Love at First Sight

Jennie and I are in Nashville this weekend for a couple events.

One is for my sister Ashley’s baby shower. Baby Brody will be comimg along in a few short weeks!

The other is the Belmont University Orchestra’s 25th anniversity concert and alumni weekend. Over 30 alums, including Jennie, are returning to join the current Orchestra in a big concert tomorrow night.

So while they rehearse, I’m wandering around our Alma Mater.

And low and behold, here’s the room and angle at which I fist saw my wife, Jen nearly 11 and a half years ago…

And yes, for me it was love at first sight.

Laptopless

Sorry Funseekers, but the laptop is getting an upgrade to the operating system, so it will stay quiet around here for another day, because posting via iPhone is a pain…

In the meantime, go outside and get some (cold) fresh air…

Sunday Summary – Music: February 22, 2009

OK, we’ve recovered from last week…

We learned a lesson about song selection from last Sunday, and had an incredible Night of Worship on Thursday night.

FYI – in case you weren’t able to attend Thursday night, here was our set list…

Night of Worship – Feb 19.pdf

(50 points if you can spot my typo on the set list…)

Anyhooooo….

On Sunday morning we had some cool stuff, as well as an interesting scenario.

First off, Andy was speaking here live, which meant that the content before the message needed to be shorter in order to broadcast the message feed to the other campuses.

Sooo, we did something we haven’t done before: We cut one of the worship tunes, but only for the first service! Meaning 2 worship tunes at the 9:00 AM service and 3 tunes at the 11:00 and 12:45.

This is because in the second service (11:00 AM) we use the recorded video of Andy from the first service. So everyone – East, West, Browns Bridge and Buckhead – are all watching the recorded 9:00 message while Andy rests his voice (and body and mind) off stage.

He’s then back live for the 12:45 service when he’s speaking at North Point, even though it’s not being broadcast to another campus. Browns Bridge uses the recorded video for their 12:45 service and Buckhead uses it for their 6:00 service.

Confused yet? Hold on…

This also means that we didn’t have to cut the top-of-the-service content for our 11:00 (video) and 12:45 (live but not broadcast) services, meaning we could add in that 3rd worship tune for those 2 services.

Now try getting that through to a group of Pavlovian Worship Leaders, musicians and production personnel who have already rehearsed and done one whole worship set and service a different way!

But they did it, and did it great!

Here’s the worship set:

God Is Alive (this was the one we cut for the first service)

Wonderful The Love

Lift High

After the worship set (in all 3 services) we did something we have hardly ever done here at North Point – an Offertory song!

Now if you grew up anything like I did, nary a week went by without an offertory song. Whether it was the choir or a soloist, or what – there was always an offertory! And, on a few occasions when I was a teenager, the offertory was me playing a newly learned classical piece.

One time, at the church back in Canada I grew up in, Jennie (my then girlfriend, now wife) and I did Great is Thy Faithfulness, with her on violin. That’s when our pastor said to my mom, “She’s the one, isn’t she?” That was a fond memory.

A not-so-fond memory was when I was about 15 and massacred a piano solo of “El Shaddai”. Butchered it. I put chords in there that don’t even exist.

That was the day I learned (the hard way) that I must practice something past the point of nausea, all the way to a healthy hatred for the song. True internalization. Muscle memory. Ability to play the song with your hands while having a conversation with your mouth and brain.

Otherwise, you’ll look like a fool. Trust me.

Alrighty then…

Nowadays, we only do an offertory if it’s a song that sets up the message, usually with tension or a question that the message will then address and possibly answer. They are a songs that might describe an imperfect scenario or situation. Basically not a song that would fit as a closer that would leave an audience with an answer, or basic sense or closure or hope. Now that’s not set in stone, but it’s a good rule of thumb…

So we did a tune called “Storm” by Lifehouse. A neat, moody song that is really quite haunting. Ryan Stuart’s incredible vocal matched with the East band’s ability to master the song’s subtlety (plus some cool ethereal programming I did ) made for a really unique, cool experience.

Give the song a listen and you’ll see just how polar it is to our usual Sunday AM content…

The song set up Andy’s first message in the series “He’s Still Got The Whole World In His Hands“. And it was a GOOOOD one!

