“Recording 48 Tracks with Studio One and the FireStudio”

If you are thinking about doing any kind of live tracking of your church services, you need to watch this video from PreSonus to see how you can do it without spending a ton of cash. These are solid products and pretty straightforward to use. We are hoping to install a similar system to this (24 channels instead of 48) to be able to live track our services on Sunday morning.

Videos for Worship

Someone (sorry, I don’t remember who!) linked this site on twitter and I thought it was pretty interesting. If you do any kind of “mood” or architectural projection in your sanctuary or if you are just looking for some video content to use in your worship services, check out this channel on Vimeo – Videos for Worship. Very cool.

Here are a couple of examples –

Check it out. There is some very, very good stuff here. Awesome to see people producing incredible content and then sharing it for the benefit of other churches.

Great work, guys!

WorshipTogether.com Training Conference

WorshipTogether.com is hosting a training conference in Kansas from April 12-14. Looks like a great event with some great people involved.

Anyone planning on attending?

 

YouVersion Bible Reading Plan – convert RSS to email

Lots of people are jumping on board the YouVersion Bible Reading Plans right now and one question that has been coming up is how to get those daily readings delivered to your email inbox. Right now on the YouVersion site there are three options – visit the site every day, use a mobile app or have the content delivered by RSS.

Want to have the daily readings delivered right to your email? Check out this video and follow a few easy steps to make it happen -

Here’s helpful step-by-step instructions to go along with the video -

1. Go to www.youversion.com and create an account.
2. Click on the “New Reading Plans” button and find the plan you’d like to follow this year.
3. Look for the orange RSS icon, right-click and copy that RSS feed address.
4. Go to www.notify.me and create an account.
5. On the “Sources” page, paste the RSS feed address you copied from YouVersion and select email as your preferred platform.

10 Free Christmas Worship songs

The fine people over at WorsthipTogether.com have put together a tasty little Christmas treat for all you worship leaders who are starting to freak out that Christmas Eve is only a few sleeps away! They’ve put FREE sheet music online for 10 songs that you can use this year for your Christmas series or Christmas Eve. Check it out here – www.worshiptogether.com

The songs they’ve featured -

• Emmanuel (Hallowed Manger Ground) – Chris Tomlin
• All Creation Sing (Joy to the World) – Fee
• Sing – Josh Wilson
• Born in Bethlehem – Third Day
• Here Is Our King – David Crowder Band
• Glory in the Highest – Chris Tomlin
• Silent Night (Emmanuel) – Matt Maher
• Joy Has Dawned – Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
• Love Came Down – Ben Cantelon
• Born That We May Have Life – Chris Tomlin

There is some goooood stuff here! Thanks Worship Together folks!

Video – Listening Skills

One of the big steps in maturity for a musician is learning how to listen. Listening skills are just as important as playing ability and this video talks about how it applies to worship teams. Lots more good stuff like this over at www.musicademy.com –

GarageBand – How to change a loop tempo

Okay so I’ve recently made the jump to the Apple Army and I’ve been pretty happy with it. Whether you are a Mac user or not, you know that one of the big benefits of Apple products is how intuitive the software/hardware combo is and the ease of use of interface. For the most part, I’d say this is definitely true and I’ve made the switch from Windows XP to OSX pretty easily.

This weekend, however, I found myself in a pretty frustrating situation with GarageBand ‘09 and couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a solution for what I was wanting to do.

First – some setup:

At my church, we use click/loop tracks almost every week. I’ve talked about this before and they are a pretty standard part of our worship team toolbelt. In the past, I’ve pulled a stereo wav track in to Audacity, split the stereo file and run the audio channels to either front of house or in-ear monitors. If we need to make tempo changes on the fly, Audacity can handle that through one of their little drop-down menus.

This past week, I decided to try using GarageBand to take a pre-recorded click/loop track of “Sing to the King” and add some organ and pad parts. Here’s a shot of the GarageBand project -

Two things to notice. First, the click and loop tracks at the top of the window is orange. Second, see in the bottom left-hand corner where it says “Follow Tempo & Pitch”? That’s greyed out – no option to check that box.

