 3 8:51 Selah in B — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 4 14:54 Selah in B — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 5 17:17 Selah in C — from the 5-19-2026 stream, Song 3 23:22 Selah in A — from the 5-19-2026 stream, Song 5 An Answered Prayer Last week I asked you to pray that God would make a way for my son Sanban to finish his senior year at San Marcos Academy. I want you to know: He made a way. It came together, and Sanban will walk across that stage with the friends he’s grown up with. I don’t take it for granted, and I’m grateful beyond words — to the Lord, and to every one of you who prayed. This is exactly why I keep doing this. Thank you. 250 Years — and the One Who Sustains Us This Independence Day is a milestone: 250 years since the birth of our nation. Two and a half centuries — it’s a lot to sit with. However you’re marking the Fourth this year, I hope it’s a good and restful one. But mostly I find myself wanting to give thanks. Not to a flag or a moment in history, but to God — for His faithfulness across two and a half centuries, for the freedom to sit down at a piano and pray out loud without fear, and for all He has done and is still doing for His Kingdom. Nations rise and fall; His Kingdom has no end. That’s the hope I’m resting in this weekend. A Night of Worship Our church family — The Connection Church in Buda, TX — gathered this week for a Night of Worship on Wednesday the 1st, a sweet time of singing and being together at the start of this celebration week. A few of you have asked lately where I play each week — that’s the place. If you’re anywhere near Buda and looking for a church home, we’d love to have you; you’d be welcomed with open arms. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close — a Pray the Bible short, and a fitting one for a weekend of looking up in gratitude. Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/lL3RZbnmEaw. Happy Independence Day. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 83 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 82 27.06.2026 32m

  Twelve weeks in. Podcast 82 is up. Same as always: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and gathered into one continuous listen. Six Selahs this week. Not a lot of behind-the-scenes news to report — mostly it’s been a season of life happening off the bench, which I’ll share a little of below. In This Episode Six spontaneous pieces, drawn from four mornings — May 13, 14, 15, and 18. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece came from: 0:00 Selah in E — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 1 6:09 Selah in G — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 6 8:56 Selah in D — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 7 14:04 Selah in C — from the 5-14-2026 stream, Song 2 17:54 Selah in B — from the 5-15-2026 stream, Song 2 26:47 Selah in D — from the 5-18-2026 stream, Song 3 Life Off the Bench Most of my week hasn’t been at the piano — it’s been around the kitchen table, planning the year ahead for my boys. My oldest, Sanban, is heading into his senior year of high school, and my younger son, Jake, is gearing up for another year of homeschool. If you’ve raised teenagers you know the strange weight of a “last first day” coming into view. Here’s where I’ll ask for prayer, plainly. Sanban’s heart is to finish where he started — San Marcos Academy, the Christian school he’s called home since the fifth grade. It turns out that’s what he really wants, to walk across that stage with the people he grew up with. For our family right now, that’s a real financial stretch. So I’m simply asking: would you pray that God makes a way for him to finish his senior year there? I’ve watched the Lord provide before in ways I couldn’t have engineered, and I’m trying to hold this one with open hands. A Move Toward Home We’re also praying about a move that would put us closer to our church family in Buda. So much of our week is spent driving back and forth — services, youth nights, men’s mornings — and the thought of being a few minutes away instead of an hour round-trip feels like its own quiet answer to prayer. More time with the people we’re doing life with, less time on the highway. We’ll see how the Lord works out the timing; it hinges on a few things outside our hands, which is probably right where it should be. For the Curious Nothing flashy on the tech side this week. The chapter markers (table of contents) are on every episode now — tap along the YouTube progress bar to jump between the Selahs — and behind the scenes the whole publishing process has quietly gotten more automated. Practically, that just means it runs on its own and I get to spend the saved time where it belongs: at the keys, praying. This Week’s Pray the Bible To close, a Pray the Bible short — and given everything above, there was really only one choice. The oldest prayer of provision and trust we have: Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/7CUKr47UBmI. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying — this week, especially, I mean that. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 82 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 81 20.06.2026 31m

