We’re almost there. I’m doing some final testing of the new file management system and should be ready to post that online tomorrow. I’m also working with my graphic designer on some last-minute changes to the WordPress theme set which should also be in place.

And tomorrow I’ll have a long post about where we’re headed with the site. So, come back later in the day on New Year’s Day for all the scoop.

Have a great New Year’s Eve!

Kent

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you that frequent this site and have worked to make Sacred Loops what it is (and soon will be). Your devotion, sharing, and interest have given me renewed energy, hope, and vision for the future.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

This morning I realized that we’re a little less than 10 days away from launching the new Sacred Loops. I’m pretty excited but also starting to feel the pressure of having everything ready. Between the redesigned loop/sequence/patch management system and the updated site appearance, it’s been a busy last few weeks.

I’ve also been spending quite a bit of time thinking about the Sacred Loops “brand” and the process that has gotten us to this point. I’ll talk more about that in a future post, but the upshot is that Dan Lukas (aka Frugalpole for some of you) has provided a legacy that I’m working very hard to live up to. Admittedly the site has been fallow over the last year or so, but that’s all about to change.

In looking over the web logs, Sacred Loops still by and large is a place where people come for worship loop-related content. And that’s a good start. But I’m hoping the site will be much more than that. I’ve already talked about Sacred Loops TV in another post, and I’ll simply tease you with this term: Sacred Loops University. No details yet, but the name should conjure up for you the intent.

For the next couple of days, I’m trying to grab some much-needed sleep and spend some time with my kids while they are out of school. After that, it’s full-on until January 1st. Hang on!

Today is a milestone for me. I’m finally selling my first analog tape-based setup, and I thought I’d post the pics here for posterity. Sometimes it’s easy to forget our roots amidst all our shiny toys…

This is a Teac A-3440 4-track recording deck and a Teac 2A mixer. This particular setup was the equipment on which I recorded my first real project that eventually got pressed to vinyl (a small blues band recorded in Denton, Texas during my sophomore year in college, around 1981). Over the next 25 years, I recorded everything from choirs to jazz bands to country-and-western groups to synth-pop ensembles. Most of the master tapes were spun off to Logic and/or Pro Tools years ago, but some are still around (somewhere).

The A-3440 was a great deck with a great headstack, and I used a Teac RX-9 dbx unit later on for noise reduction (young people have no appreciation for tape hiss). The whole setup weighs quite a bit and wasn’t all that portable, so I have to chuckle when I think about how I show up now with my laptop, audio interface, and mics in a couple of small bags.

As a way of tying this in here on Sacred Loops, this deck was used during some church productions to play back pre-recorded band and choir tracks (tracks 1-3) and send a click to the live band during performance (track 4). We recorded the click onto track four using a Roland DR-55 and played it back through a headphone amp matrix that I built one summer. We were using click tracks for live performance as far back as 1981!

Here are a couple of close up pictures of the mixer and deck:

The mixer is 6-in/4-out and doesn’t even have XLR inputs (we used matching transformers instead), but it does have a 4-channel bussing system as well as direct outs and buss ins. Quite advanced for it’s time and certainly nothing like what had previously been available to the consumer market at that price point.

The whole setup was probably around $4,500 in 1979, and I am forever grateful to my parents for loaning me the money to buy the setup (while I was still in high school). It took a few months of recording sessions with local bands to pay them back, and I’ll never forget the day I paid it off free and clear.

Thanks for walking down memory lane with me!

From Create Digital Music…

Just how rugged is your microphone? Mats Stålbröst, editor of the Stockholm-based Studio, took testing to a new extreme last year. He did violence to the legendary Shure SM58 – the sub-$100, vocal dynamic mic. It was used to hammer nails. It was dropped several meters. It was frozen. It was dunked in water. It was driven over by a car. It had beer poured on it. It was placed in a microwave atop a pizza. And the thing kept on working.

Then they buried it in the ground, left it for a year, and dug it up to test again. Read the full story on CDM.

I use the SM58 all the time live, and I’ve always treated my personal SM58s like (probably better than) my children. I guess I don’t have to be so cautious now.

I just saw this today over on Create Digital Music (one of my favorite blogs and should be one of yours as well). It’s a pack of presets for Ableton Live 7′s “Slice to New MIDI Track” system, and it’s pretty cool.

I’ve been a Propellerhead ReCycle user since version 1.0 (arguably the granddaddy of the slicing products), but Live 7′s capabilities are nice as well. Plus, it’s so much easier to have an integrated option instead of having to open ReCycle all the time.

This morning, I used the presets to create some new loops that I’ll be using in a project after the first of the year. Using the presets is simple, quick, and quite a bit of fun. These Covert Operators are clever folks. Check out the pack!

I took a vacation day yesterday to get a break from some work-related stuff. As is often the case on my days off, I decided to head down to the local Sam Ash and Guitar Center to just have a look around. Typically I like to play the new keyboards, talk to the sales guys about what’s new, and generally just build up my wish list.