Okay – so we play the click during rehearsal and soundcheck and after our first service decide that the tempo is just a touch slow. The loop is programmed at 118 and we want to run it at 120. Unfortunately, changing the master tempo of the GarageBand project from 118 to 120 only changes the timing of the programmed organ track and does NOT change anything with the click and loop tracks.

After a quick look through the menus and searching through the help files, it looks like I’m out of luck. I jump over to my Windows laptop, fire up Audacity, adjust the tempo from 118 to 120, export as a wav, upload to Dropbox and then wait. Too bad for me – not enough time between services to get the new click/loop track re-inserted to GarageBand at the new tempo.

So yesterday I’m thinking to myself that there must be a way to do this with GarageBand. I begin hunting around on Google and eventually find out that switching the tempo of a pre-programmed loop track is definitely possible but.. get this.. it is not documented in the help files and not available anywhere in the menus. How stupid is that? Apple – you should be ashamed!

Alright, so what is the solution? It goes like this. Remember our orange click and loop tracks? Hilight those tracks and press Control-Alt-G. Click somewhere in the track window and those tracks should now change from orange to purple, like this -

And what’s this? Remember our “Follow Tempo & Pitch” option that was greyed out? Tada!! It’s alive! Click that checkbox and now your click and loop tracks will be slaves to your master tempo for your GarageBand project.

Release Day Giveaway – Paul Baloche – “Glorious”

Paul Baloche has been writing worship anthems for the church for years and his new CD “Glorious” releases tomorrow, November 3. Our friends at Integrity Music have put together a pretty cool giveaway for FIVE people out in blogworld. This Release Day Giveaway is a little different – there are five blogs all running the same giveaway and each site will have a winner who will receive a copy of the new CD as well as the worship leader digital songbook.

I’ve had this CD for a couple of weeks and I’m really enjoying it. This is classic Paul Baloche – singable melodies, lyrics rich with theology and all of it presented in a way that is accessible and memorable. If you’re a fan of Paul Baloche’s song, you will love this CD.

Here’s a video of Paul Baloche and his band playing the title track from this CD, “Glorious” –

How do you enter? Each blog owner can make up their own rules but here’s what we’ll do here -

1. Leave a comment on this post and tell me why you’re excited about winning this CD. Lots of comments are great but it will still only get you one entry in the contest

2. Post about the CD and the giveaway either on your own blog or twitter – make sure you include a link back to this blog when you are posting! Post a link to your post as a second comment and you’ll get entered TWICE in the contest.

3. Go ahead and enter on all five blogs if you like but you can only win once. I’ll choose the winner here tomorrow evening.

Here are links to the other blogs that are part of this giveaway -

• www.ChrisFromCanada.com
• www.FredMcKinnon.com
• www.RichKirkpatrick.com
• www.JoshuaSeller.com
• www.BrentInWorship.com

UPDATE: I used random.org to help pick the winner and the lucky person is Adam Clarke! Congratulations Adam! I’ll get your info to Integrity and they will send your CD out very soon.

Worship Team Director from Integrity Music

“Worship Team Director” from Integrity Music

Worship Team Director is a complete training and presentation tool for worship teams that instructs team members how to play and sing songs at home in rehearsal and performance. WTD comes complete with instrument specific instructional and practice material as well as enhanced performance media to allow any size worship team to effectively work from practice through to performance.

The Gateway Worship Collection includes all the powerful songs from both Gateway releases: “Living For You” and “Wake Up the World”.