  Eleven weeks in. Podcast 81 is up. Same idea as Podcast 80: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and stitched into one continuous listen. Six Selahs this week, and a couple of honest updates underneath them. In This Episode Six spontaneous pieces, pulled from three mornings — May 11, 12, and 13. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes back to the full morning the piece first showed up in: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 5-11-2026 stream, Song 2 4:57 Selah in B — from the 5-11-2026 stream, Song 5 13:46 Selah in D — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 4 17:34 Selah in D — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 5 22:35 Selah in B — from the 5-12-2026 stream, Song 6 27:03 Selah in C — from the 5-13-2026 stream, Song 5 Behind the Scenes: A Better-Sounding Pedal A quieter update, but one I can actually hear. Anthropic just released a new model — Fable 5 — and I’ve been moving the production workflow for this ministry over to it. The results have been honestly remarkable, and the place it showed up most this week was in how I clean up the piano itself. If you play, you know the sustain pedal is half the instrument. When I record live and the editing software stretches the timing to line everything up, it can quietly blow out the tiny gap where the pedal lifts and comes back down — so a chord change arrives a beat late and the new chord sounds dry, like the room went flat under it. I’d been hearing that all over this episode and fixing it by hand, one pedal lift at a time. This week that became an automatic step: it tightened up nearly four hundred of those late pedal changes across the recording — the ones I used to chase one by one — while leaving the deliberate pauses exactly as I played them. The sustain just connects now. It’s the kind of thing you don’t notice when it’s right, which is the whole point. Two Months In, and Honest About It We just passed the two-month mark since the relaunch, and I’ll be straight with you: the numbers haven’t moved much. Growth has been pretty stagnant. A few weeks ago that might have discouraged me. It doesn’t now. Relaunching Music To Pray By has completely revolutionized my own relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ — sitting down at the piano to pray every morning has changed me. So I’m going to keep going, even if I’m the only one who’s listening and praying along. If that’s you on the other end — thank you. And if it’s just the Lord and me for now, that’s enough. A Note on Timing In the spirit of being transparent about how this gets made: I actually finished this episode on June 13 and scheduled it to post a week ahead, today. I’m hoping to get another podcast finished today and recorded tomorrow — partly to see how much faster the new workflow really is now. If it works, you may notice these landing a little more reliably. That’s the goal: less time wrestling the machinery, more time at the keys. This Week’s Pray the Bible Back to the usual closer — a Pray the Bible short. Here’s the one that resonated most with you this past week, and it fits where my head’s at: a prayer of overflowing hope, from Romans 15. If the embed isn’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/l6aabmHS4iQ. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 81 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 80 13.06.2026 33m

  Ten weeks in. Podcast 80 is up. Same compile as Podcast 79: live worship piano from the morning streams, cleaned up and stitched into a single listen. A few real updates this week, including one I’ve wanted to ship for a while. In This Episode Six Selahs, pulled from three mornings of streams — May 6, May 7, and May 8. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters, and each link goes to the full morning the piece first showed up in: 0:00 Selah in B — from the 5-6-2026 stream, Song 2 4:33 Selah in C — from the 5-6-2026 stream, Song 6 8:10 Selah in F — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 2 12:26 Selah in D — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 3 17:11 Selah in G — from the 5-7-2026 stream, Song 4 21:48 Selah in D — from the 5-8-2026 stream, Song 2 New: Chapters on Everything This is the update I’m most excited about. Every video now gets a table of contents — the chapter markers you can tap along the YouTube progress bar. On the morning streams, the chapters list the worship songs by name. The spontaneous pieces — the ones that aren’t covers — get a name of their own: Selah, the Psalms’ old marker to pause and reflect, each one named for the key it lives in. And on the podcasts, every track is cross-referenced back to the exact stream it came from — “Selah in F — from 5-7-2026 Song 2” means that piece first happened live on May 7, second song of the morning. Here’s why I like it: if one of those spontaneous moments catches you during a live stream, you can always find it again — and when its cleaned-up version lands in a future podcast, the chapter label tells you exactly where it began. The rough take and the polished take, connected in both directions. We’ve rolled this out across the back catalog too, so the older podcasts and streams have their chapters already. The Split-View Clips Are Out A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the church-service clips were getting a new look — the Meta-glasses POV paired side-by-side with a steadier FaceTime camera shot, so all that head motion is easier on the eyes. Those have been posting for a bit now, so this week, instead of the usual Pray the Bible short, here’s the one you all have watched the most — from TCC’s Sunday worship on May 10: If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/PtNWxXQ7xn0. If You Tried to Subscribe and Heard Nothing — I’m Sorry One more, and it’s a confession. While working on the site this week I discovered the email subscribe form had been quietly broken — and not for a week or two. It looks like signups haven’t actually gone through since 2024. If you ever typed your email in and wondered why nothing came, that’s why, and I’m sorry. It’s fixed now. If you’d like a short note from me when each week’s podcast goes up — no spam, just the episode — you can sign up at musictoprayby.com/subscribe. You’ll get a confirmation email first; click that and you’re in. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 80 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 79 06.06.2026 31m