Yesterday, I was in Guitar Center and found that they had all three Korg nanoSERIES controllers in stock (Key, Pad, and Kontrol). I have been eyeing these since they were first announced and had originally just intended to buy a Kontrol when they became available. However, after playing with them a bit, I decided to bite the bullet and buy all three. With some haggling plus a $10 gift card and a 10% coupon, I ended up walking out with all three for less than $150.

In a few days, I’ll talk about each controller specifically and try to post some pictures (and perhaps video) to give you some up close information. There are some videos already up on YouTube about these units, but hopefully I’ll have some additional information to provide you.

My quick impression is that the units are fairly well made, but they do have some quirks. I had been prepared to take the nanoKEY unit back, but I have really grown to like it in only a day or so of playing with it. It won’t replace a more powerful control (my current favorite is the M-Audio Axiom series), but it’s quite portable and is pretty decent for the size.

I’m going to be out of pocket for the next few days, so I’m not sure how many updates I’ll get posted here. But we’re getting close to January 1st, and I’m very excited about the upcoming changes.

Blessings to all of you.

I checked the survey results today just to get a picture of what’s been submitted so far. The title of this post says it all (well, not ALL all, but you get the idea). Overwhelmingly, the responses have been male (only a single female respondent thus far), young (30 and under, which is young to me, although there is one respondent who is over 50), and tenor in terms of singing voice (not surprising given the responses to the first two questions).

Trends are hard to identify, especially in unscientific surveys like this one. But the results actually don’t surprise me given the type of person that tends to frequent sites like Sacred Loops (and the type of person that tends to frequent sites that tend to point to Sacred Loops). One could argue that most visitors here are likely to fit the stereotype of the “young hip worship leader”, and I’m guessing that if we checked the playlists on the iPods of each one we’d find Coldplay, Radiohead, U2, and Death Cab for Cutie in heavy rotation. And that’s not a bad thing, especially if your alternative is Wally the Worship Leader.

What does it mean for Sacred Loops? I don’t know yet (other than I feel really old and perhaps out of my element). But I’ll continue to ponder the results and share some other observations as we go along. And I’ll also wonder about that one person who’s over 50 (which I’ll be in a few short years) and how they’re viewing their role in all this.

Interesting stuff. If you haven’t filled out the survey, please take a few minutes and give us some info about you. It’s completely anonymous and valuable to us as we plan the future.

More later.

I tend to get caught up in the production of my music, so much so that at times it simply gets in the way. I agonize over a bass part or worry with the notes in a harp line or string section. I fiddle over and over again with the technical aspects of the music, and often it just renders the overall result soul-less.

So it’s very inspiring to see folks like Playing for Change and the incredible work they are doing. Have a look at their version of “Stand By Me”, and if that doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will.

I wish my stuff were that simple and yet that powerful. Lay aside the gimmick of the recording process, and it’s simply powerful music.

Enjoy!

I’ve written music in one fashion or another for a very long time. My first real piece was a very short piano etude that I wrote in second grade (although my piano teacher was less than thrilled because it was much more like John Cage than Frederic Chopin). It’s the first time I remember understanding that most music is created by someone rather than just appearing from nowhere. I guess as a second grader, folks like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart are really just a bunch of dead guys that couldn’t possibly have written music. Heck, they didn’t even have TV!

Most of my music is written for others to perform, not because I don’t like performing my own stuff but because I typically have so little time to really do justice to my own work. As a result, I haven’t posted much of my music simply because it really isn’t solely mine once another artist puts their stamp on it. And that’s okay. But I digress…

The other day I was talking with some friends about the creative process in general and music composition specifically. These particular friends are more from the “background music” school (ambient stuff used for commercials, industrial video, documentaries, etc. Not really film scoring in the traditional sense but certainly more “write on demand” than I am. They get paid to create for specific projects.

The talk turned, as it often does with these guys, to some nuts and bolts topics of creating. One of the more interesting discussions was the workflow process and the arranging aspects of taking a song from the back of a napkin to a full-blown recordable (or performable) piece of music. Again, because these guys are more used to the non-vocal composing style, it was interesting to hear their points of view. Lots of differences in our approaches.

But what was consistent among all of us was the need to have the right environment in order to feel (and therefore be) creative. That’s not to say that I haven’t written songs in line at the supermarket, in the car, standing in the airport, etc. But the reality is that most of those songs end up being grist for a finer mill that only really gets employed in the comfort of my own studio (or in someone else’s studio that is similar to mine). And I started to come to the realization that I’ve been having some difficulty on the creative side because my environment (i.e. my studio) has become a utilitarian mess rather than the creative space it once was.

So, I’ve resolved that over the next few weeks, as I’m revamping Sacred Loops, I’m going to revamp my creative space as well. I’ll do my best to document the process (at least in discussion and perhaps in pictures if I get highly motivated). I’ve seen many of the spaces that you folks work in, and some are breathtaking in their beauty and, as important, simplicity. I’m hoping to get inspired by some of that work, and I’ve also started scouring the Internet, books, magazines, and other materials for ideas and concepts to get me started.

More to come…