New Studio for Church

  • Thread starter Thread starter pkmusic
  • Start date Start date
Sorry I missed the beginning of this thread as it is a subject dear to my heart. And, for what its worth, when I first started this journey 2 years ago, Sonusman's advice was just what I needed at the time to get it going and begin learning what I was doing (and to learn how naive I was - thanks Ed for teaching a little bit of humility!!).

I'm running a recording operation at our church down here in Wichita. Until 2 weeks ago I was running a dual ADAT setup (for 16 tracks) with individual feeds for all the instruments in the rhythm section and praise team vocalists, and sectional mics for the choir and orchestra on those weekends. We just move into our new facility last week, and I've upgraded to a Mackie 24 track hard disk recorder to go along with our new Midas Legend 3000 console.

My setup is specifically geared for recording in the sanctuary and mixing down later on. I'm currently taking pre-fader direct feeds from our console straight into the recorder. We don't monitor the recording as it goes down since we don't currently have a spare mixer laying around to do this. We did have split feed cabling run to an isolated room so that in the future we can do a "live" mix, but not for now. I take the recorder home and mix there at my leisure (which sometimes takes a week or a month to get it completed). This is the real problem for me. I hope to figure out how to manage this better in the near future (plus I've only got a 16 channel mixer, so I'm scratching my head trying to find a cheap way to mix 24 tracks...).

Our current usage of the recordings is primarily as an evaluation tool for our musical arrangements. I'm beginning to get enough good material that soon I will also be putting together a sampler CD for visitors and members. We are also planning to do a full service CD, and I provide support for customized soundtracks for solo vocalists as well as recordings for music-based ministries. We are also in the process of developing a video editing system and the audio gear will be used to support that venue.

The live recording experience is just that, an experience. I can record 3 services of the same music and often wind up with 1 usable song in total because of any one of a variety of things, including volunteer musicians who forget to show up, vocalists that sing out of tune, mics that accidentally get unplugged, wireless mics whose batteries are on death row, etc. In our old sanctuary I also had to fight a major grounding problem that caused a local AM radio station to get recorded which was evident on weaker signals. I don't cosider it a waste of time, however, because as a result of my labors the quality of our music has greatly increased and is one of our top draws to bringing people into our services.

Someday, I hope that what I produce will be commercial quality (its not that far off now, actually), but as a tool what I'm doing has been invaluable. I'd love to have $10k to spend on gear, but so far this has been out of my own pocket so the funding has been in much shorter supply. If I had the money, in addition to the hard disk recorder (I'd actually probably buy the Alesis HD24 if it wasn't for the incredible deal I got on my Mackie) I'd get at least a Tascam Dm24 console or a Soundcraft Ghost, with all the outboard gear I could get with my budget. I'd also setup an isolated room with a video feed in addition to the audio so you can tell what's going on in the services. After that, its just spending time doing it and learning how to mix to get the results you're after.

Have fun with this. I often think it would be great to setup a church recording bbs, but haven't been aware of that many others who were actually doing it. It's great to see I'm not alone.

Cheers,
Darryl.....
 
One other thing I forgot to list is the whole copyright issue. We have a license with CCLI which allows for a "limited" number of sound recordings to be distributed (limited is legally defined as less than 500 copies, I believe). If you are intending to sell copies for fundraisers, be sure your licensing is setup correctly. I don't have any direct experience with this yet, but I have heard a few horror stories about lawsuits for people who either ignored this or were not aware of it, and it can cost dearly from what I've read.

Darryl.....
 
Thanks Darryl!!!

That's some great info. I didn't know about that type of license. I will check that out. More than likely the songs we will record will be our own and not others.
 
undaddog said:

ps sonusman what is it with you man ? i've checked some of your posting and you can't seem to make up your mind if you want to help or hate i appreciate the grammar lesson but i thought the focus was on recording music and learning from each other . I can take a joke with the best of them but man if everyone else is so beneathe you maybe it would be better to be a mentor instead of a tormentor . excuse the grammqr spelling and anything else my mother would frown at
Click to expand...

Actually I made up my mind long ago that I would help AND hate! You know, I am assuming that you consider yourself, errrrrrrrrrr, religious. Maybe read that part about judging others. It seems to be the part most forgotten in the bible!

Hell, I am no english expert by anymeans, and have my share of grammatical errors when I post, but men, you cut the cake buddy!

You can't seem to make up your mind in the paragraph above whether or not you want to write a coherent sentence or wanna talk like a rapper in "da hood" or whatever.

