For those who can’t (or don’t won’t to) break out the cash to get some custom Westone molds, could JVC’s new in-IN-ear headphones just be the toy you need. They claim serious isolation, better sound quality, and little to no sound leakage since it is so deep in the ear canal.

They are hitting in Japan first but for $38 a pair, should I make my players go pre-order a pair?

Daniel wrote a second part to the post I posted on in yesterdays post. Still not 100% but there is still some good stuff here.

And your thoughts?

Are guitar solos okay? Can you use intelligent lights in your service? How much can a worship leader talk? Is there only one right way to be a worship leader?  Here is an article from Collide magazine’s blog that lists out one man’s opinion on the matter. I like some of his thoughts but not all. Can you guess which ones?

What say you?

I’ve posted a few times about how much I like and/or have been frustrated with Renewed Vision’s software software. Recently I had the opportunity to sit down and spend more time than I ever have before just checking out the features on ProPresenter 3. Oh my goodness, I feel like a whole new world has been opened up to me. It is now official. Without a doubt, ProPresenter is hands down the best lyric presentation software available.

Trust me, I’m not saying that lightly. I’ve used just about everything out there - many times - and none of them even come close. Why? Well, for one thing most of them are for WIndows systems only and I’m not even going to begin to explain again why that is a disadvantage. PP3 has always looked slick and been easy to use but now that I have seen the light with some of the features I wonder if most of their users even know about, I am singing it’s praises and will be using it exclusively when I travel this summer.

Here are some of my now favorite features:

1. Song Automation - insert an audio track (i.e. click track) and record when the slides are supposed to change. Yes, exactly what you are thinking. You can even make it so the words change color or light up as you sing them (i.e. bouncing ball effect).
2. Countdown Timer - with it’s built into countdown generator, you can insert a clock or countdown on top of anything. Mess around with this for a minute and you’ll see how useful it is.
3. DVD Clips - Instead of having to rip sections of a DVD for a short clip, you can set in/out points in PP3 and it will play them directly from the DVD.
4. Live Video Feed - hook up a video signal via firewire or SDI and you can overlay text on a live feed.

There are so many other little things I love (i.e. color coding song sections, quick editing, common sense video library, playlists) that I regret ever saying anything negative about any Renewed Vision products. Just remember - the Apple Button is the most important button.

CCLI polled the thousands of members who use their service and the results are interesting. Do you think this says anything about the state of the church?

What kind of worship music does your church primarily use?

• Contemporary worship songs – 18.2%
• Traditional hymns – 6.1%
• Blended (combination of contemporary and traditional) – 63.6%
• Separate services for contemporary and traditional – 12.1%

If you have separate services, which service has more attendance?

• Contemporary service – 40.5%
• Traditional service – 29.4%
• About the same – 30.1%

Do you see your church’s primary worship music changing in the foreseeable future?

• Yes – 15.5%
• No – 84.5%v

If yes, to what?

• Contemporary worship songs – 55.2%
• Traditional hymns – 1.8%
• Blended (combination of contemporary and traditional) – 43.0%

What is the average time allotted for congregational singing in your church’s main service?

• 0-10 minutes – 5.5%
• 11-20 minutes – 47.3%
• 21-30 minutes – 36.7%
• 31-40 minutes – 8.5%
• 40+ minutes – 2.0%

How many songs do you sing during your worship service?

• 1-3 – 7.9%
• 4-6 – 72.8%
• 7-9 – 17.8%
• 10+ – 1.6%

How would you rate your congregation’s response to your church’s worship style?

• Very enthusiastic – 26.0%
• Generally positive – 61.7%
• Mixed – 11.0%
• Struggling – 1.3%

What are your Music Ministry’s biggest challenges?

• Lack of funds/resources – 18.3%
• Lack of preparation time – 25.0%
• Lack of skilled musicians/vocalists – 38.6%
• Other – 18.1%

What is the age range of your church’s music pastor/director?

• 18-25 – 4.2%
• 26-35 – 14.5%
• 36-45 – 30.2%
• 46-55 – 33.2%
• 55+ – 17.9%

Does your church use movie/video scenes for sermon illustrations?

• Yes – 52.1%
• No – 47.9%

What is your primary source for discovering new worship music?

• Radio – 23.5%
• Music Club – 19.2%
• Internet – 19.9%
• Direct Mail – 7.5%
• Music Conferences – 10.3%
• Bookstore – 6.7%
• Other – 12.9%

What is your primary source for purchasing new worship music?

• Music Club – 17.6%
• Internet – 38.0%
• Direct Mail – 9.7%
• Music Conferences – 4.8%
• Bookstore – 21.3%
• Other – 8.7%

What is your annual budget for purchasing church music?

