Friday evening will be a busy time. Actually, the past several months have been quite hectic. But this is what I truly enjoy: the opportunity to serve.

That said, it is a remarkable amount of work.

The picture is from the Celebrate Christmas event of last year. It was the second Christmas concert for the team and it took a lot of time and effort to produce. Earlier this year, I was asked to help coordinate an event in the fall with my good friend Trevor. Which, of course, I was only too happy to support. The event became a lot more than coordination. It was more like a full production including marketing, promotion, ticket sales, rider fulfillment, sound system and lighting system setup and teardown, media support and finally, making a 25 to 30 minute musical contribution with my own band.

Trevor and his team will do a wonderful job presenting their music. My band will help in that presentation. To get things ready for the musical contribution, I selected a set of songs, prepared charts, developed the media support for the songs, developed enhanced backing tracks to support our presentation, scheduled rehearsals and personal time practicing the material. We are a four-piece team for the event on Friday: vocals, electric guitar, bass and drums. To fill things out, we will be playing to a split-track with a click for the players and a program of ambient pads, percussion, background vocals and keys.

That work, in and of itself, can take a bit of time. My wife was kind enough to help on the marketing, promotion and ticketing of the event. She went to dozens of places around town to get posters up and to communicate the event and she has been working through the logistics of helping to ensure that we have a good turnout.

Our drummer was good enough to help me with the rider. We have a compact line array system with subs coming in to the site which we will install on Thursday evening. We will also have intelligent lighting and audio/visual. We will have to setup the environment to accommodate two bands as well as prepare in-ear and wedge monitors. Trevor travels with his own sound engineer and that engineer will be driving the FOH for the evening. Our plan is to have everything set and ready to go by end of evening on Thursday. Friday will be the setup for Trevor and soundcheck for the two bands.

It has been so busy at work that I have been having some challenges keeping the rest of life in balance. A major event like this one does add to that challenge. Although it would be nice to take a bit of a break after the event on Friday, I will be back at rehearsals on Saturday morning and playing again on Sunday.

I spent about 12 hours on the production crew at the K-Rock Centre yesterday. Fortunately, I was working graphics and video, not sound. My hearing is far from ready for mixing live sound right now.

My son was playing bass at the evening concert. I’m usually on the stage playing with him and I did miss that part of the experience. But I had my hands full keeping up with all of the graphics work. I spent roughly 30 hours in pre-production working out all of the visuals. The prelude section alone had about 50 graphics which consisted of motion images, flat stills and advertising content. All in, I used about 400 “slides” for this event.

The rig included a 12×9 video wall. I had a triple screen splitter to create a virtual display of 3072 x 768 pixels. Three projectors were painstakingly aligned at the rear of the video wall to create the illusion of a single display. ProPresenter was used to control the visuals from the Mac. ProPresenter is simply awesome. Terrific software.

Here is a shot with the house lights off and some minimal lighting to showcase the stage.

This shot is the band rehearsal prior to the evening concert. House Lights up so things look quite stark. My son Joshua is covering the low end for the team on the far rear right.

Everything comes alive once the house lights go down and the band begins to play.

What better time to install a console than during the Christmas holidays.

I had performed an assessment of a fixed location sound system at my home church. Like many churches, the sound system just happened over time. Not much thought given to longer term requirements for sound nor much thought given to the ability to effectively present sound in a variety of styles. This system was adequate for very traditional activities — spoken word, choir and organ — but not suitable for more complex applications such as contemporary worship and multimedia delivery.

I have done a number of assessments like this one over the years. And generally they pretty much turn out the same. Aging and obsolete equipment that needs to be upgraded. Proper acoustic measurements that need to be taken to appropriately specify loudspeaker arrays and the requisite outboard. Monitoring systems that need to be either introduced or upgraded.

Back to the console install.

I specified an Allen and Heath GL2400 32-channel board similar to the one pictured here. This was an appropriate recommendation given the size of the church and its budget.

The installation should have been quite straightforward as we were not changing anything else at this time. Notate and disconnect the existing input/output. Remove old console. Insert new console. Reconnect input/output. Test.

This photo shows one reason why it was time to upgrade the console.

The old Mackie board had been in use for a long time and it was well past its expiry date. Channels had started to fail and the time had come to upgrade this particular device.

What took almost 4 hours of effort had very little to do with the actual console replacement. It was sorting through this:

I have seen some interesting cable plants in my time. I have never seen anything quite like this. Although you cannot see it in this picture, buried underneath all of the cables were things like an active power bar, dozens of pens, masking tape labels that had come loose from the cables, unused cables, unmarked cables, dozens of unused adapters.

Uh oh.

It took a couple of hours just to untangle and sort through the cables. And then, because many of them had not been labeled, many of the lines had to be traced. Unfortunately, several of the lines went to another closet which was just as chaotic. I had not allocated two days of effort to sort and clean up the cable plant so I stayed focused on the existing console install. The outboard closet will have to be dealt with another day.

