This week at Rock City I got to go back to doing some of the things I was taught my first two weeks and do them independently. I also attended my first Youth Night service which only takes place once a month. On monday I created two Ableton session files for Young and Free's "Just Jesus" and Hillsong Worships "Grace to Grace" songs. I bounced the acoustic, 2 electric guitars and bass parts for those who will be performing them at youth night this Thursday, these parts were individually louder than the whole song when bounced them. I also picked out some motion backgrounds for the 4.14.19 service coming up next week. Rock City began preparing for the 8th birthday party celebration on 04.07.19. I attended this weeks creative meeting to discuss Sundays service because of Rock City's 8th birthday celebration is a big deal! I went and played a part in the role of production at our monthly Youth Night. This is the first one I can stay and participate, Ryan put me on the broadcast mixing board, which I think is his favorite place to put me and I am rocking this from 3-9pm. On Sunday I played the role of doing whatever I'm told or mainly known as the intern's role. My job was stage manager which is similar to last week. Ryan Smith is normally in charge of what I do on campus and he's almost put me on everything. I put the podium on stage for the pastor for the first two service, because the third service we played a pre-recorded service. I also was in charge of telling the campus pastor, Kyle, when to go out on stage and do the announcements for the church to the audience.
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This week at Rock City I organized our service planning center, created a propresenter for Hillsongs You & Free song "Just Jesus", and Sunday I played the frantic role of fixing the audio humming. Monday started off with 3 meetings for Nathan and Tom. This leads me to organizing the planning center website we use. I organize this by dragging the songs being played at each campus into their column. I then go to the bottom of the site and send emails out to vocalist and musicians that each campus still needs to have by Sunday and their response goes back to Nathan. I also downloaded and uploaded more Motion Backgrounds to the folder in dropbox that Rock City has with Visual Media Church. I then decided what backgrounds each campus will use. This weeks set wasn't approved yet but we were ahead of schedule which is always better than behind! Thursday the set was approved and we only had to change Ableton a little bit by taking out the reprise. I attended my first meeting and took notes for Nathan and Tom who couldn't be there cause they had to be at the Hilliard campus for a different meeting. I took notes on who gives announcements at each campus and what the announcements were. There were also no changes to the order of service so I put that in my notes as well. I had to type up lyrics for "Just Jesus" in Propresenter then I perfected them and then made copies for the other locations and put them in dropbox for Tom. I picked out some "lit" backgrounds for Rock City's 8 year birthday celebration on April 7th. I downloaded old lyric files and was told to find mistakes so Tom can fix them, and there were only a few so I made sure to be extra specific about them so it was easy to find and fix. Sunday I stage manager who took out the chairs and table to the stage for our pastor to have a one on one interview with Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. I also ran the broadcast mixing board again. This morning we had an issue with the headset microphones making a humming noise and I tried everything in my ability to get rid of it without pulling down the High cut part of the EQ. We later decided to turn down the gain of the microphones and it helped as long as we didn't turn the faders up to listen to it to above unity. The problem was solved and the rest of the services went smoothly. This week at Rock City I went and worked on more independent study while my boss was in meetings all week. I also went back to doing things I have already learned and can now improve on. Nathan had requested of me to watch the WorshipU music lesson videos about the Bass Guitar. I did all of this on monday as him and Tom were in meetings most of the day, leaving me with not much to work on especially since we had to keep changing locations. I am in the process of finding a bass to practice on by buying one, or borrowing one from Rock City. Thursday I worked on projects with Tom as Nathan was stuck in meetings all day again. Tom was there to help me build the Ableton session for March 31st and they are performing a total of 5 songs which is very different of them to do since I have been here. I also organized the order of service papers for Tom for all the campus locations. This Sunday I was placed on the broadcast mixing board, this job requires me to send good levels of the pastors voice to other campuses and for point to point (p2p) I would be sending click tracks, vocals, and keys to the other campuses. There has been different pastors for the past two weeks so I've had to change the compression on the voices. There was also a change that the pastor wanted 20 mins. before service so we had to prepare for a point to point which Ableton was not set up for but the band had a click for it at a similar tempo. It was then broadcasted to the other campuses through my board. It was a rough first service for the other campuses with this change but here at Hilliard we had it down. I only have tha channels turned on for broadcasting where the production head actually has to click things on his computer to send channels to the other campuses. This week at Rock City I started to dig into more independent work for the church! This is super exciting to be able to be independent and let my bosses know I mean business and can be held at a high standard. I did a lot of work in the Ableton DAW and got to experience a new side of Production here at Rock City. On Monday I built the Ableton session for this weeks Sunday service. This made me feel like I was such an important role because without the Ableton session for Sunday services there would be no back-track music or click track for the worship performers! I also created the slide playlist and lined them up in Ableton and learned how to do a playlist in Propresenter. Having the right playlist up is the most important because if you have an old one with another songs lyrics on it the audience would be very confused. The playlist are all the same for the campuses but there are different screens so that is why Hilliard or Short North locations have 2 separate playlists. One is for words in the middle of the screen and then there are the side screens where the words are on the bottom. I also got to choose the backgrounds that were presented on the 4k pixel wall you see in the picture here. (I did not chose that current image as it is not a moving background). On Thursday, back on my normal schedule I built the Ableton session for the next weeks services. I built this session all by myself going off of previous sessions that exist making it easier to build because I had a template. I labeled the MIDI keyboards that are used by the drummers at the 4 locations because that's how they cue the songs. I organized files that got misplaced on the Ableton hard drive. I then downloaded the Ableton session onto the laptops for the Westerville and Lennox locations. On Sunday service was a tad stressful