No band. What to do?

[carguy1]

Ok, so as some of you may remember we are looking to start a Saturday evening service. The idea is make this an "Overdrive" service. However, we don't have a band. Well, we don't want the lack of a band to prevent us from ministering to those people that may work Sunday morning. So, we are going to start the service anyway.

So, what suggestions might you have as to how to handle this. What we need is something that can be run by myself and maybe one tech person. Of course I would be working with volunteers with little or no technical training (other then what I would give them). So, the easier the better.

Let the ideas flow.

Oh and yes, the plan is still to put a band together, but we don't believe that God needs a band to reach people.

If we build it they will come.

[fmckinnon]

Get a speedy laptop with an external 7400 RPM Firewire drive, Ableton Live, and some tracks from InteractiveWorshipLive.Com .... you'd be doing great.

Seriously!

[carguy1]

I will have to look into that. Thanks. I have heard that mentioned a number of times in the pst, but I will actually look into it now. Thanks.

[chrisfromcanada]

Wasn't the idea for that service to have louder, rockin music that would be different from your Sunday morning? Maybe I'm mistaken.

[carguy1]

That was part of it, but the main intent was to reach out to people who can't come to the Sunday service due to work or what ever else. I think the goal is still to end up there, but should we miss the opportunity to minister to people while we wait to put a band together? You are right, this was originally invisioned as an overdrive service.

[chipshot0701]

Get a speedy laptop with an external 7400 RPM Firewire drive, Ableton Live, and some tracks from InteractiveWorshipLive.Com .... you'd be doing great.

Seriously!

you could also buy some backing tracks and jam along with em.
Karoake with CD's is another one we do when we're short on musicians.

try it and good luck!
make it work no matter what!
mike

[Mike Darley]

I'd try to pull some people from other churches. I know a lot of musicians would like a chance to come together and do some more rockin stuff. If I was a little closer I'd sit in with you from time to time. It's like what I do if one of our musicians can't play a Sunday morning. I'll ask one of my friends from another church to sit in. Ask around to see if you have enough interested people.

[carguy1]

Steve, I do have some musician friends that I can bring in when some of my regular guys can't be there, or need a break. However, I first have to have some regular guys. So, the more immediate problem is leading worship without a band.

I do have a few ideas though about this.

1.) Short Term: I have a bunch of accompaniment tracks from spin360.com. Pastor’s wife is experienced at running Mediashout. So, I have these tracks loaded in itunes in my laptop. So, I put together a playlist in itunes for the service, set up the set list in Mediashout and boom we are ready to go. The only problem I see right now is. How do I get the audio from my laptop on stage to the sound board? I know that I could use the headphone jack from my laptop getting a 1/8 to ¼ cable and use one of the 1/4in inputs in the snake. The question is what kind of quality would that give me? Also, if I wanted to run the audio from iTunes, as I mentioned, via my laptop on stage, but wanted to get better quality what would I need.
2.) Mid-term goal: Use these same accompaniment tracks, but make them into a movie with the audio and the lyrics so that it could be played directly from Media shout, but then would I be able to run it from the stage if it was actually running on the PC in the sound booth?
3.) Long term goal: Abelton!!!
Please let me know what you guys think of these options. We had our first service last night and we had one of the guys in the church make a DVD with the original artist recordings of a couple of David Crowder and Charlie hall songs. This worked out ok, kinda corny in my opinion, but hey how many small community churches have worship led by Crowder or Charlie Hall, last night we did.
As always, thanks for the help.

[fmckinnon]

Matt,
Coming out of your laptop's headphone jack should not present a problem, or any quality loss ... it would sound just like you'd played it off the board or from the sound booth .... the sound system doesn't know the difference in whether or not you are sending you iTunes output through that snake, or if you were sending a keyboard or other instrument.

Quick question - how many people do you think will attend this service? Is there any comparable service like it in your community?

Fred

[russhutto]

I would run out of the laptop headphone jack (1/8 to 1/4) into a direct box with a ground lift then into the snake/board.

When I go directly into the snake/board from a laptop without the db in between I tend to get some electronic noise that is barely audible but oh so annoying.

