This blog examines, reviews and discusses how worship is being lived out in culture and in the church. We tackle everything from songwriting techniques in corporate worship, to interviewing worship leaders and pastors, to reviewing the last big rock concert.
When working with loops and click tracks one thing you need to know and preferrably know quickly is the beats per minute(BPM) of the song. I use this widget constantly to quickly get the BPM of a song I’m listening to in iTunes.
All you need to do is install it, then play the song in iTunes you want the BPM for, open your dashboard and tap the drum set along with the song and it will display the BPM. Then you can click the +Music icon on the right to save that into the song data in iTunes. Quick and easy and as accurate as you are of a mouse clicker. The only down side I’ve found is that it can get pretty CPU intensive if left open for long durations along with iTunes. iTunes ends up eating up more and more CPU. So watch out for that and if that’s happening make sure to close the BPM widget after using.
This is late, late Saturday night when what I thought would take me 3hrs to program is taking me 6hrs+. I hadn’t even started on guitar work yet, so I spared you the real mess. The problem when recording late at night is you settle for garbage. You get tired and settle, I hate that.
The UI on this is pretty slick, quite apple’ish in fact. $5 seems quite reasonable as well, they have 2 versions, the Hip-Hop Edition and Club Edition.
Took a shot of my live setup with my iPhone this past Sunday. Thought it might be fun to diagram exactly what I play with.
Apple MacBook Pro (GR) - this is my workhorse. In addition to running Guitar Rig I use this for most all my personal work. It’s an older MBP but it gets the job done. 2.33 Ghz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HD
Guitar Rig 3 - After leading worship and playing lead guitar in a lot of worship bands in smaller venues I was sick of dealing with stage volume issues. I was having to turn my amp down so low amp didn’t have the chance to get to the warm part of the tubes. Literally I was having to have my amp down at 1 so the FOH guys would stop complaining. So I was really limited in my tone and sound. All direct options whether software or multi effects had such poor quality and weren’t an option until I found Guitar Rig. I experimented with it on some recording projects, then tried it live and was very happy with the flexibility and sound quality. So this is my rig for small venues and I highly recommend it for congregations 300 or smaller.
Behringer FCB 1010 Midi Foot Controller - I don’t particularly like the foot controller that comes with Guitar Rig, so I just got the software edition and got my own midi foot controller. 2 foot pedals is a must, dedicated volume pedal then the other for trem speed, wah, what have you.
Presonus FireBox - “2 out of 3 musicians recommend Presonus for their firewire audio interface needs.” I’m one of the 2.
Apple Macbook Pro (Reason) -My newer machine. 2.4Ghz Intel Core Duo, 4GB Ram, 150GB HD
Reason 4 - I talked a bit about how this came to be in an earlier post. Slowly been integrating more synth tracks, live and recorded.
M-Audio Oxygen8 v2 - wanted something small and ultra portable with a decent amount of assignable controls and transport. This fit the bill. Great controller for Reason.
When working with loops and click tracks one thing you need to know and preferrably know quickly is the beats per minute(BPM) of the song. I use this widget constantly to quickly get the BPM of a song I’m listening to in iTunes.![[del.icio.us]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://www.ourrisingsound.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