  Podcast 79 is up. Same compile as Podcast 78: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. A couple of notes worth sharing this week. A Quick Note on Timing Before anything else: I actually recorded this episode last week, and I’m scheduling it to post ahead of time. So when I say “this week,” I’m really writing from a week ago — if a detail here feels a little out of step with the calendar, that’s why. I’m trying to get two or three podcasts queued up in advance. We’ve got a family trip coming in late July, and I’d rather the morning rhythm not skip a beat while we’re on the road. In This Episode Seven Selahs this week — the spontaneous worship pieces, each named for the key it lives in — pulled from four of the morning streams. The timestamps match the YouTube chapters if you want to jump around, and each link goes to the full morning stream it came from: 0:00 Selah in C — from the 4-30-2026 stream, Song 3 8:51 Selah in E — from the 4-30-2026 stream, Song 5 11:47 Selah in G — from the 5-1-2026 stream, Song 5 16:16 Selah in D — from the 5-1-2026 stream, Song 7 18:40 Selah in G — from the 5-4-2026 stream, Song 4 23:54 Selah in E — from the 5-5-2026 stream, Song 4 28:43 Selah in B — from the 5-5-2026 stream, Song 7 A Better Way to Watch the Church-Service Clips Last week I mentioned the church-service clips — the TCC Sunday and Wednesday-night worship moments — are back on the Music To Pray By channels. Since they’re staying, I changed how they’re shot. The footage used to be pure Meta-glasses POV: first-person, straight from my point of view at the keys. Immersive, but honestly all that head motion got a little dizzying to watch for more than a few seconds. So the new clips are a split view — the Meta-glasses POV on one side, paired with a steadier shot from my FaceTime camera on the other. You still get the up-close, over-the-keys perspective, but now there’s a stable frame to rest your eyes on. Same worship moment, just easier to actually watch. One more small thing from this past week: the Pray the Bible shorts and the weekly podcasts now post to Rumble as well. If that’s where you spend your time, the catalog is there now too. Closing — A Prayer as God’s Child To close, here’s one of the Pray the Bible shorts that’s been resonating most lately. It’s drawn from 1 John 3 — a reminder of who we already are before we ask Him for anything: “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1) If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/boWYeEKVW8Q. The Pray the Bible library keeps growing, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, Telegram, and now Rumble. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 79 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 78 30.05.2026 30m

  Eight weeks in. Podcast 78 is up. Same compile as Podcast 77: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. Quick post this week, but a couple of real updates worth sharing. An Update on the Church-Service Clips A quick course-correction worth being honest about. For a few days I experimented with moving the church-service clips — the TCC Sunday and Wednesday-night worship moments, the meta-glasses videos — off the Music To Pray By channels and onto my personal accounts. The reasoning was that the live-band, full-room sound was a different vibe from the quiet, prayerful piano MTPB is built around, and I worried it muddied the feed. After testing it for a few days, I changed my mind. Those church-service posts turned out to be helping people find Music To Pray By — and since MTPB exists, at its core, to move people toward prayer, that’s exactly the point. The worship moments and the prayer content pull in the same direction, not against each other. So everything is back on the MTPB channels. The morning streams, the Prayer Shorts, the weekly podcast, and the church-service clips all live together under musictoprayby again. A Prayer Request — For Finances I’m going to be honest with you about something that’s been weighing on me. The past few years have been financially difficult for our family. The day job pays well on paper, but between expenses, the home sale we’ve been working through, and the cost of building MTPB on the side, things have been very tight — tighter than I’ve let on in any of these posts. I’m not asking for money — please don’t read it that way. What I am asking for is prayer. Pray that God would provide for our family the way He’s always provided. Pray that I’d have the wisdom to steward what He’s entrusted to me. Pray that this ministry would be sustainable on its own terms, in His timing. If you’re willing to lift that up sometime this week, it would mean the world. Closing — A Prayer for Provision Of all the Prayer Shorts in the catalog, this one feels right for this post. It’s drawn from Philippians 4:19 — one of the most quoted promises in scripture, and one I’ve been holding onto more tightly lately: “And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.” If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/SYorYnVg93k. We’re past 75 prayers published at this point, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and Telegram. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 78 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 77 24.05.2026 30m