Songs Include:
Come Thou Fount, Come Thou King – You, You Are God – Living For You – Only One For Me – No Sweeter Name – Every Breath – Revelation Song – Bound – Reason I’m Alive – Overtaken – New Doxology – New Doxology Anthem – The Lord Reigns – Real – God of My Days – You Are Good – Alabaster Jar – We Cry Out – Save Me – When I Speak Your Name – We’ll Make It Loud – Wake Up the World – Call Your Name – Beautiful

The Band Pack Box Set Includes:

Five Band DVDs
# Drums / Percussion
# Bass / Acoustic Guitar (2 copies)
# Rhythm / Lead Electric Guitar
# Piano / Keyboards

Vocal Parts DVD (2 copies)
# Lead
# Tenor
# Alto
# Soprano

Media DVD
# Mix-enhancing Audio
# Split Tracks
# Click / Song Cues Left, Instruments Right
# MPEG Video Presentation Files, Includes Mix Enhancements

Each DVD volume is available to be purchased separately.

YouVersion Live

The incredible Digerati team at LifeChurch.tv announced another huge step in online engagement for churches – YouVersion Live. Lots of info online and here are the hilights –

From YouVersion.com –

• Share content on mobile devices during live events and services.
• Invite interaction through polls, notes, prayers, giving, and more.
• Share results and include feedback in your communication.
• Get people actively involved in the message.

From Swerve at LifeChurch.tv -

Here are the details:

• Communicators will be able to share content on mobile devices and get live feedback during an event. Think message outlines and notes, polls, questions, prayer requests, online giving and more.
• Almost anyone with a mobile device will be able to participate and respond—any web-enabled phone will work, as well as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and any laptop or computer with an Internet connection.
• It will be easy to use. To set up your experience ahead of time, you’ll have your own simple admin area where you can drag and drop each element that you want to be a part of your event.
• It’s an extension of YouVersion.com and the Bible App. Since millions of people are already using YouVersion, you’ll have a head start on introducing this new tool to your congregation, organization, etc.
• Not only will people have an engaging way to experience your message live, but they’ll also be able to take it with them on their mobile device and refresh themselves on the the content wherever they are.
• It will be completely free.

From the YouVersion blog –

A pastor would love to be able to get his congregation more involved in his message, ask questions and get answers, survey the room with a simple poll, give them an easy and natural way to take notes on his talking points, and maybe even give them a follow-up thought with a blog post or YouTube video as they’re leaving. And, in a perfect world, they’d be able to keep all that information in a place they look every day so they can refresh themselves on what he spoke about.

When YouVersion Live launches, this pastor will be able to do all this (and a little more) by simply dragging and dropping in a super-simple dashboard on YouVersion.com. During a service, his congregation will pull out their web-enabled phones, open up YouVersion (either on the mobile website or a native application), read the Bible, take notes, ask questions, submit prayer requests, answer polls, find links to external content (event details, blog posts, videos, etc), and give online. Before they leave, they’ll be able to send all that great content to themselves (or a friend) via email for future reference.

Screenshots –

And the icing on the cake? Here’s a quick video from John Saddington over at ChurchCrunch.com talking with Tony Steward from LifeChurch about YouVersion Live and why they’re so excited about it –

I’m excited to see the full release of this. Pretty awesome to see massive changes happening in online engagement in the church – praying that God uses it for great advances in His Kingdom.

worshipcorner.com

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a website that caught my attention – www.worshipcorner.com

The site is basically a gathering point for songs, teaching videos and other resources for worship leaders. Agreements have been reached with individual artists to allow songs to be played for free and resources to be downloaded for free.

I spent a good amount of time on the site and was pretty impressed. It’s not a complete gathering of everything out there but if you spend some time on the site you’ll see songs from familiar artists (Chris Tomlin, Tim Hughes, Kari Jobe, etc) as well as some songs from artists who are probably new to you.

One interesting concept is the instructional videos – just one pass through the song with a guitar player and then breaking down the song into verse, chorus, bridge sections and going over chord changes, lead guitar lines, etc. Here’s one example, the instructional video for “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Chris Tomlin – http://worshipcorner.com/instructional_video.php?id=91

If you’re looking for some new songs OR if you want your band to get an idea of what they need to play before they come to rehearsal, check out worshipcorner.com and have a look around. It’s good stuff and they will be adding more content soon!