[carguy1]

Fred, last week we had about 15 or so. Many of these were regulars who came from one of our Sunday morning services. The goal of course would be try to grow this service to reach as many people as possible, but for right now we can probably count on 10-20 people in the congregation.


Blind, that is how we are doing it, headphone jack to directbox to snake. It actually sounds much better then I would have thought it might. I spent some time practicing with the set up yesterday and I actually think it will work pretty well.

The only other thing I lack now is something to put the laptop on where it will be high enough for me to reach it, safe from falling, and not look too bad on the stage. Any thoughts on this. I am currently using the small podium that pastor uses, but he'll probably want to use it and I would like to be able to leave the laptop on the stand. Thanks again guys for all the help you have given me.

[russhutto]

I think my first thoughts would be to get a nice black pub table (as small as you can get) and set it up off to the side. You know the high tables?

Second thought: build a small stand of some sort. Paint it Black.

We had an extra segment of lighting truss, that we welded onto 2 metal plates (one top, one bottom) and created a little podium of sorts with it. Not quite big enough for a laptop but if ou had the right size top it could be nice.

I've also used one of those small, rolling adjustbale podiums you might find in a banquet or lecture room.

[worshiptrench]

Hey as we have planted over 100+ churches out of NorthWood this is a common planter experience as well. Here are the options we have seen...

1. pay big bucks and hire a established travelling band. Grade D-. Why? Because you are "hooking" people with something that there is no way you can economically sustain, its not organic or communal and it never seems to work as the band isn't incarnational into the community as a lone leader that buys into your vision would be. Believe me. I've tried to talk guys out of it back when I toured and they insisted. Some were friends and so we did their opening service or first month. It never seemed healthy.

2. use the track route. C+ this can seemed contrived or canned to younger folks and you lose freedom to flow at times. Yes, you can have great tracks but there is more under the surface there.

3. use tracks (later ableton etc.) on some of the celebratory tunes upfront and shift to solo guitar for more of the adorational stuff. B+ Years ago before anyone would pay a band to lead worship (circa 1989-95), I travelled solo with my trusty Korg 01 sequencer and would use it on the celebratory praise stuff (Great and Mighty is He for some ol skool throwback memories). Then for the adorational stuff I'd shift to either just keys or just guitar. Worked very well because it got organic really fast and allowed flow.

4. pull anani difranco-esque (minus the radical feminist/ultra-liberal agenda) deal and get organic. A. Play aggressive acoustic on the upbeat stuff and bring it down easy for the adorational stuff. Pray and see what God grows up through the floors of your church. People who really believe in its vision. Add just a bassist or percussion (djembe) as they arive. It might be eclectic but it can be awesome.

anywhoo, that is the bit of wisdom I have.

[fmckinnon]

Jordan!

I've got "Great and Might Is He" sequenced on a floppy disk for my 01w/Pro, along with "Blessed Be The Name of the Lord/The Name of the Lord", "With All of My Heart (morris chapman), "Celebrate, Jesus Celebrate", and "Jesus is Alive", hahahahah .. how funny is that! We should share floppys.

[russhutto]

Oh my.

Take me back. WAAAAAY Back.

Anybody have Mighty Warrior?? Or As David Did (to go the minor oompah route)?

[stephen_can_man]

You already started the service...but I would have recommended waiting till you could really ramp things up and start it off with a bang and a band. Too late!

[carguy1]

Stephen, that was the plan. Then we thought, hey how many people would we miss if we waited? For it me it would be unacceptable for a single person to go to Hell because we wanted to wait till we had a band. That was our motivation. We will see what becomes of it, but I am reminded of Pauls words in 1 Chrorinthians 15:58, "Always give yourselves fully to the work of the lod, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." So, if we remember to keep it about God, then it will not be in vain.

[NLoomis]

When our church started a second service and again when we established a satellite campus, we got a commitment from a core of volunteers (music, parking, children's ministry, youth ministry, etc.) first. Too many churches do the "well, let's start it and see who shows up" thing.

Since you've already started, who can you recruit from inside your church? Do you have Sunday morning musicians who could do the overdrive style? Is there a drummer in your youth group who could take direction, etc.?

