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You might be a niche blog if…

Kyle — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:35:20 +0000

…you come to grips with the fact you aren’t an expert in anything.

…you understand that the hour or so you put into thinking about a blog post doesn’t really constitute as “research.”

…you don’t try to fit everything into a Top 10 list.

…you don’t lose any sleep when you have nothing interesting to post…oh and you don’t post uninteresting things in those cases, which I hereby dub unimaginative blogger tourette syndrome.

…you are entirely uninterested in getting a post out to capitalize on the latest controversy.

…you realize the internet will be just fine were you to stop blogging.

…you make it simple and write when you’re inspired, about things you find interesting and if others find it compelling it’s icing on the blogging cake.

…your friends, family and pastor’s opinion matters much more than the hundreds of comments flooding your blog.

…you are used to bigger blogs taking your ideas and re-purposing them in a really lame way.

(For the record…I gave this post about 23 minutes of thought and effort. I really am a niche blog.)

Our Rising Sound gets a facelift

Kyle — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 06:09:07 +0000

I’ve been wanting to change the layout of the site for some time, make things a little simpler. Still not quite a minimalist blog, but I’ve cleaned up a bit. Take a browse around and let me know how you like things. I’m hoping it’s a bit easier to find content and I think the site is a little more readable now.

I’m on Christmas vacation so posts will still be slow during the holidays as I spend time with the fam. But I have a lot to say in the coming year. Quite a few posts lined up that could cause some trouble. My favorite kind I’m sure you know by now.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2009: The year in review

Kyle — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:02:20 +0000

It’s been a big year, simultaneously one of the most challenging and fruitful years for me and my family. Started the year looking for a job, found one, then ended the year looking for a job and found one. God has been so graceful in how he’s lead our family, matured me as a father and husband and sustained us through many trials.

My wife is incredible and been just a rock of hope in the midst of stress and rough circumstance. We’ve been blessed this year and sheltered by God’s faithfulness and grace. Our family grew by 1 as we welcomed Adia Grace Campos to the family. That was incredible, born the day before Easter. Will never forget or cease to be amazed at the goodness God poured out on us then.

As we start 2010 I begin a new job that will change our family dynamic and rhythm, to what degree I’m not sure. But I’ve worked exclusively from home for the past 6 years or so and now I’ll be venturing back into office life. We trust God to work his goodness here and believe this will be an amazing year for us.

As for Our Rising Sound it’s been a great year. Here are some of the highlights:

Topped the 300 RSS subscriber mark
Loops downloaded/played 18,000 times … I’m really astonished at that figure
Began doing custom loops. Really excited about this and thank you for all the requests that have come in for these. This has been really fun.
Top post this year is still the dumb church sign debate (37,100 views this year, originally posted in 2008!). Crazy.
One of my favorite posts from the year was “Worship Leaders: play songs your congregation doesn’t like“
Most controversial post was probably “Jesus Culture we have a problem…your lyric“
My favorite blog series of the year was “How worship music can be like bad hotel art“
One of the most visited posts was John Mark’s explanation of the infamous “sloppy wet kiss”

Looking for custom loops? I’m for hire

Kyle — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:03:28 +0000

I’ve had several inquiries about whether I’d do loops for hire, or custom loops for people. I’ve always turned down those requests because I just didn’t have the time. But due to recent unforseen changes in the job security landscape(ah hem), I have more time now.

If you or anyone you know is looking for some custom loops. backtracks or just wants to work together on some music projects please do contact me. You can browse my current freely available loops to get a sense of what my music sensibility is. I will still release loops for free as I have been, I don’t plan on stopping that. But any special requests would have some agreed upon fee.

I don’t have any set rates at this point for a few reasons.

I want to be flexible and be able to bless and help out in creative ways. I don’t want to only contribute to projects that have a lot of money.
I have no idea what people think my services are worth, if anything.
I would be open to accepting trades for gear and such.

If you would be so kind as to pass the word along, by retweeting, sharing on facebook, etc… that would really be appreciated. ORS just recently passed the 15,000 mark for downloaded/played loops, so thank you for the interest you’ve shown to this point. I sincerely hope this has been a valuable resource for you and your churches.

I’ve been on vacation!

