You may have used some of my friend Marty Funderburk’s songs with your church choir – he’s a talented Nashville songwriter with numerous Inspirational and Southern Gospel hits and awards. This Thursday night the group Seven (they’re kind of like the 3 Tenors but there are… 7 of them!) will close the Republican National Convention with Marty’s song “What a Mighty Sound.”
Here’s Marty’s Facebook post with a video of Seven sings “What a Mighty Sound.“
Check out this week’s issue of the WorshipIdeas newsletter for a link to some awesome worship freebies – videos and an amazing free ebook on using Facebook for your ministry! If you don’t receive the newsletter, sign up for it here, for free.
Last week Allan Clarke from The Journey in Dayton, OH posted a comment that was so good I asked him if I could make it into an article! He graciously agreed and here’s his vote for clicks and multitracks:
I’m in my 41st year as a contemporary worship leader…. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but I started young and worked hard to stay current. Because I’ve been at it so long, I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. Nothing that I’ve seen used has done quite as much to make bands sound tight and polished as the use of clicks and loops.
Let’s face it gang, our leaders/senior pastors often don’t know how to make a band sound good… they rarely hear a band except the ones we lead. Most of them rarely attend concerts so they don’t know that the pros, both worship/Christian bands AND the top-tier secular acts use both clicks and loops very heavily.
The artists who make the recordings are working with a click… the styles of music we do are click and loop based. To say no “canned” music is like telling a symphony “no bows!” They can do it… but it’s not the best they can do. Whenever I have a leader lay down the law like that about a tool in our toolbox, I try to take the time to see why… and if it’s open for discussion. If it’s an immovable mandate based on their whim, I start looking for a new gig.
Nobody I know is good enough to make consistently excellent modern music with only the tools of the past. It may be possible… but it’s a lot more work for the same outcome.
Clicks, loops, stems, in-ears and multi-tracks allow us to sync to video, know the exact timing of our service elements (among other amazing feats) and present much more excellent worship moments than would be possible just by “hoping” we could find a drummer with good timing! They also cut rehearsal time and cranky band moments because we have an objective standard for tempo and groove.
Using them well will revolutionize your outcome… It may also cost you a few team members. Usually those are the ones you’ve been trying to redirect into other vistas of ministry, anyway! You won’t believe the difference!
Jerod at ChurchJuice.com has some great visual examples on how to create a good looking Facebook page for your church:
One of the biggest changes Facebook has made in recent memory is the switch to Timeline. With that came the ability to upload a cover photo that displays across the top of your Facebook Page. This large, central picture is sure to make a strong first impression to your Facebook friends. Yet, some churches aren’t utilizing that space the best they can.
Kevin D. Hendricks writes that the Olympics offer three lessons for churches:
1. Tell a Story: First and foremost, the Olympics is about story. Some people complain that ‘story’ is too much of a buzz word lately, but the fact remains that story matters. Despite complaints about NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, the stories of the athletes continued to be a major draw. That might be why NBC’s ratings are better than ever even though there were more viewing alternatives than ever before (to those who could get them).
You’ve probably at some point used stereo tracks (accompaniment tracks) in your worship and maybe even click tracks. The next step is multitracks.
It used to be that only the big churches and techie worship leaders were using multitracks – now they’re within reach of the average church, and stems can be run from ipods, ipads and smartphones as well as laptops.
Multitracks (also referred to as “stems”) are simply individually separated tracks – usually in WAV or MP3 format. Each track is a different instrument – a track for keyboard, drums, guitars, bass, etc. If your bass player is sick, simply play the bass stem for your song. Spice up your full band with loop and synth stems.
Last Sunday I enjoyed worshiping with the Trinity of Fairview praise team near Asheville, NC. Like many churches, worship leader Ed Frisbee has trouble maintaining a full band during the summer months and finds multitracks to be a life-saver. He used my new free multitracks for All Hail the Power and I played along on the piano with a guitarist and bass player.
Multitracks require that your band be using a click track with in-ear monitors. Read these WorshipIdeas articles to learn more about click tracks:
You can find a few worship multitrack websites on the net – some try to lock you into a particular software and prices are all over the board. Since the concept is fairly new for worship you’ll generally find only the most popular praise songs.
As a one-stop shop I like the multitracks at PraiseCharts.com mainly because they make sure their sheet music, charts and orchestrations follow their multitracks. Many churches are integrating multitracks into their bands, not necessarily using the multitracks in lieu of a band, so I think it’s important to have charts for your live musicians that match the stems. Watch their above video to get a visual idea about multitracks.
PraiseCharts multitracks are a little less expensive than other sites, each song has two key options and their MP3s are a higher bitrate of 160kbps (meaning they sound better). Their stems are flexible – produced and intended to be used cross platform in any software.
Try out my new, free multitracks for my arrangement of All Hail the Power. Download multitracks in E, F and G, import them into Garage Band, Protools, Logic, Sonar or your software of choice. Please comment below if you have any questions or suggestions.
The following is an excerpt from Engage by Nelson Searcy and Jason Hatley, with Jennifer Dykes Henson.
The first church I pastored was a small Baptist church in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was a 21-year-old kid. The night they voted to call me as pastor, a whopping fifteen people were in attendance. Later I learned the plan that night had been either to vote me in or to vote to merge with the church down the street. They went with me, but I’m still not sure they made the right decision. Fortunately, God began to bless that little church and it started to grow. After a few long, hard seasons, we were averaging almost 100 people per week. Since attendance was so “high” every Sunday, I went to the deacon board with a proposal: we needed to hire a part- time minister of music. They reluctantly agreed.
Research and analysis done by many psychologists shows that humans get an itch for significant change every 7 to 10 years. Some believe part of this is related to how our cells regenerate every 7 years. We change half of our main friendships every 7 years.
Obviously all this is a bit subjective, but based on the experience of most of us, this holds true. Something about our mind is “trained” to desire significant changes almost every decade, including our jobs.
This page is an example of trendy Personal Blog. It has the different header and specific Grid layout of posts. You can import it for your site based on Impreza.