for some of the production team as one of the roles wasn't fulfilled at the main campus. They needed someone to do the broadcast mixing board and camera 3. I had signed up to do camera 3 but then got placed on the board again for the first service, luckily they found someone for the camera! I then learned camera 3 before the second service, it is pretty cool because it is on two bars and it "dolley's" left to right while still being able to pan and tilt the camera itself. My job was to walk back and forth and get wide and medium ranged shots of the performers. When the pastor preached I just locked the camera down on him and sat back and listened. This week at Rock City I had my first schedule switch up. This was due to the premiere on Sunday everybody worked extra late and we decided to work Wednesday instead of Monday. This only caused a small issue of me coming in later due to a previous appointment being scheduled but I still maintained 20 hours during the week. On Wednesday I helped Tom by going through the Production folder in Dropbox and organizing all the backgrounds for the lyrics into folders that were appropriately labeled. I had to go to the website Visual Media Church and find either the 4k or the HD750 version of the background depending on which one we already had in the folder as Tom wanted both versions. This are mp4 files as they are motion backgrounds and not just images, I enjoy them a lot. On Thursday I worked with Nathan and Tom and a few other worship leaders to help record live audio for a video before Youth Night. I had to lay on the ground and hold the pole at the level of their feet as they sat on the edge of the stage talking about the release of their new song "Made A Way". I also set up Ableton for the Youth Night at the Hilliard location by hooking it up for the drummer and learning a bit about how they use Dante for the system to work. I also talked with a guy named Aaron who was running sound for the church for only the second time. He walked me through his workflow and I gave him some advice on things and some functions of the CL5 board that he didn't know because he learned how to use it from videos. On Sunday I ran the broadcast mixing board for the first time and I did it for the 3 services I was a part of at the Hilliard location. My job was to make sure all the channels being sent through Dante to other campuses were on and working, each service they were so that made things go smoothly. I also had to mix the 2 live songs being streamed with the Baptisms taking place, as the lead vocalist changed between the songs. The pastors microphone level was already great so I didn't need to mess with that too much. The only issue I ran into was a small amount of bleed through Kiem's microphone when he was leading because he only had one in ear in so you could hear the click track and the cue's announcing when a chorus or verse was taking place. It wasn't too noticeable when everybody was playing and singing. It was mainly noticeable with him and the keys playing together. This week at Rock City I helped with the premiere of the Rock City Worship song "Made A Way", I built my first Ableton session with some help, and I attended the main campus location. I helped premiere the new song "Made A Way" by putting the lyrics into ProPresenter and lining up the slides with the music in Ableton. I also learned more about Nathan's leadership role when it comes to the worship team expanding their numbers of people who volunteer. I typed up lyrics into ProPresenter for one of the songs being played at Youth Night on March 7th, and programmed those into Ableton as well. Tom helped me to build the whole session from scratch, I can't wait to be able to do this independently. I also helped Nathan and Tom record Beth, a vocalist, in the studio through Ableton. I also learned about the Izotope Nectar 3 plug in that Nathan has it's an AI assistant that autotunes, gets rid of sibilance, and everything else a vocal needs in a matter of minutes. On Sunday I was assigned to the main campus at Hilliard.For the first service I watched Cory Scott run the Yamaha CL5 Board. He has 4 channels running through the Dante system and they are sent to the other campuses for the services. The board has 64 channels and he only has 8 left open which is an insane amount of channels being in use. The second service I went and hung out with the production team, there are two different rooms for these people. One room had a guy mixing everything going through the dante system for the pastor and then he also had his own mix of the band for when they do p2p or point to point. This is where the main campus sends a signal to other campuses and they all sing together. The third service I watched the camera team to see what they may do differently than what I have done at my church. Rock City Worship released their first single "Made A Way" and premiered it live. I keep learning more and more every week here and I'm so excited to have so many more weeks left with such amazing people. My first week of my internship included: Ableton, ProPresenter, and my first Rock City Church services. To sum it up everything I did my first week was 100% new to me. I was beyond excited to be able to learn new things and take part in the services. Ableton is a DAW that is commonly used in churches because it is easy to teach and easy for people to use. At Rock City Church the drummer runs the system during the services by starting and stopping songs. This is because of those of us who did the behind the scenes of building the songs into the program. I won't share all the secrets but it's a fun time to build the songs with back tracks and click tracks for the musicians in-ear monitors. I now know how to use Ableton at a medium level of skill and will be able to use it without assistance by the end of my time here. :) Propresenter is a program used to have lyrics of worship songs flow smoothly on the screen during services. This program is connected through a MIDI track in Ableton's' system. This is really nice to have because you don't need to have a production team member trying to change the slides while the live performance is taking place. I line up the slides with the lyrics to the music that we programmed into Ableton. My first Rock City Church service took place at the Short North location. I stayed for 3 of the services, they were at 9AM, 11AM, and 1PM. For the first service I watched Corey Carter work on the Midas 32 board. THe second service I hung out with the production team downstairs who controls the live streaming and slide shows during the service. The third service I ran the board, it was a great experience. I had to be there at 6:30 unti; 2:15, I learned a lot and enjoyed serving the community through technology. One week from today I will be starting my internship with Rock City Church! #MusicTech #LiveSound #Recording #Studio #Creating
You can do what with that certification? I can tell you about how you can set your own latency on your devices. Totally crazy! If your audio quits, don’t worry because it won’t affect the Dante controller because it isn’t required! Wanna create a LAN? Have all your IP addresses be similar! It’s like magic! Wanna name your devices? Go on ahead, because you can do that! All devices get added through the use of the Dante controller, it automatically discovers and displays them for you! Dante settings are found on each individual device. Tons of cool things to learn from this site for FREE, can’t wait to do level 2!
