Pieces Volume 2 Release Party this Thursday at ALTAER!

This Thursday, we will release the 2nd Student Life CD at ALTAER. I'm so proud of all the students that contributed to the songs on this CD. There are 2 covers and 2 original songs on it.
Track Listing:
1. Chainbreaker (led by Matt Palmer)
2. Wake Up (written by Kelsey Avera)
3. Beautiful the Blood (led by Scottie Finlasyon)
4. Lift My Hands High (written by Casey Harper)

Available this Thursday for only $5 each. There are just 100 copies available so get yours before they're gone. We will also be selling a bundle that includes Pieces Volumes 1 & 2 for $10 ($2 off original price). See ya Thursday!

DIY subkick mic

I've been wanting to get a fatter kick drum sound for a while and looking into options. We've used an Audix D6 on the kick for a few years and it is a great all-around kick mic but I'm intrigued by the double-mic technique that a lot of people are using - one mic is geared towards capturing the attack of the kick while another mic is used to accent the thump. I've seen many bands use a Yamaha Subkick with great results. At $400 it's a little out of my price range so I decided to improvise.

The Yamaha Subkick is basically a 6.5 inch speaker wired to an XLR cable with a nice enclosure and stand. I did a little research online and found out that it's pretty easy to make one yourself - maybe even with materials you already have laying around.

I had an old set of JVC speakers in my basement that weren't used very often. The low frequency speaker in them is 7.5 inches - a little larger than the Yamaha but it seems to work fine. I also had an extra mic cable that I cut off about 4 feet from the end with the male connector.
Before making final connections I tried a few different options and found that it sounded best when I wired Pin 2 to the positive connector and Pin 3 to the negative connector. I wired Pin 1 to the ground spot on the speaker.

I used a short boom stand to mount the speaker. I took the screw out of a standard mic clip and ran zip ties through the holes in the clip and speaker to secure it.
I place the subkick a few inches off the resonant head on the opposite side of the sound hole.
This mic is really hot! If you have an inline pad, I recommend using it. I have the pad turned on with my console and I still don't use any gain for the subkick. I adjusted the EQ to really bring out the "feel it in your chest" bass from the kick drum. I used no high pass filter, boosted 90 hz and cut 400 hz.

I still use the Audix D6 inside the drum about 2/3 inside the soundhole pointed at the beater. I put a high pass filter on it and swept the low mid and high mid frequencies until I found a spot that accented the attack nicely. Boosting 5.5k and cutting 400hz seems to do the trick.

I usually bring the Audix D6 up until I like the amount of attack I'm getting. Then I bring the subkick up to a level that complements the attack sound. I've really been pleased with the results!

Thanks to Wade's blog for the info, pics and sound samples! Thanks also to Trevor H. for all the soldering help!

Advice for high school seniors who want to be worship leaders

This year, I have several students that are graduating and considering pursuing worship ministry. Many of them are asking what they should do next - i.e. where they should go to school - Christian Colleges that offer worship/music degrees, secular colleges that offer music/performance degrees, specialized schools that equip worship leaders, etc. I'm trying to get some feedback from the worship community and see what preparation people have found helpful. I know there are a lot of valid paths that God uses to prepare people for His service. I would love to hear some personal recommendations from people that have actually attended different schools/events. I just want to be able to present the best options to my students that will prepare them for what God has next!

Here's my background. I attended a state school and got a degree in English with a Minor in Guitar while volunteering at a local church the whole time gaining valuable experience. I then attended seminary and earned a M.Div with a specialization in worship leading. I loved both my college and my seminary experiences - they were very different but prepared me in specific ways to minister in my current context.

I'm really thankful that I didn't get a full Music Degree - it would just be overkill for the amount of musical preparation that is needed to lead contemporary worship. I'm not knocking music education - just saying that I'm glad my seminary degree placed a higher emphasis on theological education. Of the two, I feel like theological education is a higher priority for the worship leader. Minoring in Music and taking additional music classes at seminary proved to be the right combination for me. Since seminary, I've grown to appreciate even more the theological and pastoral training that I gained. Those tools have proved truly useful in ministry.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I've also posted this question at the following forums so feel free to check what other people are saying at worshiptherock and the worship community.

Creative Team Meeting #1

I've been wanting to get a creative team started in our student ministry for quite a while and this semester it is finally time. We have some incredibly talented students that have worked on projects in the past like creating dramas, set designs, photography, etc. but I can't wait to see what happens when we unleash their creativity on a regular basis!