Planning Center Online – new mobile features

I’ve been using Planning Center Online for all of our service planning for a couple of years and it has become an invaluable tool for us in scheduling, learning new songs, communication within our worship ministry, etc etc. These guys built an incredible tool on a great platform when it launched – they listened to their customer base and did it right. Planning Center Online has really become the standard for scheduling and song management for me.

They just announced that they’ve made some changes to their mobile functionality which is pretty intriguing to me. Not only have they released an iPhone/iPod application but the first step in mobile scheduling has arrived. From the app, an administrator can schedule a person for a service and request their participation. I am really hopeful that this is the first step in total mobile functionality for Planning Center Online and being able to do full service scheduling from the mobile site.

If you are looking for a way to manage your songs, volunteers and scheduling you should check out Planning Center Online. They’ve got a free 30-day trial so you can give it a spin and see if it works for you.

Great work, guys! Very impressive.

iPhone App For Worship Leaders

A friend of mine is designing the first iPhone/iPod app specifically targeted to worship leaders and is looking for some input from you. Check out the survey and let him know what would be helpful –

Can you help us launch the first iPhone app geared towards worship leaders?

We are just about to go into some expensive design and development,
and we need some insight from our worship leader friends. (forward
this to those you may know lead worship and have an iPhone/iPod

Could you complete a quick survey for us-it shows a stripped down
version of our upcoming iPhone app, and we need your feedback/ideas.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VoF0LXQT0mP_2bHdWNDXXUng_3d_3d

You can sign up to receive updates at www.songsuggest.net

Review: Robin Mark – Year of Grace

I’ve posted a review of Robin Mark’s new CD “Year of Grace” over at The Worship Community. Check it out!

If you are interested in buying it, it’s available on iTunes for download now.

Loop – Sing to the King

“Sing to the King” by Billy Foote & Charles Horne is a very simple song of declaration that’s pretty easy to teach and sing. If you are a church that’s going through a bit of a worship style transition and looking for a song to bridge from some older, more traditional songs to newer, contemporary songs then this could be a good pick. The melody is easy enough for most people to pick up the second or third time they hear it and the lyrics are very straightforward.

The last time we did this song I was looking to spice it up a bit by using a click track. We’ve been using click/loop tracks for about a year and a half at OBC and they’ve become another one of the instruments in the band. We don’t use them every week but when we do they help the band play better and give another sonic layer to the song.

I normally get all my click/loop tracks from PraiseCharts.com but they didn’t have one for this song so I went on a bit of a hunt. I found that Greg over at DigitalWorship.net had posted loops to use with an Ableton Live setup. I haven’t posted about Ableton before but basically it’s click/loops on steroids – guys who are using it can do phenomenal stuff – but right now we are using the standard linear kind of loop during our services.

I took the snippets that he posted on his site and put together a beginning-to-end loop that we used last week in our services. Have a listen -

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(RSS readers you probably need to hit the blog)

The loop we used has a click track to keep our drummer on tempo with a one-bar count-in. You can download the loop here – it’s a stereo WAV file so you can separate the loop from the click.

Here’s the structure for the click -

(click only) One bar – count-in
Intro – 8 bars
Verse
Chorus
Turnaround – 8 bars
Verse
Chorus
Chorus
Turnaround – 16 bars
Verse
Chorus

Liveblog with Twitter

I’ve done the liveblog thing a few times using ScribbleLive and LOVE it – that is a great app for capturing thoughts in the moments, pulling in tweets from people who are in the room and a quick, easy way to help people track along with an event you are attending. But.. What if you are at an event you’d like to liveblog but can’t take your computer? Wouldn’t it be great to somehow connect WordPress and Twitter to let liveblogging happen?? Well, now you can!

Does this sound like an infomercial pitch yet??

There’s this great WordPress plugin called Twitter LiveBlog that works beautifully – I put it to the test last week when I was at an event with Bill Hybels. You can check out my liveblog post from that event here.

