Video of two worship bands synchronized playing in different locations at the same time

Here's a quick new of this last weeks rehearsal with the Main Auditorium (MA) band and Lower Auditorium (LA) band.

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This will change how we search for music online. Thank you, Google.

Worship Tip and Rewind: October 25, 2009 #sundaysetlist #sundaysetlists

(If you are reading this in your RSS feed, then you'll want to hit the actual site to catch the video.)

Topics in this week's worship tip & rewind:

• boundaries (maintain healthy ones to be in it for the long haul)
  
• Country Music weekend, yeeeeeeeehaaaa
  
• how God has blessed TBC with musicians (so many and so varied and so skilled)
• 3rd hour botch (but the band didn't flinch)
  

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Set List:

• Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee - Beethoven (arr. Gill, Hobbs, Bannister)
  
• I'll Fly Away - (arr. Jones)
  
• Just a Little Talk with Jesus (arr. Jones)
  
• Anywhere With Jesus - Towner (arr. Gill, Hobbs, Bannister)
• You Are My King - Foote (arr. Robinson)
  

Watch/listen to last weekend's message

Links to other setlists:

• Fred McKinnon
• Rick Kirkpatrick
• Twitter #sundaysetlists or #sundaysetlist
  

Worship Tip and Rewind: October 11, 2009 #sundaysetlist #sundaysetlists

(If you are reading this in your RSS feed, then you'll want to hit the actual site to catch the video.) Topics in this week's worship tip & rewind (have two separate roles on stage - worship leader & band leader, put vocal team/choir in columns in front of mics). Get past the dork and listen to the content.

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SET LIST:

• Today Is the Day > Brewster
• Sing To The King > Foote, Home
• From The Inside Out > Houston
• You Are My King > Foote
• I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go > Roun­se­fell, Brown, Prior

Watch/listen to last weekend's message

Links to other setlists:

• Fred McKinnon
• Rick Kirkpatrick
• Twitter #sundaysetlists or #sundaysetlist
  

How and Why to Use Click-Tracks in Worship

If you are looking for the 100+ library of worship click tracks and audio loops - click here. But if you've wondered what in the world the musicians are listening to in their ears... read on. You can listen to an example of one of the custom click/loop tracks we used this past weekend at TBC for two of the songs (Sing to the King + Revelation Song). You'll hear click/cue track on the left (sent to the musicians' in ear monitor) and the loop/ambient track on the right (sent to the front of house system). By the way, a thank you to John Bowes for loaning me the eBay special electro-harmonix "Voice Box" he temporarily bought - very nice vocoder effect on Sing to the King. It's the "robot voice effect" you hear on the chorus.

WHAT is a click-track? A click-track is a metronome beat that follows the tempo and time signature of a song.

WHY use a click-track? There are a number of great reasons to use a click-track.

1. The tempo remains steady through the entire song. No fudging. Makes rehearsals less of a headache. No more comments like, "Hey, slow down...this ain't no freight train." "We are slowing down...speed up."
   
2. The tempos from rehearsal to worship are consistent.
3. Frequent use develops a sense of inner beat among musicians.
4. Musicians know at what tempo they'll need to play their intro, riffs, outro (especially the drummer).
5. There's no annoying "drummer-stick-click" - an' a one, an' a two...to get the song going.
6. If cuing is used, the vocalists can sing the beginning of each section with confiendence - rather than wondering (do I come in now...how about now...now?).
7. You can flow from one song to the next with no dead time - smooth patching of music sets.
8. You can sync up to a music video anytime you need to or want to (iWorship DVD sets, audio loops & click tracks, or a custom video that needs to have the band synchronized, or even synchronize two bands together).
9. Your band will be set for the recording studio when the time comes.
10. You can put together a 3-story drive-in light show with live musicians in windows who can neither see or hear each other in separate rooms.
    

WHAT is a loop? A loop is extra "spice" on top of what a drummer is playing. Sometimes it's a repeatability beat pattern with a high pass EQ. Sometimes it includes synth and other ambient "icing on the cake" elements that augment the band (and difficult to reproduce in real-time, unless you are an Ableton Live freak on the stage).

WHY use a loop? It can bring studio production elements into a live music setting with ease. It also can augment your band if you are missing an instrument.

There are some cons to using click/loops. You can lose of spontaneity (unless Ableton Live MIDI triggering is used), or you might have a drummer with their time keeping pride, or the time it takes to learn/train, or even the monitoring system it costs to make it happen. But that's for another post. If you've got questions about click/loops, let us know - we live with these clicks/loops on every song and every week. Many musicians have been saying, "I'd never go back now that we are here."

Create nice blown up musician floor worship outlines using Planning Center Online

As a musician, maybe you need bigger font/keys if you aren't using music, music stand, or you place it on the floor. If you use www.planningcenteronline.com and you've wanted an outline that you can put on the floor to see the songs and keys in bold...here's what you've been looking for. Thanks to the awesome people at www.planningcenteronline.com for the great tool they've created for us.

The coding file can be found here.

And a PDF example can be found here.

Email me with questions on implementation.

How to plot on a map where people live who come to your church

Ever wondered where people live who attend your church? Ever need to figure out who lives in your neighborhood and attends the same church? Maybe you could use the data to start a Bible study in your neighborhood. Or maybe use the map to find the unreached people groups in your city.

If you've got a tab delimited database - then head over to http://www.batchgeocode.com/ and let it go to town. Try it out for your church. You might be surprised. Maybe you won't.

Check out the plot for Topeka Bible Church. Click on the images for the larger size.

• The "hole" you see in the middle of Topeka is the park/VA.
• We draw from SW of TBC mostly.
• We strong draw just SE of 470.
• TBC's "unreached people group" is in the triangle created between north of 470, Topeka Blvd (just East of TBC), and the Philip Billard Municipal Airport (North East).

How about you? Does Christ have a presence in your neighborhood?

I See TED People: 6th sense computer

You'll need to wait about a minute or two into the video to grasp what the concept is. I admit it's both freaky and marvelous at the same time. Very interesting concept. Thanks to the verizontal blog for tipping me to this.

:: what crutch are you labeling as a 'tool?'

Check out what the President used as a teleprompter below. [If you are reading this in an RSS feed reader...you'll need to open this puppy up.] When I lead worship, sometimes I get the reaction, "Wow, you know all those words by heart." Shaa right, no I don't! We have two teleprompter screens in the back of the Mulvane main upper auditorium location AND Mulvane lower auditorium (LA) location. That means what the worshipers see, I see as well.



So don't think I'm all cocky and know all the lyrics when leading worship. I don't. When it comes down to it - the video screen is leading us all in worship, including me. It's our digital hymnal. Now if there was only a way to get the music up there, too.

Unfortunately, like our modern-day Presidents, I rely on the teleprompter like a tool. Or is it a crutch?


QUESTION: What other potential crutches do we label as tools in worship? At work? In life?

PRAYER: Lord, help me identify areas in my life that I'm taking the easy road spiritually. Show me what is really a tool or simply a crutch to get by.