We went to beach camp last week in Orange Beach, AL so we took the opportunity to meet at a local coffee shop during our free time on Thursday afternoon. The Dizzy Bean provided the perfect atmosphere to get the conversation started (and they proudly display an autographed photo of an insanely ripped dude so you know they must be legit!)
We started the meeting by discussing the vision for the creative team: to create experiences that ignite authentic worship. We took a little time to unpack this. We have 2 weekly environments ALTAER and SLAM that we want create a consistent experience from the moment people walk in to the moment they leave. This can happen through a variety of ways including music that's playing as they arrive, how they are greeted, how the service starts, how announcements are made, the content of the worship set and the talk, the graphic design on the screens, the stage design and lighting, and how people are dismissed. All these details and many others create the experience and we must be intentional about using each element to make that experience consistent.
Our end goal is to ignite authentic worship. The theme verse for ALTAER is Romans 12:1-2: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."
We should look at the creative elements as pieces used to build the altar that God calls us to lay down our lives upon. We can't make anyone worship but we can certainly light the fire and prepare the altar in a manner that encourages people to experience Christ in a fresh and compelling way each week. Our goal is not just that they would worship on Sundays and Thursdays but through those experiences, they would be equipped to live out the second half of the passage - to be transformed by Christ's power as they worship with their lives day by day.
This gave us a lot to ponder and sparked some great discussion. We will plan on meeting once a month to get things started. During these meetings, we will look at the upcoming series and special events and divide into teams that can take care of different projects.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 27 at 2:00 pm at the Student Life Center. We will be discussing 40 and set design for the first series of Fall 09. Can't wait to see what comes next!

hanging with Nick Kirk at 12stone church

Today I got the chance to hang out with Nick Kirk at 12stone church. We've been trading emails for a few months and it finally worked out for us to get together. I was really excited to check out their setup because 12stone has a full recording studio inside their church. We have been building up our studio at Student Life for a little over a year but I thought it would be helpful to check out someone who is a few steps further down the road.

At 12stone they are using Apogee converters to track into Logic. They also use an Mbox mini to edit drums in Pro Tools. They have an incredible selection of outboard mic pres (API 512c's, Focusrite ISA 428, etc), compressors, and EQ's. There is a dedicated control room, vocal booth and instrument recording room. It is truly an amazing setup and from what I heard they are getting impressive recordings.

Here are a few of the highlights I picked up:
Approaching a studio recording is completely different from making a studio album. It might be cool to perform an 8-minute song in a live worship context but that same song will bore someone to tears on an album. Tighten, shorten, consolidate - find the most important elements and eliminate everything else. Nick showed me an example where they shortened a 32-bar instrumental to just 8-bars (dramatic improvement!).

When recording drums the essential elements are good drums, a good player and good equipment (mics, pres, compressors, eq's). A studio drummer has to have a special set of skills that emphasizes to a few things really well. Locking into the groove, no too-fancy fills, clear articulation (example: snare hits). We talked about how most drum recordings are done on just a basic 4 or 5 piece kit (even though toms don't get used that much). Steven Jordan (of John Mayer Trio) was mentioned as a great example of solid studio drumming.

We discussed some options for drum replacement/reinforcement. Steven Slate came highly recommended along with BFD. We talked about options for using V-drums or a velocity-sensitive keyboard to trigger these.

One mic I keep hearing recommended over and over came up again today. The Shure SM7 is a great dynamic mic for a great price. Originally intended for broadcast use it's becoming a standard vocal mic having been used by Springsteen, Manchester Orchestra and a ton of others to capture both vocals and instruments. I've gotta pick one of these up before we start the next Student Life CD.

Speaking of mics, we also talked briefly about the AT4030 - another affordable mic used with great results by Sufjan Stevens.

For plugins, Nick recommended the Waves Mercury bundle and a bundle that included the API, SSL and Neve plugins. He also uses Massey plugins and the URS channel strip pro. We talked about how the plugins and virtual instruments that are included with Logic actually sound good and are very usable in comparison to what Pro Tools comes with.

We checked out Vintage King Audio, which looks like a great source for pro gear. I'm going to have to dig into it more.

SFLogicNinja's youtube videos are a great source for logic tutorials. I've got to watch these!

Another great youtube resource: hillsong tutorials for guitar!

