I found out today that our Worship Facilities team at Grace won several awards this year from Worship Facilities Expo!  These awards included:

Best Technical Director for our own Daryl Cripe!

Best Technical Production Team for Grace’s Production Team!

Best Facilities Manager for our own Dave Wagner!

For our new auditorium we were also awarded:

Best Church Design - New Project, 801-2000 Seats – Meyer Sounds Labs, Grace Community Church, Noblesville, IN

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to all those who are involved with the Facilities and Production ministries at Grace!

Read the full list HERE.

This is one of the coolest duets I’ve ever seen.  Especially since its only one guitar!

Oh Yes!    And drums too!

I have been a long time Phil Wickham fan.  He would lead worship occasionally at the church I attended, The Flood San Diego.  I truly enjoy the way he composes melody and harmony.  He is vastly different from the current worship leader/artist/nashville mold.  Perhaps it is because we are both from the San Diego, California area, but I like his style!

This lastest release (technically PRE-Release as it drops on NOV 17th) does not disappoint!  From soaring guitars to razor synth sounds it is a solid follow-up to Cannons.   I appreciate the variation from a seriously full-on ‘rock’ sound to almost completely acoustic, just him and the guitar.  (Though I did hear a banjo on The Time is Now, which I LOVE!)

I definitely need to spend some quality time with this album.  So far I really dig a few of the tracks and expect that I will hear and appreciate some of the other ones as I listen to it again and again.

As a guitar player, I like that he uses alternate tuning and different chords.  It makes me want to be more creative in my own playing and writing.  As a worship leader, his lyrics are very heartfelt and hit at the center of a lost and hurting culture.

Here’s my iTunes review:

I definitely recommend the album for personal and potential corporate worship.  You can get the download HERE now or buy it on iTunes or Amazon on Nov 17th.

I randomly came across Matt Papa when he followed me on Twitter a week ago.  I thought, hey, a cool songwriter.  I clicked through his website and listened to the album preview and was BLOWN AWAY!!!

Not only are his lyrics straight out of scripture, his melodies are super creative and original.  It is also the most eclectic album I’ve ever heard.  It goes from driving rock, to what sounds like orthodox Russian, to  pseudo-punk, to instrumental hymn.

I am going out on a limb here to say this is my favorite album of the year so far!!!

‘True worship is

the celebration of being in covenant fellowship with the sovereign and holy triune God,

by means of

the reverent adoration and spontaneous praise of God’s nature and works,

The expressed commitment of trust and obedience to the covenant responsibilities, and

The memorial reenactment of entering into covenant through ritual acts,

all with the confident anticipation of the fulfillment of the covenant promises in glory.

-Allen P Ross

If you have been with me for any amount of time you know that I am a HUGE Crowder fan.  This is an interesting album for me.  Like ‘A Collision’ it is meant to be played from start to finish and it comprises the History of ‘Church Music.’  It is a very eclectic mix of sound, but it definitely is slanted towards the Reason Loops and programmed tracks.

From a worship leader perspective, I’m really not sure if there are any tracks I will be able to use in a corporate setting.  Still I really love the album for my own personal worship time.  It is a bit weird that my favorite tracks are the covers of ‘How He Loves’ and ‘All Around Me.’

Overall, this is one of those albums that I LOVE to crank up in my car and rock out to while I drive around.

Just one question:

How do I get one installed in my house?

The New Fee Album dropped a couple days before Catalyst Conference and I have been listening to it since then. I must say, at first I wasn’t that into it. It sounded like more of the same. But, then, I attended the Catalyst Conference and hearing and participating in the songs in a live environment COMPLETELY changed my mind about the album. I now have a new perspective and totally LOVE it!!!

Similar to the previous album, this music is full of rocking guitars, slamming drums and some sweet Reason/Ableton loops. Different from any worship album I’ve ever heard, there is a track with ‘auto-tune’ on it. ‘Promised Land’ is worship 2.0! I was skeptical when I found out about the ‘auto-tune’, but once I heard it, I actually like it!!!

Here’s my iTunes rating so far. I must say that the stars will probably go up in the future after I listen to it a bit more. There will probably be at least a couple more 5 stars, but for now:

It’s definitely worth picking up for some corporate worship songs and absolutely great for personal worship time!

Ok, I know this probably doesn’t apply to anyone but me, but if there are any worship leaders out there using Reason or GarageBand and then mixing down to mp3 with iTunes I have discovered a sneaky little feature that iTunes has which caused me literally DAYS and DAYS of headaches so I thought I’d post on it.

I make loops with Reason and GarageBand to use in services under the other instruments.   All of these include a click track panned hard left and the backing track panned hard right.  Well, as soon as I imported the song into iTunes, the click track bled (and vice versa) into the backing track.  While this may not seem a problem, when you are playing in front of a large crowd, you probably don’t want them hearing the click…

SOLUTION:

So TODAY I discovered this little check box in iTunes called ‘Sound Enhancer.’

This little checkbox actually CAUSES crossfade inbetween the left and right channels!  ARRGGGHH!  Why iTunes, Why?

SO, if you are doing split track recordings and bouncing them to iTunes, I would suggest that you UNCHECK the ’sound enhancer’ box.

Peace Out!