Church IT – Supporting ministry with IT

There’s an amusing collection of Top Ten Church Worship Lies over at Music Academy. While trying to keep within the spirit of the post (ie not taking life too seriously) I would like to stand up for all us bassists who would dearly love to employ more effects in our playing.

I’ve got a Zoom 506, not a great pedal (auto-hiss as standard according to one friend with some justifiction) but most of the time I use it just as a tuner, sometimes adding some octaver. It’s so old that Zoom don’t even have a page for it any more! Just a mention in the History section.

How I dearly want to use the distortion/flange effect I used on a recording in my band at Uni. Perhaps I’ll slip in some wahwah here and there and see if anyone notices.

Until then, I shall work on introducing the Ukulele.

It really shouldn’t have taken me quite so long to get to grips with Aux channels on our mixer. After all they are responsible for 48 of the knobs (in two different colours) so it’s not as if they are easy to miss.

Well perhaps I’m being unfair on myself. I did use them when recording the carol service last year, but it’s taken my until now to think about using them properly.

Two of the four channels have always been in use, one for the all important induction loop and the other so that people in the vestry have some idea what is going on in the service. The other two have now been drafted in for recording purposes.

Simply put they allow the willing soundperson to create an entirely separate mix for recording, independently of the levels for front of house. The spur for me was our keyboard. Normally it is set so loud the challenge on the desk is not to make it heard, but stop it from spilling into other mics.

That wasn’t too hard with some careful mic placement. The problem was then when I wanted to start recording services. With virtually no keyboard through the main output, the tape output was nigh on useless.

The solution: Aux channels. I can run as much or as little through each without affecting the main mix.

Additional

In fact, even that needed some tweaking, due to the very different levels between speech and the worship group. In the end I recorded the radio mics on one channel and the music on another. At some point I will have a go at mixing them together.

The web has plenty to offer in the way of online music lessons, many of them completely free. I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of context to instruction, often lacking in the sound bits found on the web, but if you have a particular question in mind, the web is a great place to start.

Some good videos dropped into my Blogroll, hosted over at Dolphin Music.

For those wanting something more focussed on church, there is plenty to be found over at Music Academy. Some is free and some is paid for. I recommend signing up to the blog.

Personally, at the moment, I’m working on Fur Elise on (wait for it) the humble ukulele (mp3 on EZFolk.com for the unconvinced). I have to say it’s great fun.

My only snag is that having persuaded everyone that the ukuleles were really meant for the children, I felt duty bound to buy one pink and one purple. I’m still rather new to the music group and I’m not sure how they’d feel about a pink Uke. It probably wouldn’t fit onto the scale of ‘How metrosexual is your worship leader’.

However I fully intend to use one or both to keep the children entertained on the way to Spring Harvest. Ishmael on Uke? I’m enjoying parenthood greatly.