Great presets to get a starting point for plugins or outboard gear: search google images for Chris Lord-Alge presets.

We talked about the next step for our studio being building 2 solid channels of outboard preamps, compressors, and EQ's and adding a couple of great mics like the SM7 and AT4030. I'm excited about the possibilities this could give our studio for the next album.

Finally, we talked a little bit about sample rate. For CD's, 24 bit, 44.1 was recommended. Nick ususally uses 24 bit/48 because they do a lot of video work but for our purposes, 44.1 should be fine.

All in all, I'm ecstatic about the information Nick shared with me. My head is kinda spinning trying to process it all but I know our next record is going to sound so much better as a result of implementing what I learned today. Thanks again, Nick!

Video Blog #1: loopsinworship.com review

Recently I found a great resource that has really helped our worship team. Check it out!

SLAM - 06.28.09

Sunday Set List:
Neverending - David Crowder Band
No One Like You - David Crowder Band
From the Inside Out - Hillsong United
You Never Let Go - Matt Redman

Matt and the band brought it this morning. Over the course of VBS week, they went from being a band that struggled to play to a click to confidently locking tempo. Their playing is at a whole new level. I'm so proud of their progress. It's also helps that they are so fun to work with. Awesome job this morning!

Last ALTAER of the semester!

Tonight was our last regular ALTAER service for our high
school students tonight. The band has come so far this year.
It's incredible to think about what is in store for next year!

(left to right) back row: Eric H./Bass, Tommy C./Tech, Kelsey A./Tech,
Jonathan N./Keys, Casey H./Vocals&Acoustic, Scottie F./Vocals & Electric,
front row: Brady F./Drums, Trevor M./chillin'

Tonight's Setlist:
Take It All - Hillsong United
I Will Go - Starfield
Solution - Hillsong United
for fun we changed it up and had
Casey lead "Solution" - sounded great!
Find A World - Jami Smith

Look up bass player in the dictionary
and this is the picture you will find:

Last epicenter service of the semester

EPICENTER BAND:

(left to right) Harrison Hinson-Keys, Matt Bryant-Drums, Jake Sumner-Vocals/Acoustic Guitar, Andrew Von Essen - Acoustic Guitar, Hannah Sumner - Vocals, Jeff Nordeman-Bass, Sam Elgin-Electric Guitar

Tonight was our final weekly epicenter service before summer starts. We will have 2 summer services June 7 and July 12th. Then, we'll kick things back up with our regular schedule beginning on August 9th. It's hard to believe that we've had 17 services since we started on January 4th. It's been an exciting journey so far and I'm excited to see where the next season will take us!

The band did an incredible job tonight. We have been working on integrating loops and clicks. Tonight was the first set that we have done entirely with clicks on every song. It really tightened us up and kept us from speeding up on several of the songs.

Set List:
Happy Day - loop
Spring of Life - loop
Salvation is Here
None But Jesus - loop
From the Inside Out
Kingdom Come - loop

The band has done amazing this semester. I'm so thankful to be working with such talented musicians and great people. They have served faithfully this semester and it has been a joy to work with them on a weekly basis. I'm glad we have a break for a few weeks but I'm really looking forward to us coming back together in the fall!

New stage design for "Unwritten"

Here are a few pics from our latest stage setup for the "Unwritten" girls event we had last night. Hannah and Jenica led worship with a band of guys backing them up. Since it was supposed to be an "all-girls" night, we wanted to hide the band guys a bit so we found a place to buy cardboard circles. We zip-tied these together to create a "curtain". We were able to shine lights on and through the circles to get some cool effects. Overall, very effective and inexpensive (about $40 for zip ties and all the circles!).

Using Loops in Worship - The Journey Part 3

It's been a few weeks since I posted about our journey using loops in worship. Since then, we've made progress but it hasn't been an easy road. Our musicians are at a very comfortable point where they can show up for practice and play the music in front of them without a lot of outside effort. I'm excited that they are at this point - it's been a long time coming to get them this proficient and I'm proud of how far they've come. One of the most challenging parts of implementing loops is that it requires people who are not used to playing with a metronome to practice at home. There have been several rehearsals over the last few weeks where we have prepared click tracks and loops, tried them out a few times and realized that the band simply was not going to be able to pull it off. It's hard to just throw out the plan when there are hours of behind the scenes work that have been spent preparing but that is exactly what we've had to do.