• Under $100 – 16.9%
• $100 - $250 – 22.3%
• $251 - $500 – 20.9%
• $501 - $1,000 – 14.5%
• Over $1,000 – 25.5%

I started out typing a long explanation of copyright law for some church leaders who have recently been asking me questions. There are plenty of sites out there that do a good job explaining things in detail, so I’m just going to give you the basics.

1. If you are performing a song in what the Copyright Office would consider a religious service (”in the course of services at a place of worship or other religious assembly”), then you can perform the songs without any kind of permission whatsoever.
2. However, you cannot print or display the lyrics, record the service via audio or video, nor can you reproduce chord charts for your band even if they include the title of the song or any of the songs lyrics without written consent from the owners of the copyright.
3. That is where CCLI comes in. They cover chart printing (not choir or orchestra sheet music copying), recordings (not distributed or sold), and lyrics displayed among other things I don’t specifically use.
4. If your band plays other people’s songs for community events or anything that is not a “religious services,” it is considered a non-exempt public performance and you would be breaking the law without permission from the copyright holder. Contrary to popular belief, CCLI does not cover these types of performances along with many other things.

• CCLI has a limited library and includes no secular tunes or many popular songs heard of Christian radio. If you just perform the song without displaying lyrics, you’re in the clear so long as your band members learned the song on there own you did not create and distribute charts.
• CCLI also does not cover web broadcasts of the music you perform - but Church Copyright Administration does along with everything else including video. CCA is expensive and requires serious planning-ahead skills - like 4-8 weeks out planning-ahead skills. They describe themselves as the difference between buying turbo tax (CCLI) and hiring a professional personal accountant (CCA).
• With so many new artists and so many new songs that are not registered with CCLI, it is legally up to you (whoever is in charge of reporting) to locate the copyright owner/publisher and report to them your use of their song and pay the PROs (publishing rights organizations) the proper royalties.
• If you are a member of the Willow Creek Association you can get discounts on licenses that are not covered by CCLI.

Bottom line, it is expensive, complicated, and extremely time consuming to be compeltely covered, but there is a slight bit of room in the U.S. copyright law for liberal interpretation. Churches are similar to schools as they are non-profit organizations that a teach reproduces copyrighted material to a face-to-face audience for educational purposes. In that regard, the “fair use” clause in the U.S. copyright law allows for even more exemptions. Though I’ve never heard of any church being taken to court over this gray area and the chances are pretty slim it ever will, it could happen and you would not want it to be you.

Tim Stevens discusses copyright a bit in his book “Pop Goes the Church.”

This site is a nice resource and much easier to read than the pages on the official U.S. Copyright Office’s website. The laws have changed from time to time, so make sure your info is up to date.

Anyone who has anything to do with cables needs to memorize how to do this!!!

In-Ears vs. Wedges

My years, I fought against in-ear monitors. I hated the way they felt and believed they took me away from the vibe in the room (still believe that) which made it harder to connect with the audience I was trying to lead. All that changed when I was forced to use them in a college service I was playing at because the sound guy needed all the help he could get controlling the stage volume. Once I got used to and met a few life long musicians who had major hearing loss from using wedges for so many years, I was convinced - and have never looked back. You might not think it makes that much difference, but I assure you, the first time you put ears in your players and lose stage wedges, you’ll immediately notice the difference even if you have loud drummers and guitar amps.

We use Sennheiser wireless ears (EIM300) because they are the best quality and also one of the least expensive options. MSRP is close to $1500 but you can find them for near half that. Compared to Shure and other reputable companies, they blow them out of the water. Almost every major Christian artist I have seen on tour is using these unless they have a Shure endorsement and can not use anything else. Add an additional body pack ($400) and you can have two separate wireless monitor systems just by panning the body packs opposite of each other and sending a separate mono mix to the left and right channel of the transmitter (the main box). We have two systems we have setup tha way to give us four mono mixes and two other systems that are run stereo. I won’t really touch on it too much here, but having stereo ear mixes is something I have just recently come to appreciate and think it makes a huge difference on stage (though I often only have only one ear in which sort of defeats the purpose).

A ton of people use the Aviom system which is great and gives each player their own control over their mixes eliminating time during sound check to get everyone’s ears checked and ready. It also frees up auxes on your board for effects or sub control since it splits the signals coming in. However, it only gives you control over sixteen channels which we use much more than. Our set-up includes a separate mixing board and engineer whose sole purpose is to run and mix monitors. This option frees up the house engineer to do his job (theoretically) and gives us a dedicated person to keep an eye for any needs we have on stage. This person also acts as a “stage manager” who handles mics for guests who come on and off stage and communicates with the house when audio is about to some through via video or whatever. It is a feature that is used mostly on big stages where there are several bands, but we had to choose between Aviom (or something similar as there are some other new options out there that are quite competitive) and wireless ears and we chose wireless…because I prefer not to have wires and I go to make the decision.