Kyle — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:27:36 +0000

Yeah you read that correctly. I, Kyle Campos, took a vacation with the family, for a few days at least. Normal posting will resume shortly.

Blog ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes: Top Loops and Commenting

Kyle — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:20:41 +0000

I’d like to bring your attention to a few changes around here. First up is the Top Loops widget in the right hand sidebar. This displays the top 5 rated loops that Our Rising Sound has released. If you haven’t voted please goto the loops and rate them. Honesty is the best policy, don’t give everything 5 stars unless you thing every single one of them deserves it. And I’m here to tell you not all of them do.

Secondly you may have noticed a new commenting system. I’ve been evaluating Intense Debate for quite some time and working out some issues. It’s up and running now and this allows for a lot more fluid conversation on posts so I expect all you sleeper readers to come out of the shadows and leave some comments. You can vote for comments, reply to specific comments in a thread fashion and now we have gravatar support so you can see pics of who is leaving comments.

If you read this blog, please leave a comment on this post introducing yourself. I know for a fact many MANY more people read the blog than comment, and I’d like to get a bit more interaction going here. Helps with post ideas and makes this blog more useful for everyone involved.

So please leave a comment and let us know who and where you are.

I’m sharing great, lesser known Christian music

Kyle — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:08:01 +0000

Here’s the thing about Christian music. Most of it sucks, I’m sorry if that offends anyone, but it’s just my opinion, take it or leave it. I’m just being a straight shooter. That being said there is some great Christian music out there that needs to be heard and I love finding it, sharing it and doing whatever I can to promote it. So to that end I have this new feature in the sidebar, a little MP3 widget that contains some of the great, lesser known artists and songs I’m digging. You can listen to it right there in the sidebar and if so inclined buy it right there for yourself.

After clicking on the widget the full list of songs will appear. The playlist will rotate. Go check it out.

Special thanks from and to our readers

Kyle — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:21:32 +0000

I’ve been getting a lot of emails recently thanking us for the loops I post. I wanna thank you all for the feedback, it means a lot and is really encouraging to hear about churches across the states that are able to benefit from my loops. I even had a worship pastor from South Africa contact me, so that’s awesome. Keep the feedback coming and let me know if you have any questions on loops or anything else and I’ll respond as fast as I can and maybe even make a post out of it.

Additionally, Our Rising Sound is almost at 200 subscribers which is amazing considering it took us 14 months to break 100, now 2 months after hitting that mark we’ve added almost 100 more. That’s pretty incredible. The success of this site really depends on you sharing posts and telling others about it. If you haven’t subscribed please do so either through RSS or email.

I’ve been up in Seattle for the past couple days and won’t return until late tomorrow. Normal posting will return shortly. Thanks everyone for the great community and site you helped build here.

Our Rising Sound contributing to TheWorshipCommunity.com

Kyle — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:09:32 +0000

If you have not been to TheWorshipCommunity.com now is a great time to go visit and subscribe to their rss feed, twitter feed or via email. Fred McKinnon runs the site and it’s a great resource for worship leaders for training, discussion, encouragement and technical insight. I will be contributing some content there and helping where I can.

You can also join in the discussion at TheWorshipCommunity forums. Enjoy.

Listen, download, comment and now RATE loops

Kyle — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:19:05 +0000

The loops area of this site keeps on growing. I’ve seen a lot of interest from more and more worship leaders, so in an effort to bring more organization and to keep it fresh I’ve added a rating feature. So if you would be so kind as to browse the current catalogue of loops (note there are 2 pages worth) and rate the loops with your honest opinion. I have no guidelines as to your criteria for rating, just look it up in your gut (and ears). Your rating is completely anonymous, so if you think the loop sucks I won’t chase you down, rate with confidence. You can see what it looks like below and no you don’t have to rate 5 out of 5, this is just an example

Once a good number of rating come through I’ll add a widget to the sidebar that shows the Top 5 user rated loops so visitors can quickly see what’s hot, excuse me, hawt…and what’s not. Thank you for your feedback and if you contact me and let me know you rated every loop maybe I’ll give you a prize, like a nice e-card or something.