Image from: https://hennepintheatretrust.org/events/the-phantom-of-the-opera-broadway-tickets-orpheum-theatre-minneapolis-mn-2017/ I have seen a few productions of “The Phantom of The Opera” The 2004 movie, the broadway show in 2014, and the new production in this 2018 year. This production is being called “spectacular” and meets up to the standards of that tile for sure. This production is different compared to the others I have seen. The 2004 movie is wonderful and definitely has a fantastic cast. The voices of Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum will always be the voices I hear in my head as I sing the main theme. The 2014 broadway show was one that felt magical as it was my first time seeing the production of “The Phantom of The Opera” live. It was just so striking and emotional seeing my favorite characters brought to life before my eyes, and not just on a television screen. This years production is by far one of my favorites. This had different props and set up for some of the scenes, such as in Act Two: Scene 7 was very different than what I have seen, but that made this production so special, in Act Two: Scene 9 was also different but I have fallen in love with the end of this one, and I feel they should make another movie with the different actions that take place from the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul in this scene. Scene’s 6-8 were way more heart-felt and just so emotionally grabbing to me. The whole time I had this feeling in my chest of just being awestruck from everything that was happening. I have never loved a ending in a production as much as I love this one. I recommend going and seeing this “New and Spectacular Production” of Phantom of The Opera if you can, otherwise you will miss one of the most emotional productions of it yet! I am reviewing a podcast of the video game Destiny 2. They talk about how in the game “the past was beautiful and the future is dark” it’s really awesome and true because I have played the game since launch. This podcast is specifically about the new DLC title “Curse of Osiris”. They mention big names like Deej who is the biggest name of Destiny because he plays the game and shares videos and teasers of when the new DLC or anything is coming out. The who in this is the gamers and people talking about the video game. The what is the teaser reveal being explained on there podcast. The where is what they considered “the tower” which is the social area of the game and their social area of recording the podcast, very funny I enjoy that. The when is that this came out on November 20th, 2017. Why they do is because they are the main place to get “tips, news, and chatter” of Destiny 2. The how is they are going strong and creating these since 2013 because people communicate with them, that’s how they can keep going and making these.
https://player.fm/series/guardian-radio-1000326 I have been using these headphones for the past 4 months and I think they are absolutely outstanding. As someone who normally just wears those cheap earbuds to get me through the day. I really enjoy when I have the time to sit down and actually listen to all of the amazing vocals and instruments heard through these. The music I listen to normally in the car, in my earbuds, or through the speakers of my laptop do not compare to the clearness these headphones give to the music. I think it’s insane how these headphones do not even compare to the other ones I find around Capital University, these are just the best. Most of the headphones around Capital are closed-back so that may make a difference. I have not played with the other version of these which is a closed back pair of headphones but I would not be surprised if they were just as great AKG is a great brand. The AKG K240 headphones will give the clearest sound to anything you listen to in them. When you listen to music in general you find times where you really decide to focus on one of the individual instruments. The vocals are really the main thing you always listen to, try to dig a little deeper into the music, it’s like just staring at the cover of a book… open the book! Listen to the kick’s thump and the reverb on the snare drum, or the flow of the tom drums quick entrance and exit. These headphones really help you to hear all of that, I think they would be a great addition to anyone who listens to music. The only problem you would encounter is that they are open back, not like you would buy those and wear them around to listen to your music on your phone. If you were to use them in a public space you would not get a great result compared to sitting in a confined space. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/K240S “In the blink of an eye, everything can change. So forgive often, and love with all your heart. You may never know when you may not have that chance again.”
~Unknown |
Hope MeierMusician, Music Technology, Music Education, Worship, Gaming Archives
April 2019
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