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.

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.

Composition was never my strong point at school when I did music, so I’ve been trying to brush up on these skills. There’s plenty of stuff to keep me occupied for a while.

It’s nothing spectacular but hopefully gives you an idea of what can quickly be achieved using software like Magix Music Maker 14. The music was generated from the samples included with Music Maker, I didn’t have to play any instruments. That’s for a later project…

My MP3 player – an MSI Megastick 528 – fantastic little device with a line in socket – takes up a fraction of the space, records for longer than a briefcase of tapes (ok just a guess) and runs for hours off a single AAA battery. So it’s better surely?

Well no, not really. There’s no way to check levels without playing a track back, and there’s rarely time for that before a service. It’s also a little slow to respond to button presses; once it’s going it’s fine but sometimes getting there can be a pain.

Now, this is one thing for me, I’m reasonably comfortable at messing around with technology and can normally get it to work without raising my blood pressure too much, but there’s no way I can recommend it in a situation with people who are less happy with playing around this way. What we need is something with that familiar red button, preferably large and easy to see when active.

The trouble is, most electronic devices are just a variation on my MP3 player. We used to use an M-Audio portable recorder for podcasts and even I managed to fluff up recordings by not pressing the right combination of buttons. It’s not that the device didn’t work, just it wasn’t as simple as a tape deck.

I asked this question at the Worship conference held at Crawley Baptist last month as we had a seminar dedicated to sound and pa. They recommended the iKey Plus as offering the right balance of functionality and ease of use, and it certainly looks that way from a quick read of the manual.

Interestingly as I was mulling this post, an entry appeared from Musicians Tools for this rack mounted recording device for iPods. We’ve already got an iPod Nano for day to day background music in the church, I’m sure one more iPod won’t hurt.

I have to admit that the Summer Chill samples weren’t really to my taste, though I can’t fault the sound quality. The Ultimate Samples Collection Vol 3 was another matter however. Plenty of really good drum samples, both individual drums and patterns.

I’m looking forward to trying them out with some songs. If you’re interested I’m mostly using Magix Music Maker 14 these days. Very underrated software in my opinion and with some great features for playing live at church. I reviewed the previous version last year and thought it was pretty good. It was XXL version that comes with a MIDI/USB keyboard, which I’m still using.

What struck me was that even 16 years on it is still very relevant and challenging (yes I know how old the Bible is!).  It made me think about how seeker friendly our services are and I fear we could do better.

It’s always hard because many parts of church become habit.

A good example was at church on Sunday when we had a baptism, so lots of visitors compared to normal. The person doing the intercessions (first bit of jargon) finished off in the usual Anglican way ‘Merciful Father…’ and those of us in the know finished off with ‘accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ Amen’. Now we didn’t announce where these words could be found (I do this all the time as well) so there was no way the visitors could have known what to say. For the record, I didn’t have to look the words up.

I feel bad about it now, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time, which only makes me feel worse!

The booklet hit the nail on the head with the assertion that seeker friendly services cannot be the same as ordinary church. What I’m looking for in terms of spiritual refreshment isn’t going to happen.

If you want a read, there are copies still floating around. I found five on the Amazon Marketplace.

I’m making a start on Mission Shaped Church now. Currently half price from Church House Publishing with some sample chapters available as PDF.

Also check out some of the videos on the page, especially those of  Abraham Laboriel Jr.