- – - – -

East Band – Eddie Kirkland, Ryan Stuart, Danny Grady, Ben Snider, Scott Meeder, Earl South, Mike Bielenberg

West Band – Mike Gleason, Steve Thomason, Matt Melton, Pat Malone, Joe Lee, John Carrozza, Karen Bitzer

- – - -

Ohh, a little Digidesign Venue console action…

What song made you learn how to practice the hard way?

Night of Worship / Favorite Infomercial

After last night’s Night of Worship, I was exhausted.

The euphoria died off about 11:00 last night, at which point this busy, busy week finally caught up with me.

So this morning, Jennie was kind enough to take Ella to school (usually my job) and take Cooper to the gym with her, letting me sleep in.

Of course, once I woke up, I was able to lie in bed and take in one of my favorite infomercials of all time:

It’s like a car wreck – I can’t look away!!!

Song Markers in Pro Tools for Live Performance

Fun Seeker John asks:

“I have recently started using ProTools for loops/programming and click tracks for several of our songs. I’m using ProTools on stage with my Mbox 2 Pro. Sending my loops/programming out 1 & 2 and my click out 3.

The difficulty I’m having is the time it takes to close one file and load the next song – takes too long and makes it impossible to do two songs back to back with Pro Tools.”

John,

Thanks for asking… We actually put all loops / programming for an entire worship set in one single Pro Tools session, and simply (and instantly) move from song to song with only click of the mouse!

It means adding Markers for each song along the length of the session, and appropriate tempo and time signature changes at those points. You can also customize your click subdivision when you add a tempo marker.

Here’s an excerpt from our North Point Music Multi Tracks Users Manual – included free with every North Point Music Multi Track!

Steps 5 & 7 are what you’re looking for.

Hope it helps!

- – - – -

Pro Tools – Step 5: Creating New Markers, Tempos, and Meter Changes

At bar 1/1/000 you will see a yellow “Marker” (a.k.a. Memory Location) with the name of the first song you imported, along with a tempo (e.g. quarter note = 120 bpm) and meter (e.g. 4/4).

You will need to create new Marker, Tempo and Meter markings for each subsequent song.

1. Marker (Memory Location): Make sure you have selected “Grid” mode (button in the upper left hand of the main screen). Line up the cursor with the bar you wish the second song to begin (e.g. Bar 154) and simply click OR type the desired bar number in the main locater window (top middle of the main screen). This will indicate where you wish the new marker to be located.

Next, click the “+” sign next to the word “Markers” found near the upper-left side of the main page. This will open a new window in which to name the new song.

2. Tempo: Click the “+” sign next to the word “Tempo” found near the upper-left side of the main page. This will open a new window in which to select the tempo of the new song. The tempo is found as part of the song’s Mono Click & Countoff File”

3. Meter: Click the “+” sign next to the word “Meter” found near the upper-left side of the main page. This will open a new window in which to select the meter of the new song. Most songs are the default 4/4 time, but you may need to change to 6/8, or whatever the chart specifies or song requires.

Here are a few screenshot examples:

#1 – Session with multiple tracks per song:

#2 – Just a few files per song with track heights on “medium” – 1 loop on Song 1, Loop and Tambourine on Song 2, 1 Loop on Song 3, multiple programmed files on Song 4:

#3 – Same song as above, but with track heights on “small”

#4 – Close-up of Tempo, Meter and Markers timeline:

Pro Tools – Step 7: Using Markers / Memory Locations Window for Live Playback

The Memory Locations window is accessed through the “Windows” drop-down menu. This window is essential for ease of live performance playback.

During a live performance, each song is immediately accessed by clicking on the song title in the Memory Locations window.

Try it now using the following steps, and listen along using the headphone jack on your Mbox 2 or 002R unit.

- Click any song title in the Memory Locations window

- Press Spacebar (Start); the song will start playing

- Press Spacebar again (Stop)

- Click on another song in the Memory Locations window and press Spacebar (Start)

(You can even start a new tune by clicking on its Marker without even stopping via the spacebar!)

NOTE: You can also click on the blue Markers line and Tab between Markers (opt+Tab for backwards). Some guys prefer to use that once they’re comfortable with the software.

It’s that simple during live performance!