Survey Says?

Despite the fact that I haven’t updated the site in well over half a year, it still seems to be quite popular with more hits than I ever imagined to receive.

I’ve been dealing with some rather ugly life events lately and my natural desire to help other ministries has been stifled.  The key mentor in my life would argue about me describing this as “ugly” since he has a shack-esque view of the beauty that can be found in God’s shaping of my life through difficult processes.  None the less, I don’t recommend this path for anyone.

Hope has started to trickle back into my heart and I’m warming up to the idea of putting some more time into this site and its original purpose.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask for your encouragement and prayers.  Not sure if the comments are still as valuable when I directly solicit them, but if you’ve read Chapter 1 to what I hope will someday be the “Reinforcing the Church” volunteer guide, I’d like to hear your feedback.  Do you like my writing style?  Does the content stand out from the myriad of other resources already available (ie, is it worth another resource on the market)?  Would you like me to continue posting?

If you’ve read this far and you don’t see another post for a while, let me again direct you to Mike Sessler’s awesome blog.  His recent posts on things to know and discuss when purchasing a console seem identical to what I would have written had I been asked the same question and posting more regularly.  Almost makes me wonder if we had some kind of transporter accident like Will Riker did in that episode that created a “clone”, two people with the same past but vastly different futures.  Uhmm, but I’ll end that discussion before anyone thinks I’m as creepy as Sci-Fi Greg.

MediaShout vs ProPresenter, Round 3

I was going to save Round 3 for another day, but Mike’s already commented on Round 2 and it seemed necessary to respond.

Round 3: Reliability

Winner: Nobody, it’s all a bloody mess. Mike has blogged about his horrible experience trying to play an AVI file in MediaShout. For me, I would have checked what codec was used on the AVI and (re)install or fix it. I probably could have had it working faster than the time he took to convert the video. I have mentioned the problems I’ve been having with ProPresenter on the computer I work with at North Point (and my “boss” there has gotten quite the earful on it). Likewise, the right Mac expert can probably fix that computer in no time. The fact is, all computers are prone to some kind of failure, whether it is a hard drive failure, bad memory chip, improperly installed software, malware, poorly written add-ons, etc.

Okay, maybe the statistics say that Pro/Macs win this round too. But I’m not going to repeat everything I said in Round 1. I once heard a quote, I think it was C.S. Lewis but could be wrong…something to the effect, “That which has the greatest potential for good also has the greatest potential for evil”, or possibly the inverse. Point is, a PC has a lot of open doors which could be really really bad, or really really good, equal potential in either direction. A Mac has the same relationship. A functional properly installed/maintained PC has great potential and can do more than the Mac will allow. A messed up PC will be so much worse than a messed up Mac.

So if you are reading these posts trying to make up your mind about which platform to go with or what software…re-read Round 1 and go with whatever you have the best support for. If your IT dept (or IT volunteers as the case may be) are better at working with Macs, go with ProPresenter. And if you have a shortage of IT volunteers, then Mac/Pro is probably the safer option as well. (Notice I said safer, I can’t bring myself to say “better”, there’ll be a lot of features you miss out on, I’ll get to those in future rounds.)

Whose got the map?

Just wanted to update my 1 blog reader (thanks Maxdaddy!) on the general direction I plan on taking this blog. As previously mentioned, it’s my goal to put together a booklet that I can give to volunteers (and distribute nationally) to help train those who want to start volunteering with the production team at their church or ministry. My recent post on GAIN is a perfect example of this. But I want to stress that the posts in no way reflect what order the final chapters will be published. This is particularly noticeable since I anticipate my next posting will be something along the lines of an introduction to the mixing console, which really ought to come first in a booklet before going into the details on one of the knobs of said console.

So my next posts will likely be:

• Introduction to the mixing console
• Things a person should know about being the sound guy
• A look at faders (channels and master output controls)
• Or something entirely different. It all depends on what I feel like writing when I dedicate the time to start writing.

I just had an idea…for those of you just tuning in, I’ll make a new “Table of Contents” page with links to the individual postings in the order they ought to be read instead of the order written.

Your feedback is always welcome, did I forget anything on the Gain topic? Has this already been done before and I’m just wasting my time? Should I quit writing and stick with what I’m good at? Is this truly helpful and you can’t wait for the next installment? Inquiring mind wants to know.

Sax on stage

Maxdaddy’s comment on my about page inspired me to write about my experiences with a saxophone player. Unfortunately it hasn’t come up too often.

My most recent experience was with a small church that had an interesting worship team. The main problem was that they didn’t take the time to organize musical arrangements. What happened was that the worship leader would send the musicians recordings of the songs, and they’d play them together for the first time on that Sunday morning. It was a musical free for all where everyone complained about not hearing themselves and never arranged which instrument would carry lead at any time. (So I tried to compensate for that myself by turning down instruments or bringing up the volume on someone to highlight their part). The sax, I tried my best, but it’s only mic was an SM58 on a stand, and usually it was never heard over the other mesh of instruments. I couldn’t hear it myself unless I put on the headphones. I tried highlighting it every once in a while, but with no practice and prior knowledge of the arrangement (the band practiced a couple of hours before the service started, but I was helping another church at the same time period and could only arrive in time for the service itself), it was hard to pick the right times.

Needless to say, the above is how not to integrate a saxophone into your worship set. My only other experience was with a well arranged and rehearsed group, and I got the strongest results by taking a wireless lavaliere mic and clipping it right to the horn. I’m not a mic expert and certainly not a recording expert, so I’m sure there are better ways to mic a sax for recording. But the wireless mic in a live environment works great. The musician gets the freedom of movement without having to worry about whether or not he’s pointing the instrument close enough to the mic.

Class is starting

One of the goals for this blog is to be a resource for someone wanting to learn more about audio engineering so that they can get involved at their own church.  So from time to time I’ll write up some posts on the basics of a mixing console and basic sound principals.  I may skip a lot of details and technical info because it is not my intention to compete with wikipedia or train someone on mixing in a professional studio, I only want to give people enough information to get started in a volunteer position. 

The First Post

I recently posted this text as a comment to a blog asking for advice to give to a young person who feels called to ministry, and I thought it was the best way to start here:

I have been involved in conversations about musicians who feel a similar calling, and would like to share what I’ve learned.

Everyone has a desire to feel important. This taken to extremes can become a problem. First extreme is pride and arrogance and there’s plenty of resources on that topic. The other extreme isn’t given enough thought. Paralyzed is the best word I can think of.

For example, a young person may feel a calling to go into full time ministry, and after years of pursuing a ministry job, finds himself at the bottom, Assistant to the Associate Pastor of a 50 member church at $10 per week. That person may get a sense of failure or question whether God has really called them to a full time ministry. This lack of “importance” than causes them to give up and stop pursuing ministry all together.

That’s why it’s important to remember the story of Joseph and add up how many YEARS Joseph was in slavery and/or prison. There were decades between when he had his dreams and when those dreams were fulfilled. Would that mean he was a failure, or God wasn’t with him? No Way! So if you feel like you are missing your calling, you need to step back and try to get a different perspective on where you are going.

To the musician I would say, if you are called to be a worship leader and can’t find a church who will pay you for it, then you have no excuse for taking your acoustic guitar and a couple of friends to a park or beach and start worshiping God.

If you’re called to start a church and can’t get more than 2 people to meet with you every week, then that’s where you need to be working.

Your priority needs to be Character (your relationship with God is your first ministry priority), Community (who you serve with is more important than how you serve), and Competency (when you’ve got character and community, then you can spend your remaining effort at getting better at what you do).