Basically it works like this. Install the plugin and update all the settings with your Twitter account info. To begin a new liveblog post you simply send //NLB// (title) as a tweet from your phone or Twitter app. Whatever you put as “(title)” after “//NLB//” will become the title of your new liveblog post.

Begin sending tweets through the event. Let people know that you are liveblogging and you may be tweeting more often than you normally do. The tricky part is sending updates that will be helpful and relevant to BOTH your Twitter and blog audiences.

When the event is done, send //ELB// as your last tweet and the plugin will know that you are finished. Voila!

If you’re on Twitter, you can follow my updates at @chrisfromcanada

James MacDonald – How to Close a Service

Some great words from James MacDonald on how they put together the closing minutes of their service –

Planning Center MP3 Attachments

I know lots of you use Planning Center but you`re getting worried about the attachments you`re uploading and whether or not you`ve got enough room in your account to keep uploading mp3 attachments for new songs. I`ve come up with a way that will let you buy some time – I`ve been using this solution for a couple of months and so far, so good!

Watch this video – the resolution is good enough that you should be able to fullscreen it and get a better sense of what I`m doing. Sorry I went through it really quick – I`ll be happy to clarify anything if you`ve got questions after trying it yourself.

iTunes – www.itunes.com
Tunebite – www.tunebite.com
Dropbox – www.getdropbox.com
Planning Center Online – www.planningcenteronline.com

There you go. Did you try it? Did it work? Questions?

Lectures on Worship

Justin at Between Two Worlds has posted an incredible collection of recordings from Southern Seminary’s Institute for Christian Worship.

I won’t post the list here – go check out and list and spend some time with some of these recordings. What an incredible resource!! There are more lectures posted on the main site but here’s a list of people linked on Justin’s blog:

• David Peterson – author of “Engaging With God”
• John Frame – this guy’s name came up twice last week in conversations and this is number three!
• Harold Best – very well known and his book “Unceasing Worship” is incredible
• Michael Card
• Keith & Kristyn Getty
• Stuart Townend
• Bob Kauflin
• Kevin Twit
• Jason Harms

What are you waiting for?? Go, go, go!!

Digital Piano – check this out!!

Okay – this is a blatant re-post from another blog but I know that lots of you would love to see it so I wanted to post it here!

Tim Corder leads the audio team at Kensington Community Church outside Detroit and posts amazing stuff on his blog. He posted today about their new all-digital grand piano setup, included a bunch of info on how they did it and also posted a video with a live mix of the piano in action. You have to hear this to believe it!

Go and read the full post on Tim’s site but here’s the basics -

The shell is made by Slam Grand Pianos.  It is a 7ft 4″ model based off of the Yamaha C7 shape.  Gary Raffanelli at Slam Grand did amazing craftsmanship and was so easy to work with.  His company builds piano shells for practically everyone who’s anybody – TV shows, touring, casinos, etc.

Inside the shell is a Yamaha CP33 Stage Piano that we use as a MIDI controller.  We chose this board based on the recommendation of some of our keys players for its realistic feel.  Even though we don’t use the internal sounds in the CP33 as a part of this setup, its great to know that its built in piano tones are still pretty strong and a good option to have available in a pinch.  But for realistic feel when playing, the CP33 is pretty awesome.  The Graded Hammer Effect action gives all keys an authentic resistance that increases from the top register to the lower – just as on an actual acoustic piano. Which means that you can naturally pound out thunderous low notes with your left hand and let the fingers on your right dance and fly with the high notes.

Here`s a video of this thing in action – beautiful!!

Take the “A” Train from Tim Corder on Vimeo.

On a side note, if you ever find yourself in or around Troy, MI make sure you get out to Kensington. You will not regret it! I visited Kensington on a trip back from Willow Creek three years ago and still remember it as a landmark moment in my life. It was my first Father`s Day as a dad and everything that happened during the service seemed to be speaking directly to me – it was awesome.

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