Other than that, I've been keeping myself busy with:
We have a new version of Easy Worship. The biggest difference is the user interface. Everything is generally in the same spot; it just looks a lot better. There are some other improvements that we hope to use soon.
The intercom is broken for the video people. It is being repaired right now and should be back within 7-10 days.
Two weeks ago, I had someone from Barbizon come in and perform a "check-up" on our lighting system. It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Now that I know what to do, I have some maintenance to perform on the dimmers. It was also confirmed that our moving lights, the Roboscans, are junk. So from here on out, we will be renting different ones for the Christmas outreach and for the kid's musical.
The digital board seems to be working great! I have received several comments about how good it sounds. We'll be using more of it's capabilities as we start rehearsals for the Christmas outreach.
On the office side, I've kept busy with all the regular day-to-day issues of having more than 25 computers on a network. Thankfully, I have Roger & Matt to back me up.
I think that's about it right now. I will try to update more often.
Also, attached is the report that I will submit for the October business meeting. I will now be submitting these reports on a regular basis. October Report.doc
]]>So most of you know that we were using 2 analog consoles in our worship center. For our services and anything else during the week we used the Allen & Heath ML3000 48 channel. For Celebrate Recovery we used the Allen & Heath GL3300 48 channel. After music team rehearsal on Thursday nights, we put a shelf over the ML3K, put the GL300 on top, and then swapped the cables. The reason we did this was CR still uses wedges, whereas we use Avioms for the Sunday music teams.
Needless to say this was not the best situation. Throw in the Christmas productions, Children's Musical, and all the other misc events we do, and a digital console is looking very nice. So last year in October when I planned the 2009 budget, I put in money for a Yamaha M7. For our budget and our needs this console fit it perfectly. Mike Niemi and I went to a one day seminar put on by Yamaha and we were impressed.
Fast forward to this past spring of 2009. Soundcraft released a console in our price range as well as Digidesign (the makers of Pro Tools) and Allen & Heath (the manufacturer of old consoles). After doing lots of research on the specs of the boards and the reviews, I really liked the A&H iLive. It offered the most physical inputs and outputs and flexibility for the price.
There was an hour long hands-on demo that Mike, Tim Wentz, and myself went to this spring. We were very impressed. As user friendly and intuitive that we felt the M7 was, this one was even more so. Add in the complete flexibility options and the power behind it, this was a clear winner over the M7. The only other console that would be in the running was the SC48 from Digidesign. However, 2 big points put that out of the running for us. One, we don't do much with Pro Tools recording software. And I don't see us as a church using it for quite some time (unless the Lord calls Mike Niemi to Oklahoma). The second issue was that it is not as volunteer friendly as the iLive. It can be a bit confusing for someone who's not used to it.
We had hoped to have a demo in here during the summer, but supply was too short. Meanwhile, I started to line up buyers for the 2 consoles and the outboard equipment we wouldn't need anymore. I quickly found buyers for the 2 consoles (thank you Lord) and most of the other equipment.
The console finally arrived on Friday, August 31. All I had time to do was snap a couple pictures, plug it in to our system, play a couple songs from my ipod, talk in the mic, and then put it backstage. I had planned for it to come on a Friday, so we could swap out the consoles Sunday after the service. On a quick glance, everything seemed OK.
I then proceeded onto my regular Friday duties. Including putting the shelf over the ML3K and putting the GL3300 on top and swapping cables for the last time. Sunday, September 2nd, we had our last service with the analog console. After service, I unhooked all the cables, we put the ML3K backstage, put the iLive T112 surface on the counter, and the rack in the booth. I then went to lunch with my family and had a nice rest of the day off with them.
Monday after lunch I came in and started to remove all the old outboard equipment and put the stage rack in. We decided to put the stage rack in the booth for a couple reasons. One: we already have a snake installed running from the stage to the booth. Two: we have more local media players and recorders than the surface has connectors for. And three: the cables for the amp racks are already run to the booth. So for us it makes sense to have the rack in the booth.