My comment approval/rejection policy

Kyle — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:16:12 +0000

I’ve received a quite a few comments recently that I’m deleting and not approving. So I thought it would be a good idea to lay out clearly what kind of comments are frowned up.

What will get your comment deleted or disapproved?

Use of profanity. I don’t mind strong language, but if you’re cursing like a sailor you probably don’t have anything valuable to say. Keep it PG-13 please.
Harsh rebuke or critique without any sensible argument or entertainment value. If you’re going to say how much something sucks or how much you disagree with something, all I ask is you spell it out in an articulate way or at the very least be entertaining. If you wanna be a jerk, than speak well or be funny, it’s that simple.
Self Promotion Spam. I don’t mind if you want to promote your stuff here. I love helping others out as much as I can. But at least pretend to have read the post you’re commenting on. Throw me a bone here.

What won’t get your comment deleted?

Thoughtful disagreement. I really don’t mind people disagreeing with me. I disagree with a lot of people, so I’d love to hear your beefs. Just be articulate, concise and don’t cuss.
Relevant self promotion. If you have a post on your site that is relevant to the post here you’re commenting on, by all means, link away. Just make sure it’s relevant.

Subscriber count milestone

Kyle — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:35:15 +0000

A big thank you to all my readers and subscribers. A few weeks ago we crossed the 100 subscriber barrier, a point I had hoped to reach by the end of the year. So thank you to everyone who has subscribed to the blog either via RSS or email and also thank you to our new podcast subscribers.

This success of this blog depends on you guys blog evangelizing and spreading the word. So if you know of friends, family, co-workers that might enjoy the blog please encourage them to subscribe. For all you silent subscribers make sure and comment so I can meet you, hit me up on facebook, stumbleupon or twitter.

Here’s to passing 200 in much shorter time!

Some of my favorite comments from the readers

Kyle — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:20:27 +0000

Starting with the most popular post on this site, Presbyterian vs. Catholic Church Sign Debate, which has received almost 50,000 views.

This is too funny. I just preached on “Do Dogs Go to Heaven?” yesterday. Then I blessed the animals. If you’re interested, you can go on the following website and hear the sermon and see some of the pictures taken.

I’m anything but interested, but thanks. The fact that someone actually preached on dogs going to heaven and then blessed animals just makes me ill and angry at the same time. Here’s a great follow up comment.

…I’m a Catholic and I’m not even sure if I have a soul.

That’s just priceless. Now onto probably the best comment ever received. This comment was made by a Mr. Scot Longyear in response to me calling him out on playing a Michael Jackson song in worship in the 10 Commandments of Blogging post.

Listen up Thriller,

Billy Jean is NOT my love. Maybe you should take a look at the man in the mirror. I don’t think you want to be startin’ somethin’, even though it is human nature. I know you just won’t stop ’till you get enough, you pretty young thing. Leave me alone you smooth criminal. Why you wanna trip on me? Just remember the time and keep the faith. Above all, remember it don’t matter if your black or white. It’s easy as A-B-C.

Oooooh whooo

I don’t know how anyone can top that. However, Mike takes the prize for the most chilling comment ever. My post on if non-christians should be in worship bands apparently awoke some hellish anger in him. Although it doesn’t seem like that hellish anger ever goes to sleep.

I wouldnt be caught dead on a stage with bible thumpers! unless I were eating there babys

I love getting comments like this, it really is fun to chat with absolutely crazies sometimes. So I responded the only was I know how, sarcastically.

Me: Mike God bless you man, checked out your myspace, looks like you’re plenty busy polishing skulls and such so thanks for taking time out of your day for that valuable feedback. I’m going to add that to my list of criteria when trying out new band members, “Must not eat children.” Rock on brotha.

That’s the best of the best for now. Thanks to everyone who’s engaged in dialogue in the posts. I appreciate it, keep it up!

Our Rising Sound contributing to Worship.com blog

Kyle — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:25:05 +0000

I’m pleased to announced that Our Rising Sound will now be contributing on the Worship.com blog. If you haven’t been over to Worship.com make sure and subscribe to the blog feed, there are a lot of great articles and a wide variety of contributors including, Bob Kauflin, Scot Longyear (I follow your lead) and the Resurgence. I’ll certainly need to dress appropriately and behave myself over there with that crowd. There is no change of content on this site, business as usual here, but now some of the posts will also appear on Worship.com.