Band practices have been hard for the last few weeks. We'll start our trying to play along to a click/loop and it hasn't worked out well. Sometimes, 30 minutes of rehearsal go by and we're still working on one song and haven't even started on the others. This has led to some very hurried, frustrating practices with little progress being made in the implementation of loops.

Last night at rehearsal, we had a breakthrough. I decided to run our rehearsal like normal with no loops or click tracks. We had four songs we were preparing that the band had played many times before. The preparation went quickly and within 30 minutes we had all four songs at a place where they were ready to go for the night. At this point, we still had about 45 minutes of practice time left so we spent that time working with just one song that had a click and fully sequenced loop. It took a few times to get the hang of it but eventually it fell into place. For many of the band members, it was the first time they had really experienced being locked into the click. It was pretty incredible to see them play at this next level. This will be our new approach to practice for the next few months. We are aiming at August as our goal for implementing playing with a click for every song. At this point, just focusing on one song a week is a much more manageable task than trying to make the transition all at once.

A few final thoughts on implementing loops with a band:
1. Make sure everyone can hear the click - it is annoying at first to just hear it in your ear monitor but it has to be loud enough so that each person can hear it over their instrument. I'm not advocating damaging anyone's hearing - I'm just saying it probably needs to be louder than you think at first.
2. Focus on implementing one loop per service. Simple, repetitive loops are the easiest - even if you get off the downbeat, it may not matter. Eventually move to playing along with a fully sequenced loop. *Triple-check the order of your chord chart - it must be absolutely correct.*
3. We've had success using loops on opening songs. In our services, unfortunately, the opening song is usually the signal for everyone to come in, finish their conversations and grab a seat. That puts less pressure on the song if there is any problem, it won't be as noticeable as if it were in the middle of the set. The plus side is that if the band does pull it off, the loop adds a lot of energy to the opening song - which hopefully starts to solve the problem of people not being engaged during the beginning of the service.
4. If at all possible, get the loops/clicks to people ahead of time. We use Planning Center to distribute our chord charts/loops. Allowing people the time to practice at home is critical - especially for the drummer and lead vocalist. We created metronome links for each song using WebMetronome. You can set the tempo, time signature and accent beats then just copy the link to your musicians and they can practice at home.
5. Prepare your other (non-loop) songs first. This will allow "extra" time at the end to work with the click/loop without stressing everyone out since the other songs are already rehearsed.

Progress is being made. More updates to follow!

Ableton Live Tutorial: Setting Up Live for Use with a Worship Band

Image via Wikipedia

Here's a video tutorial that explains how I set up Ableton Live for our worship bands. This setup allows a band member to easily start and stop click and loop tracks using only the numeric keys and space bar. Check it out here:

Ableton Live Tutorial: Setting Up Live For Worship Band from Jake Sumner on Vimeo.

SLAM and the Wire - 03.22.09

Sam and Matt are getting ready for ukulele hero and bluegrassband



Today was a challenging day but a good one, nonetheless. We are trying to implement using loops and playing to click tracks. Rehearsal was short but we got a lot done. We ended up cutting several of the loops for the 2nd service or just using them to start the songs and it worked pretty well. This is going to be a process over the next few weeks so I'll keep posting our progress.

New Stage / Lighting Setup - Pictures!

Here's a few shots from this Sunday of the stage and lighting redesign we worked on last week. I'm pretty excited about the new look!

Using Loops in Worship - The Journey Part 2

Today, I'm trying to get a little more sophisticated with our use of loops. I'm starting off today by getting some better click tracks. Most people I've talked to recommend creating click tracks in Reason using more percussive elements. We use stage monitors with our middleschool band so it will be nice to have a click track that sounds okay if it bleeds into the house mix. The built-in click from Ableton Live is piercing and sounds out-of-place if it bleeds into the house mix. Our other bands on Thursday, Sunday morning and Sunday night all use ear monitors so it won't be as bleeding into the house mix won't be an issue but I still think that people play better to a click that is more like a percussive element of the song (shaker, tambourine, etc) rather than a traditional metronome.

I'm also on the search for some pre-made loops to get us started before we jump full-speed into creating our own loops.

My first stop was at sacredloops. This site has a tremendous amount of stuff! It doesn't look like it has been updated recently but the content section of the site has loops, Live files, Reason files (unfortunately I can't open them with my Adapted version - maybe time to upgrade!). So now I have a ton of content to search through.