I then connected the rack to the surface, turned everything on and started to program. I had intended to start working on all our settings beforehand using the software, but just ran out of time. After a little bit, I noticed that things weren't right. None of the 3 banks would switch layers and all the peak lights were lit on the layer buttons. I called A&H tech support and we tried a couple things. After a couple hours of troubleshooting, it was determined that the console needed to be sent in to be worked on. I was devastated. Fortunately, I had been on the phone throughout this whole process with our local A&H rep and support company. They're a 20 minute drive away. So I called them with the final prognosis, and we decided that I would drive to their place Tuesday morning. They had also finally received their T112 console and it worked fine. We would swap surfaces and they would work with A&H to get the other fixed. I called all my volunteers who had planned to be there Monday night for the 1st training session and told them to enjoy the night at home.
So Tuesday morning, we swapped consoles. I came back, hooked the "new" one up and everything worked perfectly. The layers switched and no peak lights. So away I went programming. We had a couple musicians coming in Tuesday night during training, so I had a lot to do. The console is easy to program, we just have a non-touring standard setup. Not only do we have a lot of local recorders (which are fed by matrices, which in turn are fed by a record aux), but I had wanted to customize the layers. I want anything we would use on a Sunday morning on the top layer, regardless of if it's an input, group, aux, main send, etc. So it just took a while to do that.
I got most everything ready for the 1st night of training. There was still some pre-setting of stuff I wanted to do on specific ins and outs, but it was generally ready. The first training went pretty well. I think I overwhelmed a couple of my volunteers, but sometimes you just need to jump in the cold water. We did have a couple musicians there that night, so it was a help to get levels on the piano, elec drums, snyth, and 1 guitar. More would have been helpful, but it was still good.
Wednesday I finished all the settings that I could put in the console and we had another training session that night. This one was short, since there is only so much you can do without a band (when the bass player is here, this is where his signal will show up...).
Thursday the MMO card finally came in. This is the card we use to feed our Avioms. No more A/D converters; it's all digital from the console to the Aviom mixers on stage. Will make the signal the musicians are hearing a lot better. Here's the cool thing though. I didn't know that the card comes with the 16 channel Aviom out, 16 channels of HearBus outputs, and 24 channels of ADAT out on optical. All of them are active at the same time and all are completely configurable separate from each other! So we can now send 24 channels to Mike's ADAT recorder digitally. We have 3 digital splitters in 1 card! This is very cool.
Thursday nights is our normal time for rehearsal of that Sunday's music team. I had kept the worship leader abreast of everything that had happened so she could be prepared (our worship pastor was still finishing his summer sabbatical and would be back the following week).
Rehearsal was OK. Not good, but just OK. It could have been worse, but I also did not get as much done as I had wanted to. I had wanted to use the software to adjust stuff while my volunteers were mixing. Although the software wasn't working (turns out it was a simple fix the following day). But we got through it.
On Friday I continued to tweak based on my notes from the rehearsal. I then started to set up a separate show for our Celebrate Recovery group which meets Friday nights. We need a separate show since their output patch is different (they use wedges instead of Avioms). Fortunately, Tim Wentz came and took care of some of this since I still had other "regular" stuff to do. CR went fine that night.
I had a great day off with my family on Saturday and came back refreshed Sunday morning. It felt great to not have to swap consoles Sunday morning. The band showed up, we did our quick run thru of songs, and the services went great. Doug came back that week and we had our 1st funeral with the new console that week.
In the weeks since I have kept dialing in settings. It is sounding fantastic! We have received several comments at how good it sounds. I can't wait until Christmas to really use the scene capability and the customization of the faders.
]]>However, this week I wanted to talk about what happened last Sunday on our special service. Doug put a lot of special elements that required lots of tech. One of them was during the song "Revelation Song" Erin Bullock was signing. We wanted the camera shot of her on the screens, with the words on the lower third keyed over.
This is something that our current mixer handles very well. However, the past few times, I have not been happy with it. So I called tech support for the manufacturer (TV One) and walked them thru our setup and want I wanted to accomplish. I then had him walk me thru the process of doing it. In that, I found 1 option that needs to be changed that I had never used before. This allowed it to work perfectly and look fantastic. I was psyched! Last Friday I showed it to Bonnie so she could get the powerpoint ready.
Sunday morning when I arrived I tested it to make sure it worked before everyone got there. It worked fine.
Then it came time for it during the service. I went thru all the buttons and....nothing happened. I tried it again. Again nothing. It was at this point that we just put the camera shot of Erin up on screen by itself and left it. I was pretty peeved. It had worked fine just hours before for the 4th time in 5 days. What was going on?!?! It took me several minutes to recover and get back to helping Tally & Jerome with the new sound console.