Introducing our new Hip-Hop contributor

Kyle — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:49:04 +0000

I’m happy to introduce Brett Ernenputsch (pronounced “Erne-whatever”) our new contributor dedicated to everything hip-hop. Here’s what I know and love about Brett

He loves Jesus
He loves hip-hop
He loves this blog

What else do you need to know? Those are the three elements of a successful, abundant life. In addition to those 3 points he is one of the leaders at our church, is currently going through our Movement Internship program and has a bunch of tattoos which is enough street cred for me. I’m looking forward to Brett’s insight into the world of hip-hop, how it’s impacting or being impacted by the church and our culture.

Thanks Brett for bringing another musical dimension to this blog!

Our Rising Sound Apparel now available!

Kyle — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:48:04 +0000

One thing that is critical for any successful ministry or blog is timing. Bad timing is absolute death to a blog, you have to be able to capitalize on what’s happening that day. So that’s why after these last couple weeks of news where it appears America’s economy is about to bring upon armageddon, families are filing bankruptcy and foreclosing on their homes, I’ve finally got the Our Rising Sound Store up and running!

With all that extra money you all have you can buy all sorts of men and women shirts, sweaters, stickers, hats, etc… What better way to show your patriotism and rebuild our economy than by sowing into the Our Rising Sound blog? OK maybe that’s not a good way, but it is a good way to look sexy and help me pay some bills. Look over on the right sidebar for the picture and link as shown below.

Our Rising Sound on Pixels Preach

Kyle — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:04:19 +0000

Pixels Preach is turning out some pretty sweet presentation layouts for you preachers out there. They also are running an Our Rising Sound ad so they are double sweet. Please go check them out, especially those who do presentations and/or sermons.

Our Rising Sound apparel coming soon!

Kyle — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:23:30 +0000

Just in time for the holidays. Nothing says “I love you” like an Our Rising Sound fitted shirt. Right now the quality control team is rigorously field testing the gear to make sure it’s up to standards. Teams are doing worship sets, prayer meetings and sermons 24/7 to see how this apparel holds up to the beatings of ministry life. There will be weeping and gnashing of cotton. Once ORSQCT (Our Rising Sound Quality Control Team) comes back with the green light we’ll have a link where you can purchase. Until then here’s a sneak peek.

What is Technorati and how can you help ORS?

Kyle — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:07:22 +0000

Technorati is a blog search engine that indexes millions of blogs. It then “ranks” your blog based off the number of times other sites link to it. This helps determine what they call your blog’s “relevance”. The higher Technorati rank the more visibility you get in the searches. There are a few things you can do to help this blog increase its ranking.

Link to posts you find interesting on your own sites/blogs. This would include Facebook, Myspace and any personal blogs. In our interview with John Mark McMillan we are doing a giveaway based off of people linking to the post. So spread the love.
Add Our Rising Sound to your blogroll. In addition to linking single posts you can also add this site to your blogroll or links in your blog so a permanent link is visible.
Add Our Rising Sound to your Technorati Favorites. You can do this by clicking the “Add to Technorati Favorites” link on the right sidebar under “Web Life”.
Comment please. This doesn’t have any direct impact on Technorati ranking but it does show engagement with your readers. So if you find the post interesting, comment and let us know, if you hate it, comment and let us know that too. We have a lot of silent readers here but I want some interaction. I want to know what you’re thinking, I’m not afraid to argue either so bring it.

Site redesign finished and this time I’m happy

Kyle — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:16:35 +0000

Been a busy few days getting this latest redesign ready. But it solves a few problems and eliminates a few limitations the previous designs had so I’m stoked. This should be a good base to build off going forward. Still need to make a few tweaks but I’m tired and my wife is giving me that, “if you don’t get in bed now you’re sleeping on the couch” look. Have some exciting posts lined up for later today, I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with, “Shawn Shmark Shmickmillan”. We’ll even be giving a free prize away as well.

Stay close and let me know how you like the new look. Click around and explore, it’s fun. Big props to Josh Dailey for the logo design, well done as always my man.

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