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.
1 Comment
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. |
Hope MeierMusician, Music Technology, Music Education, Worship, Gaming Archives
April 2019
Categories |