Anyway.................

Peace out and I will just ignore your posts like all the others run on sentence posts. Obviously, you can't take a joke that has a bit of seriousness to it too. ;)

Ed
 
Looks like you stepped in some undaddog shit.:D :D :D
 
sonusman said:
Actually I made up my mind long ago that I would help AND hate! You know, I am assuming that you consider yourself, errrrrrrrrrr, religious. Maybe read that part about judging others. It seems to be the part most forgotten in the bible!

Hell, I am no english expert by anymeans, and have my share of grammatical errors when I post, but men, you cut the cake buddy!

You can't seem to make up your mind in the paragraph above whether or not you want to write a coherent sentence or wanna talk like a rapper in "da hood" or whatever.

Anyway.................

Peace out and I will just ignore your posts like all the others run on sentence posts. Obviously, you can't take a joke that has a bit of seriousness to it too. ;)

Ed
Click to expand...
ED i think some where along the line we got out signals crossed . i think you have a very solid recording sense . a very strong comical persona , that shows up offen . but if you felt i am judgeing you i apologize for that . and yes i do sometimes talk /type like a rapper :D o well just don't tell my mother
 
DDev said:
Have fun with this. I often think it would be great to setup a church recording bbs, but haven't been aware of that many others who were actually doing it. It's great to see I'm not alone.

Cheers,
Darryl.....
Click to expand...

I'd sure go for that. Or at least a lot more threads like this!

So Darryl, are you the engineer/sound guy? How do you deal with monitoring for vocalists (and drummers, for that matter)when you record a live performance? Do you do any overdubs at all? What are some of the songs/worship artists that your church does?
Where do you find the time to go back and listen to all those takes! Arrggh!:p
 
Maestro,

Thanks for the note. I haven't been running the sound in past, but will be getting more involved here soon. Up until this last week I spent more time on stage playing bass than actually recording.

Our church alternates worship styles every week, with one week being very contemporary (ie. Hillsongs, Passion, Lakewood Church, etc.) with a band consisting of 2 guitars, piano, keys, drums, and bass (and sometimes percussion) and either a mixed male/female vocal team or an all male vocal team. The next week is more traditional with a full orchestra and choir, which does some of the contemporary music but really shines on the traditional music.

We just moved into a new facility 2 weeks ago (we'd been in our previous building for 40 years and with an average weekly attendance of 1800+ we had no room to breathe). Our old sound system was a kludged together system with parts that ranged all the way from a Mackie 32x8 console to 1960's vintage horns in the center speaker kluster that would blow if the slightest bass was put into them. We had 2 stage monitor feeds, and really crappy monitors, so it was always a nightmare. Our new facility has a Midas Legend console, with EAW speakers in the left-center-right clusters, plus subs and front fill speakers and 6 stage monitors from 5 independently adjustable feeds. We use 2 floor monitors from a single feed for the vocal team, 2 for the guitars and bass, 1 for strings, 1 for brass and piano. We also use a non-powered feed that goes directly into the Roland V-Drums and is monitored by the drum monitoring system, and the same for the keyboards.

When I record live, I take either the direct out feeds or tap into the insert sends (that was all I had access to on the old system with the Mackie mixer). I would monitor the recorded signal with a small 16-channel mixer, but I was physically located in the sanctuary so I did not mix it there. I have my recorders in a portable rig, so after recording I take it all home and mix in my mini-studio I built (it is a very small 8x8 ft room with a bit of acoustic treatment). The only time I have ever done overdubs was when we recorded some original material and the bass track was picking up some local radio station noise. Otherwise, what I mix is what was originally tracked. I usually listen to all the services I recorded (usually 2 or 3) and pick the one service that had the most usable material. Then I dump the rest and only mix that one. It can take awhile the way I do it, and I hope to streamline the process soon.

In our new facility I have lots of options for how I will get the signal I record. For starters I plan to use the direct outs of the Midas console, which can be jumpered to be either pre or post fader, so I'll take the pre-fader option to take advantage of the mixer's pre-amps and eq. After I see how this works, then we'll see where the next step is. We had split feeds dropped so we could setup a studio in an isolated environment and do a "live" recroding and mix simultaneously in the future (we just need the gear to do this).

Anyway, looks like I wrote another book. Its a fun ministry that, for me, is just beginning to show fruit for the labor. The next few months are going to be interesting as I learn a new system and new recorder, and hopefully am able to produce something that will assist other ministries.

Cheers,
Darryl.....
 
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