Worship Leader Blog

Every now and then I decide to write a little script for something--it might be a short video, or a little stage play, or an audio drama or something else. I never know exactly how to format it, and I probably do it differently every time. And somewhere along the way I get bogged down in formatting the thing and the writing process is derailed, and I give it up and go do something else.

Well, there's a good chance that's not going to happen any more, because I recently stumbled upon an application called Celtx, which its developers tout as "the world's first all-in-one media pre-production software." And it really is a cool application. And here's the kicker--it's available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, and it's FREE.

With Celtx, you can create screenplays, stage plays, A/V scripts, audio plays, comic book scripts or plain text documents. The script editors produce output that conforms to the industry standards for each type of script. And there's more: you can also create storyboards with images that you upload, and incorporate sound, video and images to create "rich media breakdowns" of your project. There is a scheduling feature that allows you to create a detailed shooting schedule for a project, and you can take one type of script project and adapt it to another, such as turning a screenplay script into a stage play script. Celtx handles all of the formatting changes.

Celtx script windowI haven't really even begun to put this application through its paces, but there are some nice screencast tutorials on the Celtx site that explain features and demonstrate how to use the program. You can also get a Celtx Web server account, and publish your projects to be shared with other members of your team, or with the general public.

So far, I'm pretty impressed with Celtx, and I'm going to be giving it a workout. If you've got multiple screenwriters or A/V producers or drama script writers on your team, it makes sense to have everyone formatting their work in industry-standard ways. I heartily recommend that you give Celtx a try.

I happened to run across another church audio blog today--this one is written by "JB" and it's called Church Audio & Sound. Author JB sounds like he knows what he's doing, and his honesty and candor about what he does is refreshing and challenging. Definitely worth a look.

The sound techs at your church are at their best when no one in the worship service notices what they're doing. The only time that most of them get any recognition at all is when there is a sudden shriek of feedback or someone's mic isn't turned on, or the accompaniment track stops halfway through the song, and at that point, they're wishing they could hide under the mixing desk.

Many church sound techs don't come from the sound reinforcement profession--most are just ordinary folks, maybe a bit nerdy, with a penchant for knobs and buttons and blinking lights, and the willingness to give hours and hours in a thankless, anonymous role because they love what they do, and they love to serve the Lord and the church with what they've been given. And many of them could use a little help.

If you are a sound tech, and if you're looking for some help and encouragement as you hone your craft, you'll want to check out Behind the Mixer", a resource for church sound techs.

This blog features equipment reviews, instructional articles, videos and a free e-mail newsletter to help you stay informed, learn what others are doing, and figure out how to do what you do better.

(Oh, and by the way--we worship leaders may talk smack about you from time to time, sound guys, but the truth is that we love you and couldn't do what we do without you!)

Nov. 5-7, HoustonI hadn't heard of the Worship Facilities Conference and Expo until a couple of weeks ago, but it looks like a pretty big deal--they're planning for 5,000 attendees and 400 exhibitors at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Here's a description from the promotional materials:

We work to create a unique learning experience for church teams through our program. WFX is designed to educate church executive, facilities and tech teams to learn together through a unique conference program that focuses on four tracks, a day-long executive seminar for pastors (pastorsxforum.com), the largest expo floor for the church market filled with thousands of products and services, and a special events program that will offer something for every team member. For four years WFX has been educating church teams with the knowledge and cutting-edge information they need to reach their growth goals.

Would your tech team, worship team, or facilities planning team would benefit from being at this event? Might be worth a look.

I had the opportunity to attend the Contemporary Worship Institute at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City this week, and the featured guest artists/clinicians were Paul Baloche and his band. (By the way, just let me say that Carl Albrecht is an amazing drummer.)

Anyway, it was very interesting stuff, and in my next few posts I'll try to go over some of what I learned there, and maybe do a little out-loud thinking about how we might apply some of that wisdom to our own worship arts ministry. But in the meantime, I wanted to share just a little about the lead guitarist in Paul's band--Ben Gowell. Ben is a talented, solid player, with a lot of recording and touring credits to his name, plus he plays an old Tele and has a custom-made Tele-style guitar with humbuckers and a Bigsby (guitar players know what I'm talking about here). The amp he used at this conference was a Vox AC-30.

Ben's pedal board was also interesting--he likes discrete effects, and I noticed a few "boutique" pedals (overdrives) in there (he was kind enough to let me photograph the board).

In his playing with Paul Baloche, Ben was tasteful, never in the way, never overpowering, but always there with the appropriate accent at the right time. His solos weren't look-at-my-amazing-chops fancy, but elegant and melodic, and (here's that word again) tasteful. The guy can definitely play--no question that he's got the chops--but he is clearly secure enough in his role with the band that he doesn't feel the need to go nuts when the spotlight goes on in his corner of the stage. He seems to understand the importance of serving the song (and the Lord) in his playing, not showcasing his own talent.

He's on one of Paul's instructional DVDs, which you can get at his Web site, or at Baloche's LeadWorship.com site.

More on the conference later!

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching Steve Jobs' keynote address at the big Apple event earlier this month (where they rolled out the new iPods and the new iTunes). One of the features of iTunes 8 that he demonstrated was the new "Genius" playlist feature. I have to admit, that two Genius playlists later, I'm hooked.

When you activate the Genius feature in iTunes 8, iTunes sends information about your music library and listening habits (anonymously) to Apple, where this information is used, along with similar information from thousands of other users, to generate a playlist of 25, 50, 75 or even 100 songs from your music library--songs that somehow go together well, just for you.

Using it is simple--you select any song from your music library, then click the Genius icon at the lower right corner of the window. In some cases, iTunes won't be able to create a playlist from certain songs, but most of the time, you get a new playlist almost immediately. You can give this playlist a name and save it with your other playlists, or trash it and try again.

I've made only two Genius playlists in the past few days, and they've been so captivating, that I've scarcely listened to anything else. The first one was based on Pierce Pettis' "Alabama 1959," and the 25-song list featured additional cuts by Pettis, along with cuts from Nick Drake, Patty Griffin, David Wilcox, the Waybacks, Stan Rogers and several others. More than once, the first time I listened through the list (without really looking to see what was on it), I thought, "That was a great song--now it would be cool to hear ---," and sure enough, "---" was part of the list later on.

I can't begin to imagine the kinds of algorithms Apple's iTunes folks have concocted to make Genius work the way it does, but so far, I'm impressed. Apple encourages Genius users to update their information (re-send it to iTunes) from time to time, because the Genius system is learning and getting "smarter" all the time, as more and more people make their information available, and as our music libraries and listening patterns change.

The other playlist I set up was based on David Crowder's "Come and Listen," and it's got a great line-up of tunes from many of the worship artists I've got in my library, including some stuff that I frankly don't listen to that often, but in the context of this list, it seems appropriate and goes together well. It occurs to me that Genius might be a great way to pick your walk-in music playlists for various events--pick a song that is representative of the feel that you're going for, and let Genius fill out a playlist based on that song. Could be cool.

I'm sort of waiting for the "Weird Genius Lists" blog posts, where people find really odd results while playing with Genius, but for now, I'm sold. Nicely done, Apple.