Depending on the size of your church and how many of these kinds of folks you might have, I would consider doing it acoustic. Do it in a smaller room. Physical closeness is an asset. Add musicians as you can. Start with a djembe. I lead worship for our youth with just my acoustic. A full band can be an electric guitar, bass, and drums. Everything else is nice, but not necessarily needed. Check out Shane and Shane for instance.

I personally avoid bringing in musicians from other churches, at least long term. I want team members who are bought-in to the mission of our church and active in its life.

In my mind, bringing people to Jesus has almost nothing to do with music. We want to speak in a way that our culture understands, but if we don't love them in such a way that they encounter Jesus' love when they're in our service, it doesn't matter if the Crowdster himself is there. Music is not a fixall. You can have great music and still fail to reach people. Churches have done that for years.

[carguy1]

Nlommis, I agree with much of what you said. We certainly have musicians from our sunday services that could do what we want to do on Saturday night. The problem is that we did this in the past with the same group do Saturday night and Sunday morning services and they quickly burned out. Pastor and I don't mind being up there Saturday nights and Sunday morning because that is what we are called to do, but regular volunteers get burned out.

I am with you on the full band being a bass, drums and electric. This is absolutely all we need to do the kind of music that we want to do. After that the rest is a bonus.

I am also with you about bringing in musicians from other churches, unless they are not serving at their own church. It is also possible that some musicians will be called to leave the church they are at to move to another flock, but outside of that I would only bring outside musicians in to give the regular team a break, or to shake things up a bit and do something different.

I also agree that music is not what it is ALL about. It is not a fix all. However, I do feel that the music is very important. I know that I have personally been touched nby the spirit through music on many occassions. I also believe that music can allow us to bring people in so that we then have the opportunity to love them. However, you are right, no matter how good the music, or for that matter the building, or even the sermon, if their is no love then most non-believers will leave having not recieved God's greatest gift.

I was just saying this week to some folks that many of the people that Jesus saved he never preached to. I consider the women at the well, or the adulterous woman that was about to be stoned. He did not preach to either of these women, he saved them by loving them. Love is where it all starts.

[tschoon]

IWORSHIP -IWORSHIP - IWORSHIP and other dvd's, tracks etc...tschoon

[travisham]

2. use the track route. C+ this can seemed contrived or canned to younger folks and you lose freedom to flow at times. Yes, you can have great tracks but there is more under the surface there.

...

4. pull anani difranco-esque (minus the radical feminist/ultra-liberal agenda) deal and get organic. A. Play aggressive acoustic on the upbeat stuff and bring it down easy for the adorational stuff. Pray and see what God grows up through the floors of your church. People who really believe in its vision. Add just a bassist or percussion (djembe) as they arive. It might be eclectic but it can be awesome.


Matt, I'm going to totally agree with Jordan on this. I dig that you're wanting to provide a worship service that meets the time needs of a certain segment of your community while also relating a younger generation in a relevant way musically. In the interim time while you're waiting to see the means (musicians) show up to pull of the vision you and your leadership have for this service, one issue that's worth considering is how the people at this service will really perceive the different options you're working through. Jordan mentioned that canned music can be perceived as contrived. I might even go so far to say that it can come across as cheesy and even inauthentic to the people that you're wanting to reach. At least that's been my experience from both sides of the stage.

I would definitely support the idea of going with just an acoustic in the beginning stages until additional musicians are risen up. Really, with only 10-20 people in a room, you might not need a whole lot more than that to start with. The addition of a djembe at some point is a great idea as they're pretty cheap and the learning curve isn't too bad if one of your members is up for learning to throw down some basic beats. Tastefully adding a bass and even an electric on top of that mix can work really well while you're waiting for someone who can handle a full drum kit.

Keep praying and recruiting from your people. If God has given you guys the vision to do this with a certain demographic in mind, make sure that what you're doing truly meets them where they're at, and pray for the additional folks you need to pull off where y'all are wanting to head with this to either grow up (by God raising up the musicians you need out of the people already within your congregation) or show up (by God bringing in newcomers who happen to have the desire, specific talents, faithfulness, and time to fit into your ministry).

Be encouraged, Jesus will always ask us to do that which we cannot do with what we do not have, and in doing so He always shows Himself as faithful. Just ask the 12 disciples and the 9000 guys who grubbed on fish & bread :)