Cause for Praise '12 Concert

We will be holding our annual praise concert on October 19th. Check out desertspringschurch.bandcamp.com to hear some tunes from the last couple years.

Christmas, Christmas Time is Here!

Well it is Christmas time again and it is one of the most challenging ones I have had in my 16 years at DSC. Christmas is on a Sunday! This means we are doing our two Christmas Eve services on Saturday night and then turning around and doing two completely different services Sunday Morning. We see it as a great time to celebrate the birth of our savior and his resurrection from the dead in one weekend. Needless to say that means one mighty big weekend of music. Christmas Eve will be our regular band consisting of bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, percussion and 7 vocals rotating through, plus a string quartet, extra electric guitar, children's choir, twelve person ensemble.  Sunday Christmas Day we will be pairing back to our regular five piece band. Should be great fun and a lot of work. This a rough stage plot for Christmas Eve.

Cause for Praise

Here is the first picture of the setup for Cause for Praise.

New Drum Shield

Well we got our new Drum Shield. It is the Phoenix Slim from Whitley Solutions. I was looking for a seamless shield to replace our old Clear Sonic which we have had for about eleven years and was getting pretty banged up.  The new shield looks great and works great. This pic is from our first sound check with this beauty.

The iPad and Me

Well I have an iPad now and I am going to tell you what I think. Let me start with the negatives:

1. Printing is terrible. I was able to finally get some printing setup but it is a chore. If you have one of the printers with the wireless printing form HP I here it does a little better.

2.Let's be honest you can work on certain files from the iPad but I don't want it to be my main computer. Maybe if I used an external mouse and keyboard, but that kind of ruins the idea of the iPad for me.

3. No camera but we know that will be fixed with the new iPad.

Now the positives:

1. Man is it light. I don't mind carrying this thing around.

2. Battery life. Nothing like eight hours of battery life.

3. Apps, Apps, and more Apps.

4. Where do I start. iWorks on the iPad does a good job of being able to update input lists and check lists.

5. Lots of fun apps like an Audio spectrum analyzer and decibel meter.

6. I love reading my blogs and surfing the web on the iPad.

7. It syncs great to my productivity apps like iCal and Things project manager software.

8. Now the main reason I love the iPad is the Stage Mix app for the Yamaha M7CL console. I can now quickly and easily adjust my console with ease using the iPad. It does not give me the input patching that Studio Manager gives me but for a sound check it is DaBomb.

The iPad does not replace my MacBook Pro, I am writing this post from my laptop now, but is a great tool and has improved my work flow. I am getting ready to try some Remote Desktop apps to see how that works. I will post on that in the future.