  Seven weeks in. Podcast 77 is up. Same compile as Podcast 76: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. The weekly cadence is settled now — what I want to talk about this week is the where. There are a few new places to find MTPB content that haven’t made it into a post yet. Three Places You Might Not Know About Telegram Channel: @MusicToPrayBy We launched a Telegram channel earlier this month and I haven’t mentioned it here yet. If you’re a Telegram person, that’s the cleanest way to get a notification when each new Prayer Short drops — same content as the other socials, with no algorithm in between. Join at t.me/MusicToPrayBy. 24/7 Worship Replay on Twitch If you’d like to leave worship music playing in the background through the day, the MTPB Twitch channel now runs a 24/7 replay of past live worship sessions. It loops continuously, shuffled, with a fresh randomized order generated every day. No commentary, no breaks, no “starting soon” screens — just continuous piano. Find it at twitch.tv/musictoprayby. 24/7 Worship Replay on Rumble For folks who prefer Rumble, the same 24/7 worship piano replay is also live there: rumble.com/c/c-7892744. Same playlist, separate stream. The intent with both is simple: have continuous worship piano available on every major platform so that no one has to switch ecosystems to find it. The 6 AM Poll — Standing Pat for Now Last week I asked when most of you spend time with God in the morning, hoping to figure out whether to shift the 6 AM CT live stream earlier or later. The honest answer: nobody replied. Which is a perfectly valid signal too — if 6 AM isn’t bothering anyone, I’ll leave it where it is. We’ll stay at 6:00 AM CT, weekdays for now. The door’s still open if that changes — just drop me a line via any of the socials or comment below. Closing — A Prayer for Strength in Weakness Rather than embed the prayer as text this week, I’m going to drop in the actual Prayer Short. This one is currently the most-watched of the past week or so — a prayer drawn from 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul writes that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. If embeds aren’t loading for you, the direct link is youtu.be/9eiHEHxHL64. We’re past 70 prayers published at this point, all searchable under musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and now Telegram. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 77 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 76 16.05.2026 34m

  Six weeks in. Podcast 76 is up, and I think we can officially call this a routine. Not a lot of new equipment news this week — the pipeline is settling into a real rhythm, which is the goal. The MTPB weekly process from recording to publish to Prayer Shorts is more refined than I’ve ever had it, and I’m starting to feel like I can think about music again instead of about workflow. That’s the dream. A Quick Apology — The Duplicated Shorts If you follow the Prayer Shorts on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook, you may have noticed the same prayer landing twice within seconds of each other a couple of times this past week. That was on me — an interaction between my scheduler and the post-queue at Postiz that I didn’t see coming. The short version: deleting a scheduled post on the back end didn’t actually cancel its publish job, so when I rescheduled, both copies fired to each platform. I’ve since put an automated trap in place that detects and removes the duplicates within about two minutes of when they fire, so it shouldn’t happen again. Thank you for your patience — the cleanup is in place now. A Question for You — What Time Do You Pray? One thing I’ve been wondering for a while: is 6:00 AM the right time for the live stream? I picked it early on because that’s when I tend to sit down at the piano, but I have no idea whether that’s actually convenient for the people who are listening. Could be earlier, could be later — I want to know. So I’d like to take a quick poll. What time do you most often spend time with God in the morning? (All times Central.) 5:30 AM CT 6:00 AM CT (current stream time) 6:30 AM CT 7:00 AM CT Reply in the comments below, send me a DM on any of the socials (musictoprayby, one word, on YouTube / Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / X), or just email me. I’ll let the results decide where the live time lands. If the answer is “earlier than 6” or “later than 6,” I’ll make the move — and announce the new time a week before it changes so nobody’s surprised. Summer Is Coming — Heads-Up on a Travel Gap Our boys wrapped up school last week, which means our family is finally going to take the road trip we’ve been planning all year. It’s a long one — Texas to Virginia and back through the Smoky Mountains — so there will be a stretch in late July / early August where the 6 AM streams pause. I’ll announce exact dates closer to it, and the Prayer Shorts will keep rolling out the whole time so you’ll still have something to pray with each morning. Just wanted to give the heads-up early. Closing Same compile process as Podcast 75: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. The Prayer Shorts are still rolling at two a day, 8 AM and 8 PM CT — we’re north of 60 prayers published at this point. If you haven’t found them yet, search musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on any of the social platforms. And again — please drop your morning-time vote. I want this thing to actually serve the people who are listening. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 76 appeared first on Music To Pray By.
