Psalterium and Cause for Praise

Well as I continue my posts on Cause for Praise I need to mention the CD we are releasing.  The CD is called Psalterium Vol. 1 and is a 5 song EP written from the Psalms. It will be available on Friday. You can preview it here.

Cause for Praise

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

Cause for Praise '11

This will be the first post of I what hope are many on Cause for Praise '11. I thought a picture of the preliminary stage plot.

Drum Shield

Here at Desert Springs Church we purchased a new drum shield. Our old one has shifted to the you the room with a roof for some great isolation, and vastly improved sound. The new one in the Worship Center is a seamless from Whiteley solutions. They have developed the Phoenix Drum Enclosures, which are little drum condos with all types of features. They are pretty cool but were just to big for our stage, but they came out with the slim, just a seamless curved shield. It looks great and works even better. I would recommend checking them out at the above link and on Facebook.

VBS CD

Well it has been a while since my last post, so I thought I would show you how we recorded one recorded one of the songs for the VBS CD. We gave the kids a CD when they signed up for VBS so they would know the songs before VBS started. It really helped with the singing during the gathering time. Here are a couple photos from recording "I'll Fly Away". The fist one is looking out into the West Wing which is the big room off the control room. Our studio is multi purpose at DSC. My office is the control room, the tracking room holds chairs and tables for the West Wing which is used for classes and in this case a recording session. We recorded the instruments together trying to get a front porch kind of feeling to the song. We recorded the vocals separately from the instruments.

VBS Goes Vintage (sort of )

Well VBS was a great success at Desert Springs Church this last week. Here is the run down of Microphones used.
Skits
11- Shure and Audio Technica Wireless systems
We paired various types of microphones to those systems:
2- Countryman E6
1- Countryman E6s
3- Audio Technica BP892-TH MicroSet
1- DPA 4066
3- Samson SE50
1- Audio Technica Artist Elite® AE4100 Handheld.

 The Band
Kick: Shure Beta 52
Snare: Shure SM 57
HiHat: Shure KSM109
Rack Tom: Audix D4
Floor Tom: ATM 25
Ride and Crash: Pro 35's underneath
Bass: SansAmp DI
Acoustic Guitars: Radial ProDi
Washboard: Beta 98
Wash Tub Bass: Beta 91
Lead Vocal: Beta 87c
BGV's: Shure 55's of various types. 1-Super 55, 2-55SH, and my personal 1959 Shure 55. It was so sweet.

If it Worked once Try it again

Well I was having a dilemma. Los, our young adult minister/church planter, has been preaching the last few Sundays.  He does not want to wear an over ear mic like the E6 but also did not want a traditional lapel. Los also uses a large dynamic range when he teaches from very soft to very loud. The is to make him understood no matter how loud or quiet he is. The microphone we tried had been using on him for a while was the E6s which is shorter version of the normal Countryman E6. He liked it because it was easy to hide. The problem is it does not give, at least for Los, great clarity, so I went back to the well. Los wears glasses with a nice flat frame. So like I did with our Teaching Pastor Ryan, see post here, I taped the microphone to his glasses. With Ryan I use a Countryman EMW. I do not have a second one on hand so I used my Shure W93, which is a nice flat lapel like the EMW.  Wow what a difference. Los is clear and I have a ton of head room. Another reminder to keep your options open when trying to mic someone or something up.