Next I headed over to DigitalWorship. The loops section here is really nice for a few examples. It looks like this guy went through the same process a few years ago that I'm just starting. He chronicled his adventure and there are some great insights he shares along the way. His journey starts here.

Finally, I landed at InteractiveWorshipLive. This is a pay service that is building a good selection of loops, clicks and fully-produced Live Sets that can be used to replace missing instrumentalists in your band. They have a free account you can sign up for (you do have to give a credit card no. and a crapload of personal info, though) and you get one free complete song and one free loop. I decided to give it a try. I downloaded "Salvation is Here" and the loop for "Holy is the Lord." I'll write more about when I get a chance to really check 'em out.

So, in summary, I picked up a lot of tips and samples to sort through. Tonight, I'm trying to put together basic click and and loop combinations. I'll post more about how it goes.

Using Loops in Worship - The Journey part1

Image via Wikipedia

I've been using loops in worship off and on for almost 3 years now. Technical difficulties, time and other factors have kept me from using them more but now, I am heading that direction full-on. In the past, we have used loops for 1 or 2 songs in a set but never the entire set. So, we have the technical setup - a Macbook Pro with Ableton Live 6.0 (still debating the upgrade) running out of the headphone jack into 2 channels. In Ableton Live, I set the click to come out the left channel and panned all loop channels to the right. Eventually, I may pick up an M-Audio interface so we can send out stereo loops and still have a channel dedicated to sending out the click. I also have Reason 3.0 Adapted for Digidesign (may upgrade this also) for loop creation and Logic Express/Garageband. I thought I would document the journey here.

Last night with our middleschool band, we used 3 basic loops from the Ableton Live library and and the built-in click from Ableton Live. Here's a screenshot:
http://tinyurl.com/cjw6j2

Ableton has a cool feature where you can map anything to any key just by pressing the "KEY" button in the top right. I pressed this and assigned assigned the Master Column on the right to the number keys so one of the musicans could fire the next song just by hitting "1", "2", or "3" and could stop the song by pressing the space bar.
Here's a screenshot of that:
http://tinyurl.com/c7aula

Thanks to Duane Mixon at portcitychurch.org for showing me that trick!

Another fun trick I figured out yesterday is how to change tempos in Live for the different songs. In the master column on the right, you control click on any of the numbers, select "Edit Launch Tempo" from the pop-up menu and voila! Anything you put in that row will start at the selected tempo!

Busiest Week Ever!

This past week has been crazy! I guess it really started being busy last Monday when Aaron, Andy, Stuart and I attended a planning meeting for the Sugarloaf UMC Party with a Purpose. We emerged from the meeting with the responsibility of producing 45 minutes of entertainment for the night. Ever since then, we've been working together with the whole church staff to create a variety show based around an "American Idol"/"America's Got Talent" spoof idea. All of this was on top of our usual crazy weekly schedule of SHIFT, ALTAER, the wire, SLAM, and epicenter. Oh yeah, I almos forgot - ALTAER winter camp is this weekend.

Monday and Tuesday consisted of shooting video and editing short intro videos for each of the acts. Stuart has done a tremendous job with the video production. His skill level has increased exponentially over the last year!

On Wednesday night, Aynsley, Ryan and a student band led by Kelsey and Jonathan ran SHIFT for the 200+ middle schoolers. Meanwhile, Aaron, Stuart, Andy and I were in the Main Sanctuary directing the Party With a Purpose for over 400 adults. It was a wild night and a huge success on both fronts. I'll post footage from the evening soon.

Thursday, we had an extended night of worship during ALTAER. Trevor, Hannah P, Jonathan and Kelsey planned and led the student band into a great time of music and response. I'm so proud of how far each of them has come as worship leaders and musicians.

Today is Friday and I feel like I'm taking my first deep breath in a while. A student band consisting of Jonathan, Trevor and Hannah P. are leading worship at the ALTAER winter retreat. Stuart will be teaching this weekend. Yesterday, I got all the sound and lighting equipment together for them. Andy, Aynsley, Ryan, Paige and Gretchen are also going to camp this weekend. Aaron and I are staying behind to lead the wire, Fresh Start and epicenter on Sunday. I love doing youth ministry with our team - I don't know how we would do it any other way!

I'm back!

Okay, so it's been over a month since my last post. Well, I'll try to keep up a little better from here on out. Christmas holidays were great! Lots of time with friends and family. The new year is off to a very busy start but so far I'm loving it. Can't wait to see all that 2009 has in store.