| |  Just after the holidays of 2007, We laid out the following vision for Stonebridge Worship Ministry's technical future. This morning (May of 2009), our youth team took us into the Thronezone using these very tools, and using them skillfully. I found this old document today and thought I'd repost it - it's a good reminder of why God often insists that we plan today for His blessings tomorrow!
(Pillar #3 below has been set back because of budget cuts, but we are hoping to have nominal remote multi-track live recording in place by mid-year 2010)
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December 2007
A Techno-Jaunt...
For those inclined, I'd like to discuss a bit of what Stonebridge Church will be doing technically in the season to come. It's a powerful vision, and it's survived more than one "death of a vision." I won't belabor the setbacks, other than to say they've driven us to our knees in prayer and planning!
Painting in broad strokes, we are deliberately linking our production studio with our platform. People have noticed a few rhythm loops and synthesizers supplementing our live worship events; we'll keep learning that skill and getting better at it, but this is not the end-all. Ultimately, we want to complete the loop between the studio and the worship center: from the studio, we want to send multiple tracks to the platform. Any of these can be muted or selected on the fly. From there, we want to return multiple live tracks right back to the studio for post production. We're talking about a "record-a-torium" that effectively blends all the best qualities of a project studio with a fully-orbed live environment.
The media-ministry potential in this kind of thinking is huge, and (during those "death of a vision" moments), the prospect of sacrificing it was painful. But God is the One who brings beauty from ashes; through the creative thinking of Phil Mahder, we managed to break the "digital barrier." That brought all our costs down and enabled us to shuttle our music around the new facility via computer Cat-5 cable! Literally, we'll be paying pennies on the dollar compared to miles of expensive copper shielded analog lines of a lower cost system. The added versatility will make the impossible possible. We're already taking baby steps toward this vision of a "closed loop;" we acquire a digital capture of Pastor Randy's messages each week via computer. We convert those messages to MP3 files, upload them to the internet and - thanks to years of effort by Jamie and Yvonne and Randy Rayman, these high-quality files are being downloaded all over the world. In a nutshell, we are designing a process that will allow us to provide recordings of quality live worship events...at least parts of those events.
Having seen live-TV of worship at church for years, and having purchased a bazillion live music recordings, we imagine that getting quality sound is simple to do. It's not. If you listen to local Sunday morning radio, there's an example of this: a fine church that broadcasts a raw mix of their morning worship...it's well-intentioned, but almost unlistenable. These players are actually quite talented, but based on their broadcast, most people will assume otherwise. A good job of capturing a live musical event requires boatloads of musical skill, technical skill, and a bit of costly gear. (If you can't mix it, you can't "fix it.")
Our strategy will involve these three pillars:
1. Preproduction provides the live event with shape and a shine it would not otherwise likely have. Lest this weekly preproduction become overwhelming, we must develop a streamlined system that provides a good product, but minimizes the artistic obsession with perfection. I can justify 15 hours, but not 50.
2. Production itself on the platform must be transparent enough to provide the congregation with an authentic worship experience. Since mere mortals will have to present it, it must also be simple enough to be sustainable for years, and be accessible to broad number of singers, players and technicians with a broad variety of skill levels.
3. Post production returns the live tracks (including the room-sound itself) back to the studio, to be combined with the pre-recorded tracks. Again, time constraints must be in place! Live worship CDs are often in post production for months; again, 15 hours is a-lot, depending on the intention of the recording. We have exploration to do on copyright and royalty laws, too. (We may find that Stonebridge becomes a songwriter's paradise!)
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| | Posted 5/24/2009 6:41 PM - 236 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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