The idea of creating video tutorials has intrigued me for a very long time (probably since college when I did a series of fire safety videos for my home town). In another life, I used to teach software development, and one of the tools we used was video lessons. In fact, my first exposure to non-linear editing was on an Avid system we purchased to create training tapes (yep, VHS in all its glory!) for some of our clients.

I’ve been scouring the web recently for good examples of tutorials and have found quite a few. You can go to YouTube and be overwhelmed by the number of videos on Ableton Live, Apple Logic Studio, Propellerhead Reason, and others. People teach guitar, keyboard, organ, bass, and even the hang drum (one of my new favorite instruments). But most of these teaching videos are fairly abbreviated and usually not done with a significant level of commitment to quality. (There are exceptions, however, such as the very excellent video series on Logic by SFLogicNinja.)

Over the last couple of years, I have been informally documenting and teaching some of the techniques I use in production and performance. And I’ve amassed a fairly sizeable archive of videos that I’ve produced for other folks that I am planning to repurpose for Sacred Loops. While I’m never going to give MacProVideo or the other commercial sites a run for their money, I am interested in doing something along the lines of what ChurchMediaDesign.tvis doing for media work.

With that in mind, about six months ago I started editing and reshooting some of the more interesting video topics and preparing them for use on a sister site that will be launched in January. You can see the logo at SacredLoops.tv, and I’ll have some sample content up around Christmas to whet your appetite.

But I’m not just interested in putting up my own work. I want to open it up to others who have things to say and teach in the areas of music and audio for worship. If that’s you, let me know. If you need or want help in producing your videos, let me know that, too. The first videos I plan to post are basic stuff (audio interfaces, one-man worship leading setups, etc.), all drawn from my own personal experience. I also have tutorials on basic mixing, production techniques, and other related topics that I think people will find interesting and useful.

Let me know what you think!

Confession is good for the soul. I confess that I ate too much turkey over Thanksgiving. I confess that I slept in a little later than I had planned this morning. And I confess that I haven’t been monitoring comments on this site in some time.

The lengths that people go to in order to put spam on your blog is simply amazing. Even more amazing is the type of spam that is submitted. I did a (decidedly unscientific) survey of the 22 pages of comment spam on Sacred Loops today, and I found that the majority of spam is about drugs or supplements. I figure this is merely one more indicator of the state of our society. After all, almost nobody spams a blog with links about Jesus or God or salvation.

I’m working through the various options for slamming spam (filters, captchas, prior comment approvals, etc.), and I’ll have a solution in place by the weekend. My apologies to all of you who submitted comments over the last several months, only to have them disappear into moderation limbo.

As mentioned in a previous post, Sacred Loops has languished a bit since I took it over some time ago. Chalk it up to big plans, no time, competing demands, and all the other things that make up “life”. But I’ve been working steadily over the last few months on some plans to revitalize the site and offer up some changes that I think will be valuable.

So, the countdown to January 1st begins. New Year, new Sacred Loops site, new (or renewed) energy to provide meaningful information on using audio and music technology to glorify Jesus. I’ll be posting each day in December to talk about where I’ve been, where I’m headed, and where the site is headed along with me. I’ll also have some thoughts about technology bits and bobs that I’ve been working with over the last few months.

Get ready. It’s countdown time.

Kent

It’s never easy to make changes. You make plans, you strategize, you dream, you even hope a little. And inevitably there are challenges, obstacles, and just plain screw-ups that hamper your progress. Sometimes you feel like throwing in the towel, and you often discover there are indentions in the wall where you’ve been constantly banging your head.

Such has been the path with Sacred Loops since I acquired it. Problems with the old hosting provider, problems with the new hosting provider, challenges with the whole model and approach, and personal “stuff” too involved to discuss. But I’m finally digging out.

Starting December 1st, I’ll be talking about the future and then relaunching the site (and a new sister site) on January 1st. Consider it a New Year’s baby without all the yucky stuff. For 31 days in December, I’ll talk about the hopes and dreams and ideas and even some other related (and non-related) topics to whet your appetite.

Stick with me. I think it will be worth it.

Kent

Mike Krueger sent me a Reason 4.0 song file for Matt Maher’s “For Your Glory”. It’s a great tune, and Mike’s Reason file is a very good accompanying track for it. You can find the Reason file here:

http://www.sacredloops.org/content/Reason/4.0/ForYourGlory.zip

If you don’t know the song, Matt teaches it on a New Song Cafe episode here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88uG6vSDsfg

Finally, the lyrics to the song are in several places on the web. Worship Together has them here:

http://www.worshiptogether.com/songs/songdetail.aspx?iid=559492

Enjoy!

(edited to correct file location. file now contains count-off sound files.)

(Sorry for the delay in posting this. I just found it in my “Drafts” folder. Sheesh…)

Isaac Sung forwarded me a Reason song file for Neverending. Find it here.

Thanks, Isaac!

I was talking to a couple of folks today about Sacred Loops and about how it’s a fairly anonymous system. Even back when we had the ability to sign up and submit content directly (which is coming again, I promise you), there were a lot of folks who visited and took advantage of the content but remained nameless. One of the people I talked with suggested having a regular posting about various people who visit and use Sacred Loops. Sounds like a plan, so…

If you’re interested in seeing your mug and a brief story about you and your work here, send me a quick email at kent (dot) kingery (at) sacredloops (dot) org. At a minimum, I’d like to get up a photo, a link to your website or your work (MySpace, etc.), and a brief summary of what you do, tools you use, etc. I’m looking to kick this off in the next week or two, and I’ll probably start with myself as the guinea pig so you can see the format before you commit.

If the idea doesn’t have legs, we’ll find out soon enough. But I’m intrigued by it. I hope you will be, too.

It’s been a little over two years since the last significant release of Max/MSP, the visual programming environment from Cycling ’74. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Max/MSP for the last decade or so, loving it for its capabilities, hating that I never seem to take the time to really exploit everything its capable of doing. With the introduction of Max 5, I’m vowing to spend more time working with the product.

If you’ve never worked with Max/MSP before, you owe it to yourself to have a look at the introductory video to see what it’s all about. If you’ve used it but let your interest wane over the years, you really need to have another look because of some of the new features. Given the (relatively) cheap upgrade pricing and the very cheap price tags if you’re a student, it’s well worth the investment if you do anything with MIDI and/or audio and control of those things, this is a must-have package.

Download the demo, and take it for a test run. I promise you’ll like it!

Todd Berger over at Enter the Worship Circle has announced a remixing project (of sorts) here. Looks interesting, so go check it out.

You can hear Todd interviewed in a podcast on Chainsaw Weasel.

Neutrino sent me some of his Combinator patches for Reason, along with the following statement:

“So as a note- on synth related patches the mod wheel is usually filter 0 being cut totally and 127 being full signal.
One the Rhodes it controls the amount of tremolo and aftertouch increases the rate of tremolo (genius… I know).
The Rhodes patches also use the free electromechanical refill, if you are registered on propellerheads site you can get it free. If you play Reason live with a keyboard controller that has the usual 8 knobs and 8 buttons- change 4 adjacent knobs to CC71,72,73,74 and 4 adjacent buttons to 75,76,77,78.

I hope you enjoy.”

Find it here.

Thanks much, Neutrino! You gotta love anyone who uses the word “plethora” in a filename…