Bottom line, either option has pluses and minuses and I’m sure you’d be happy with which ever you choose. Of course, you might have so much money you choose to do both which gives you the best of both worlds and if I had an extra $5000 laying around, that’s what I would do.

Set-up is always a beast, and I knew there was no way anyone would stick around to help me on Sunday if they had to plug all the equipment in, set-it up, then do the reverse to tear down every Sunday. So, I designed a case that rack mounts all of the equipment, has table legs in the lids to create work space, and has a connector panel so projectors, TVs, Cameras, and audio I/O (in/out) for easy plug and go, and hired someone to build it. No, it was not cheap. It cost about $2000, but as you can imagine, it was well worth it. Sometimes, you’ve got to bite the bullet and spend the money to make your life easier. This was one thing I could not compromise on.

The same guy who built the case made us some projector platforms that fit on top of ordinary, inexpensive speaker stands. Theoretically they should have worked perfectly, but for whatever reason, we always had problems lining the three screens up (they have to be lined up perfectly. We eventually moved to camera tripods with plywood platforms bolted to the quick release attachment, which worked much better and would have saved us money had we gone that direction to begin with.

We set up three risers on stage for drums and other instruments. They are Intellistage by Road Ready and are light-weight and fairly easy to set-up if you get the expandable legs. We only got those legs for the higher drum riser and less expensive screw-in legs for the other two. Big mistake. It might have saved us a couple hundred dollars but it takes way more man power and time to screw in 40 legs. We are in the process of saving up to buy the expandable legs for the other risers and will be ordering them very soon. The reason I went with this staging was because of the simplicity in set-up and the fact you can get special cases that house all the pieces making it extremely easy to load in and out. With the expandable legs, the entire system can easily be set-up by one person. The down side is the sturdiness. Compared to other portable staging by Stage Right, and other companies, it is much cheaper, but it is not near as heavy duty either. This is the kind of stage you’ll find at trade shows where quick and easy is the way to go. You want see this kind of stage in a venue where bands, dances, and other activity driven performances are the norm. for what we use it for, it is prefect. If we ever back to a room where we had to set up our own stage, we would find something else.

Several people have been asking me for pictures of Oak Leaf’s media environment so I thought I’d give you a link to a web gallery that has a few. I’ll take my camera with me this Sunday and take a few more so you can get a better idea of what is involved and how we have it set up.

I’d also like to extend the invitation to anyone who has any sort of question about anything you think I might be able to help you with to ask away. I am definitely not an expert by any means, but I have a fair amount of experience in just about every media and music related area and might be able to give some insight or at least offer an idea or suggestion. I’m not sure what people need to know and instead of me continuing to type out everything we do, it might be more productive if I could specifically help you in your area of need. Leave a comment or email me and I reply within 24 hours.

With a tight budget, I had to make cuts across the board to pull off the media package without sacrificing too much quality. Since I knew there was no way I was going to even be able to financially stay in the HD ball park, first thing to go was the quality chain from the computer to the projector. To maintain the 1400×900 resolution coming from the computer, I’d have to have all sorts of digital splitters, scalers, and switchers capable of handling the HD signal and you can imagine how much money that was going to cost. It’s important to realize once you go down in video quality, you can’t really go back up without spending a fortune in gear designed to make the scaling up process look better than it should. In other words, once you smash a 1064×768 source down to 640×480, trying to scale it back up to the original source is just going to create video noise that makes the image look fuzzy or blurred. And you don’t want that.

So everything is run analog BNC from the$20 DVI to RCA adapters we bought at the apple store to the yellow RCA jack in the back of the projector. I know some of you are cringing right now, but let me say me this. If I had the money, I know how to do it right. But I didn’t have the money so I had to face the bold reality that 99% of the people we were doing this for (i.e. those attending the church services) would never know we skimped on anything…well…until now. Truth is, it still looks really good and unless I had something to A/B the difference, I might just argue to the grave it is not worth the money to go HD (yet).

Now, if you are not trying to run a system where one image fits multiple screens, you can keep the digital chain for a lot less money than it would cost us to do the same thing. Most settings only need one computer, ProPresenter, a nice dvi to composite splitter, and some long cables and our in business. Not to mention, for a portable church, everything you do needs to be easy to set-up and tear down.

So how do we set all of this up on a Sunday morning without losing our minds or all our volunteers? I’m still working on that one…but I’ll tell you how we set it up and make it all happen in under an hour in the next post.