You know what happened? I had boasted all week about how I had "figured" it out and how great it looked. I wasn't thinking of how the people in the congregation would be served by seeing the signing and seeing the words; I was plain & simple looking for everyone to saw how amazing it looked and to give praise to me. And guess what? Doesn't God have something to say about that in the Bible. James 3:4-6, James 4:15-17, and I John 2:15-17 all have something to say about our boasting. We should only boast in the Lord.
So you ever wondered when I will get my 15 minutes on stage instead of "hiding" in the tech booth? Well, God took care of that last Sunday and humbled me in front of about 900 people (and also broadcast live on the Internet and recorded onto DVD).
So, I would say I certainly learned my lesson. No more boasting about the "great" things I've done.
(PS. As another take away I will be making a Macro for this, so next time it is a lot easier, but that's not the main point).
]]>I won't be there Sunday, July 26. We're spending the weekend at Thunder Lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with my mom's extended family. Lots of uncles, aunts, and cousins. No computers and probably no cell coverage.
Take care everyone!
]]>Oh yeah, we did get the satellite installed for the Beth Moore simulcast at the end of August. It took the installer over 7 hours! Combination of long cable pull (backstage closet to under stage to booth), picky satellite for aiming, and slow installer. But it's all done now and working perfectly.
That's about it. Keep cool everyone
]]>Last week Doug & I went to the Willow Creek Arts Conference. It was held at their main South Barrington campus. We enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot. Here are a couple thoughts from it.
Everyone should go to the S. Barrington campus at least once in their life. It is amazing. Their worship center holds 8,000 on 3 levels. It is designed extremely well. Everything was thought out. The audio, video, and lighting systems are top notch. All that said, it's just not what I want church to be.
The session on Tuesday afternoon was about taking care of your soul. It was very good and I will be trying out some of the suggestions.
After all, when it was the worship, I had to close my eyes. I was getting distracted too much by all the cool tech toys.
They are still human. I caught "mistakes" in the audio, video, camera focus, shaders, and lighting.
For those of you who don't know, they have extremely bight High Definition LCD screen. Very cool. But I still was drawn to watching the actual people on stage even though they were "bigger" and clearer on the screens. Give me real people.
I've already been talking with our video people about making some lighting changes based on some principles from there. I am also looking forward to implementing some cool audio stuff when the new console arrives later this fall.
Well, I think that's a good bullet point recap. Have a good summer everyone and I'll see you later.
]]>Thanks to all the tech people who helped out with the CR Native Ministry gathering. I heard it went really well.
I will be in Florida with Jen's family for about the next 2 weeks. I will be officially gone Tuesday, May 19 thru Wednesday, May 27. I'm hoping to read, spend time with family, and just relax.
When I come back, it will be a busy June. The 1st week of June we will have the digital board for a week to demo. We will use it for Sundae Sing on Sunday, June 7. The next week Doug and I will be at the Willow Arts conference. We're both looking forward to that. It will be my first time there. I'm excited about that.
And then, the digital transition will finally happen. That shouldn't be too bad for us here, as none of our wireless should be affected by it. But as with all things tech, you never know.
Well, that's about it. Have fun while I'm gone, and don't blow anything up while I'm gone. ;)
]]>Last fall Mike and I went to the Yamaha M7 class. At the time the M7 was the only console in this price range. We really enjoyed it and liked the M7. So I put it into my budget for 2009. Then the iLive was released a few months ago. On paper, there are several advantages over the M7:
1. More inputs than M7
2. More outputs than M7
3. Any fader can be anything. The flexibility of this is nice.
4. Can have up to 16 VCAs. As you know, the limit of 8 is constricting in even a normal Sunday service. Throw in Easter, Good Friday, Christmas productions, this feature becomes very nice. Probably won't use all 16, but definitely 10-12.
5. Using the same processor as the larger iLive, which has received very good reviews.
6. The separate stage box and the advantages/flexibility that it offers.
7. More simultaneous EQs.
8. Same manufacturer as current consoles. Not a huge item, but still helps the case of the iLive.
9. Cheaper.
The items that I was hesitant about the iLive:
1. New. Even though it's based off the big brother, it's still new. The M7 is tested and proven.
2. Only 1 card vs the M7s 3. Right now and for the near future, those will only be for Avioms.
3. Mike and I felt the M7 was volunteer friendly and intuitive. We were curious how the iLive would compare.
After the demo last week, we were very impressed with the iLive. As easy and intuitive as the M7 is, we thought the iLive was more so. I think the biggest part of that is the difference in the channel strips and the use of the touchscreen. It seemed easier and more intuitive on the iLive.
