The loop in this video is a custom loop for Misty Edward’s “You Won’t Relent” and can be purchased/downloaded here.

The loop in the video can be downloaded here.

I ran a recent poll here on ORS that asked where your team was at with looping. 25% of you said you’d like to start using loops but don’t know how to get started. This post is intended to address that and hopefully get you some detailed information on how to get going. First here are some articles to help you decide whether you should even consider using loops:

• Why should I consider using loops in my worship service?
• Won’t using loops cause a congregation to get bored?
• Do loops leave any room for spontaneity in worship?

If you’re wanting to get started looping here are some articles helping you with that process:

• 8 steps to configure Ableton with loop and vocal cue tracks
• Configuring Ableton Live to run your click tracks – The link above showed you a more comprehensive loop setup that runs your loops and click. But if you wanted to just use Ableton for running your clicks, this is a great tutorial for that, as well as just general Ableton Live info.
• How to send click tracks to monitors and not mains
• How to transpose a loop in Reason
• How to create your own click track in Garage Band

Some sites where you can download loops:

• www.OurRisingSound.com – here of course
• www.themonobox.com – Matt hasn’t been posting for a long time, but he does have some good loops and tutorials still available.
• www.sacredloops.org – Again, not much content here, but hey there aren’t many people doing this kind of thing.
• Bwacks Forums – good place to ask questions on loops

If you have questions that none of these articles and tutorials address please don’t hesitate to ask. If you have any suggestions for loop links above let me know and I’ll add to the list.

Here’s what caught my attention this past week.

• Video: How to make a baby – it’s not what it sounds like. Really cool and creative way of tracking and capturing pregnancy. One of those, wish I would have thought of that videos.
• Ragamuffin Video: Top gospel choir in the US – mad sangin skillz.
• Photo essay of a beautiful bride – This photo essay shows the story of a woman dying of cancer who married her high school sweetheart days before she passed away. Moving, beautiful and sad.
• Guitar amp recording techniques – This article discusses best guitar amp mics and mic placement strategies. Older article but still just as valuable.
• A little swine flu humor – Uncircumcison fever nearly made me spit up.
• Resurgence: Qualifications of a Worship Pastor Parts 1 and 2 – Wonderful article and invaluable points made. For those considering bring on worship pastors this is a must read to identify the qualifications needed.
• Pastor Steven Furtick interviews Ted and Gayle Haggard – loved the way Steven opened the interview.

I’m always on the search for music gear that I want/need/lust after. I also have nowhere close to the amount of money I need to get the gear I thirst after. Craigslist is an obvious place to start when looking for local gear that people are trying to part with. The problem is so are thousands of other people in your area so the chances of you searching just at the right time to score the right gear at the right price aren’t all that great. Enter Craigslist RSS feeds.

1. Search in Craigslist for whatever specific gear you’re looking for

2. Copy RSS feed for search criteria

3. Add it to your RSS reader of choice

You can see that I have a few saved searches and I check everyday to see if any new items come up. I’m usually first to respond when they do. Although now maybe a few more Phoenix people are hip to Craigslist RSS feeds and I have some competition on my hands.

In any case this is a great way to score good deals. Happy shopping.

A vocal cue track is an audio track set to a click, and usually ran along side of a loop, that is sent to your in ear monitors only and serves as a helper track, guiding you inside your arrangement. The primary purpose is to keep the band in sync with the arrangement and is especially important when using loops. If you get off the loop disaster can come quick and hard.

You can create a vocal cue track in your audio recording software of choice. What I do is just import my loop to GarageBand, create a new vocal cue track and record along side the loop, then just export the vocal cue track by itself. If you are running integrated clicks inside your loop, that is panning a click in the left channel with the loop in the right, then you’d just add the vocal cue track to the left click channel as well. I don’t do this because I use Ableton and it handles my click track dynamically which gives me more flexibility. Once you have a loop track and/or vocal cue track here’s what you do in Ableton, this is a complete tutorial of running loops and vocal cue tracks in Ableton.

1. In Session View add your loop track to the Audio channel

2. Add additional Audio Channel for vocal cue track

3. Add vocal cue track to accompanying loop “scene”

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s what caught my attention over this week:

• John Piper’s 4 part interview with Matt Chandler. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Matt Chandler has the highest CWPM(Convicting Words Per Minute) rating out of anyone I’ve heard.
• ChurchCrunch’s 3 tips for not sucking at ‘Christian’ blogging. I can’t say the post is entirely insightful, but there are some good portions. The problem is it makes some big assumptions and oversights, namely assuming that every Christian blogger wants to become a large blog with diverse readership. That overlooks the very nature of niche blogging. You aren’t going to have diverse readership because your content is very narrow. I do talk a lot about non-christian music and topics but it’s always how it relates to or impacts worship.
• Church Soundguy posts on Dynamics 101: Compressor Application Notes. This details compression settings for the most common instruments coming into your board. This blog has some incredibly useful information, I highly recommend checking it out, especially for you sound men.
• TwiTip’s 11 useful twittor tools that don’t require your password. Good list of useful and safe Twitter tools.
• Joel Brown, worship leader and deacon at Mars Hill Church, talks about his decision to get baptized this Easter. Great story.
• Randy Elrod unleashes on Perry Noble’s Unleashed rant. I understand where Randy is coming from and do agree there was a general irreverence present in Perry’s rant. But I don’t necessarily disagree with Perry’s ultimate conclusions, just in how he presented them, the language he used and the audience they were spoken to.

I recently downloaded the Tempo iPhone App for $0.99. It has quite a few features for a little 99 cent app. When you first launch the app you see this screen:

First impression is not that pretty of a UI. Color scheme isn’t my favorite, not soft on the eyes. But they do present you with all the basic functionality you’d expect out of a click generator. You can set your time signature, beat type, volume controls and setting the tempo either through tapping or explicitly setting the BPM. The tapping feature seems a little sensitive, but after a while you can get the tempo average to mellow out and give you a decently accurate setting.

The only other screen available is the settings screen:

The Animate Meter Change is kind of a worthless setting. Just turns off a very brief animation when switching time signatures. Play mode is pretty cool. Overlay mode allows you to play a song from your iTunes library and run the App on top of it. So you can tap out a time to a song in your library. That’s pretty darn handy. Sound set just changes the audio that’s played for the click. Digital is the best sound they have I think. The bummer with the drum kit sound set is they don’t offset high-hat and snare based on the time sig. Both high hat and snare just play together on every beat. That’s not really what you want when using a drum kit click track. Tuner feature is kind of nice, just plays the note tone. Maybe in a pinch it could be handy. Would be much better if it read tones from the mic of course.

The biggest annoyance with the app is stability. You can make it crash every time if you start the click track, then navigate into settings and change some setting. So they have some work to do on bugs. Practically I think the best uses I see for it now is tapping out tempos in your library and having a portable click track for rehearsals and laying down scratch ideas. Here’s the final score based on a 5 point score, 5 being the best and 1 being the worst.

Appearance: 3

Features: 4

Usability: 4

Price: 4

Stability: 2

Overall: 3.4 / 5