After 6 hours, the new board was up and running. The cable plant behind the board is now properly tied and dressed and everything is labeled — and not with masking tape.

It took much longer than expected but the new console will provide many years of service and at least the installation and cable dressing was done well.

Trevor was in town to host a Compassion Canada presentation at our church. Although I do not serve as part of the technical team, I was asked if I would be willing to run sound for the two services on Sunday. And I am so pleased that I was able to serve Trevor and the Compassion team. Both services were powerful reminders of the plight of many children in the world and the opportunity we have to sponsor a child and make a difference in their lives. We took out a sponsorship on behalf of our youngest son.

Joshua and I spent Saturday afternoon preparing the environment for Trevor. We then spent most of Sunday in terms of load-in, sound check, services, tear down and a late lunch with Trevor, Brad and Andy. Great friends and a special time to get together.

I brought my own direct boxes, microphones, monitors, interconnects. I tried to bring in a proper sound system for the event but I was too late for booking. Summer is a busy time for the audio houses. The system at the church is very, very rough. I was able to get the job done but I’ve never had to “fight” with a sound system to try and wrestle out a decent sound like I did with this one. Joshua did a great job on the multimedia component and we made all the cues and transitions without a blip.

A very powerful and moving morning. I know Trevor often drops by the blog. Trevor, you are amazing! Well done.

Over the past few months, I have been hard at work organizing and planning an evening of music at our church. We had a great team of players and support folks helping us out and we enjoyed a very special evening last night.

Although a lot of planning went into the event, the past two days have been exhausting. I am very tired today. However, the memories will last a lifetime. A few photos from the event.

Josh and I had a chance to serve at Wesley Acres this morning. We served as part of a worship team in a large outdoor setting. Well, not quite outdoors. We were in a tent.

It was a special time all around. Particularly when I get the chance to serve with my son.

For those of you looking for a glimpse of the new gear in action, here it is. Awesome guitar to play and an awesome rig. This first photo is a picture of me and my son. I think he liked a certain guitar riff I had just played.

Here is a shot of part of the band. We also had three singers with us. Perhaps the camera needs a wider lens.

Always a good idea to tune before you play. The photo does give a front shot of the new Tom Anderson guitar as well as a peek at the new Dr Z rig.

Groovin’ and riffin’.

“The church is dying.”

So said the organist of St. Paul’s Anglican Church. St. Paul’s, located in Lachine, Quebec, was the church of my youth. And it is an example of how quickly and dramatically the church has declined in just one generation.

St. Paul’s played a major role in my life as a child. Sunday services where I served in the choir and as an altar boy. Scouts. Youth Group. Worship bands. Confirmation. An active church community of well over 500 people.

St. Paul’s was also the church where my father’s memorial service was held. As I wandered through the church sanctuary, memories from that day entered my mind. I had just turned sixteen.

I remembered that just before the funeral service, while we were still at the funeral home, and while no one was looking, I placed a small wooden cross into my dead father’s casket. This cross was given to me by the Reverend of St. Paul’s on the day of my confirmation. My hope was that this cross would somehow help my father. That there would be a physical and ongoing link between him and I even though he was dead.

The lesson of the cross is for the living — not for the dead.

And perhaps the cross was removed before the casket made its way to St. Paul’s. I will never know. But the memory of that day still grips me with sadness and despair.

St. Paul’s was built in 1964. And the church sanctuary looks exactly as it did when I was there over 40 years ago. I have included a few photos that I took of the church earlier today.

As I was shooting the interior of the church, the organist came over and talked with me. What had once been a healthy and vibrant community of believers 40 years ago was now a community of fewer than 30 people. And, once they have passed away, there is no one to lead the next generation of believers at St. Paul’s.

I read the following from Alectro Systems and I wholeheartedly agree. Unless a church is operating at a very large scale, digital consoles are just too sophisticated and too expensive for most small to medium-sized churches.

Although a wonderful ideal for user interfacing and audio organizing, digital consoles are simply not cost effective. A well-manufactured professional digital mixer, loaded with the necessary features, is just far too expensive. Due to this fact alone, a digital mixer should often be considered a last resort, and only if there is enough in the budget to pay the massive premium for a top-of-line console. There are exceptions to this rule though, as these mixers are greatly suited for large churches with huge worship teams and productions on Sundays, as well as throughout the week. In those venues, the cost factor becomes insignificant due to the fact that the benefits of a digital console become overwhelming. Those venues have a need for a massive number of inputs, and the ability to interact with them on a much more complex level; this is not the case with the remaining vast majority of churches. In almost every situation, an analogue mixer remains the best choice of consoles for a churches needs. They’re straightforward, cheaper with far greater quality and features versus a digital console of the same price, and are much easier to teach others how to use – which in a church environment is an absolute necessity for the majority of those able to help with sound teams.

Via.