As for as the only 1 card issue, that will be for the Avioms. I know that doesn't give us room for another one (i.e. for recording). But the stage box of the iLive has lots of XLR outs that could then feed a recording interface.
The issue of the newness of the iLive is still there, but not as strong. It looks like A&H has done a good job of bringing across the stability of the big brother, while hitting this price point.
There were a few other really nice things that we liked about the iLive over the M7. For instance, there is both the regular headphone connector and the mini. You can freeze channels, so even though you might be going to a different layer, that fader would stay the same.
As I stated earlier, we should be having a demo here sometime in May. As soon as I know which week, I will let everyone know. The plan is to have worship team members here every night to help us get the settings right and learn the console.
First are the big events of Journey to The Cross and Easter. Easter morning was a pretty standard morning in terms of tech. The only addition was the opening of the live streaming for everyone. That part went fine, but there were a couple hiccups in the live streaming. I'm hoping to clear those up this week. The other tech change was I moved the Room Mics for the Aviom feed from the tech booth to the stage. I've been doing some research on these, and a lot of people have had success doing this. Mike Niemi said the new location is a lot better. I'll be tweaking their location a bit on stage, but they will stay up there.
Journey to the Cross was about the same as last year with a few tweaks. The biggest was the changing of the 7 last words of Christ from 2 buttons to 4. This required adding a USB interface, buying 2 more amps, and going back into the software (Soundman Designer) and adding a matrix playback and then re-doing the ques for 4 buttons. This was fun because it's a new type of software for me and I learned a lot.
I have switched batteries for the wireless mics. The new supplier is a local company whose owner is a Christian. The price is almost the same, and being a local company the service is very quick. There have been no performance differences.
I have kept up on my project of continually trying to keep my office organized and clean. Let's just say that's an ongoing project. Part of the re-do has been that I finally got a new computer here. My computer was 7 years old and did not have everything that I needed. The new one is great and will keep my happy for a while.
The digital sound board is coming along. Mike Niemi, Tim Wentz, and I will be receiving a hands-on demo this Thursday. The latest is that we will have the demo here for a week sometime in May. The timeline for the actual purchase is unknown at this time. It will be sometime this year, but it is mostly out of my control (availability of funds here and the shipping of the console). Needless to say the purchase will significantly upgrade the audio in all areas (audience sound, monitors, choir, lobby feed, recordings, etc).
Personally, it's been a rough couple months. The passing of Linda was hard. Yes, it was expected, but it was still really quick. She was my office neighbor when I first started working here. And coming from the world of Harvest, the idea of a warm, welcoming pastor's wife was a new concept to me. I'll always remember her joy and being so happy to see Jen and Abby when we used to all come early on Sunday mornings.
Then Jen's grandma passed away. She had gone in to the hospital 2 months prior for a hernia and got a bacterial infection from the hospital. It was downhill from there. She was 77 and as far as we know, unsaved. This is Jen's dad's mom and that whole side is Jewish. This has been really hard on Jen. As a child, she spent almost every summer down there. Please pray for her. We will be going back there in May for Jen's cousin's high school graduation. We also will probably go to Disney for a couple days since it looks like we'll get free tickets and hotel. :)
In upcoming events, a week from this Saturday is the Girlville conference for Women's Ministries. Yes, I will be there. One of the "perks" of being a tech director at a church is that I get to work all kinds of events. Right now it looks like their tech needs are very minimal, but I should find out more info shortly.
Then in a month we have the CR Native Ministry gathering. That one will require tech help. I will be getting more info for that shortly as well.
Well, I think that's a long enough post for now. I'll do better at more regular updates.
]]>Visitation will be on Sunday, March 1, from 4:00 - 8:00 p.m. at the Evangelical Free Church of Crystal Lake. Linda's memorial service will be on Monday, March 2, at 7:00 p.m., also at the Evangelical Free Church of Crystal Lake. There will be no visitation before the memorial service. Following the memorial service, there will be a fellowship time in the Activity Center. Please contact the church office at 815-459-1095 with any questions.
I encourage you to hold fast to the words of Isaiah 40:31, "But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar with wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
In the hope of God's promises,
Dave Cook
Senior Elder