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  Music To Pray By Podcast 75 09.05.2026 30m

  Five weeks in. Podcast 75 is up — and this one had to be re-recorded from scratch, which is a story in itself. (More on that below.) Same compile as Podcast 74: live worship piano from the morning streams, stitched into a single listen. We’re still running about two weeks behind in the release cycle, which is fine. If you’re new here, the launch-week post walks through what Music To Pray By is and the tech behind it. The OBS Audio Doubling I Didn’t Know About I built an auto-switching scene this week that flips between an overhead camera (looking down at the keys) and the FaceTime camera on my MacBook Pro — a small visual upgrade that lets you actually see what’s happening on the keyboard during the streams. While building it, I discovered that the piano microphones were attached to the overhead-camera scene and getting added to the mix twice — once from the scene, once from the global audio. That’s been the case for an unknown number of past streams and podcasts. I had to re-record this entire podcast from the beginning to get a clean mix without the doubling. Going forward, the audio should be a touch softer overall but with noticeably more dynamics — soft passages can actually be soft now instead of pushed up to the same level as the louder moments. That’s a real improvement, even if it took an unplanned re-record to find. Logic’s Smart Tempo Ate My Sustain Pedal This one cost me most of today. Logic’s Smart Tempo — which I’ve come to depend on for the MIDI editing pipeline — has a quirk that mangles sustain pedal events. The Disklavier records pedal motion at extraordinarily high resolution: a single pedal press can produce 30 or more CC64 events, sometimes well over a hundred, capturing every subtle shift in pressure as I play. Part of my regular MIDI cleanup simplifies those down to about 7 events per press — held-down (127), then a graceful release ramp through 95, 64, 32, to fully-released (0) — so the file is actually editable. What I discovered today: Smart Tempo collapses those 7 cleaned-up events into a tiny window, sometimes under 15 milliseconds. On playback that turns a natural release into an abrupt pedal-up — which kills the tail of every chord. The fix required some custom tooling to detect compressed releases and widen them back out to a natural ~60ms ramp, anchoring the trough at zero and re-spacing the intermediates evenly before it. Tedious to track down but a good catch — this has almost certainly been affecting the Prayer Shorts MIDI quality for weeks. New Piano Sounds Coming for Church Our worship pastor at The Connection Church, Rene Rodriguez, has been telling me for the better part of a month that I need to update my MainStage patches. He’s right — I’ve been running the same piano and pad sound for years and they’ve started to feel dated. Spent a chunk of this past week digging back into Keyscape (Spectrasonics’ LA Custom C7), Noire (the felt-piano engine in NI’s Komplete), and Omnisphere for pads, building a fresh patch list with proper crossfade-on-mod-wheel behavior so I can blend piano + pad smoothly mid-song. Combined with the Dante cutover I wrote about last week, the church worship clips should start sounding like a different room over the next few weeks — cleaner signal chain, fresher voicings. Dante — Still a Project Speaking of Dante: the cutover from analog to all-digital is mostly working, but consistency week-to-week has been a fight. Some Sundays everything routes cleanly the first time; other times we’re chasing dropouts or weird routing states between the Allen & Heath board and Mainstage on my M3. The sound quality when it works is unambiguously better, which is the only thing keeping me from rolling back. Hoping to land on a known-good config in the next couple weeks. Night of Worship at TCC One more thing on the church side — The Connection Church (theconnectionchurch.org) holds a Night of Worship service on the first Wednesday of every month, and this past one was the first I’ve actually recorded. Came home with about 45 minutes of video and audio that will turn into shorts over the next two to three weeks — once they’re edited and the new piano patches are dialed in. If you’re local to San Marcos / Buda, come visit the next one. If not, the shorts will land on your feed soon. A Side Project — Flux Report And one tangent for the curious: I launched fluxreport.ai this week. It’s a Drudge-style aggregator for AI news — refreshes every ten minutes, pulls from Hacker News, Reddit, GitHub trending, arXiv, and the major AI labs, with niche routes for /security and /enterprise. Different audience from MTPB — same person behind it. If you work in tech and want a fast scan of what’s happening, give it a look. Closing — A Prayer of Trust in God’s Plan The Prayer Shorts continue rolling out two a day, 8 AM and 8 PM CT — we’re past 50 prayers published at this point. If you haven’t found them yet, search musictoprayby (one word, no spaces) on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X. Here’s a sample of the kinds of pray-the-Bible prayers landing in those feeds. This one aired this past Thursday — built on Romans 8:28-30, one of the most-quoted promises in all of scripture: Father, You see what I cannot. I trust You with every loose end. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory. Work it for good, Lord. All of it. Even this. Amen. — Romans 8:28-30 (NLT) This was a heavy tech week — OBS, Smart Tempo, Dante, Mainstage, all in one stretch. None of it is the point. The point is the morning hour at the piano. Everything else is in service of that. Thank you for listening, and thank you for praying. The post Music To Pray By Podcast 75 appeared first on Music To Pray By.