Blog – Page 2 – Building Your Band

Starting Point Workshop

June 20, 2016 By Pete Bulanow

BYB PG 2016

We just wrapped up a “Starting Point” workshop for 5th to 9th graders, which is a simplified version of a regular workshop curriculum. The whole event went so well and the kids were awesome.

Brian Beasley did a great job of capturing what went on, so I’ll just point you there: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Wrap up.

Perfect size workshop of 50 – wouldn’t want it any bigger! #BuildingYourBand #pgbyb16

A photo posted by Peter Bulanow (@peterbulanow) on Jun 17, 2016 at 10:03am PDT

The remarkable thing about this workshop, is that the majority of the kids (I think 60%) had never played an instrument before, and something like 90% of the kids had never played the instrument they were playing for the workshop (they decided to pick up a new instrument). Yet, at the end of just four days they were playing musically, together, as a band. There were a number of times during the “Battle of the Bands” on the last day that our jaw was on the floor with what we were hearing and we experienced actual compelling moments that caused emotion to well up inside. It was incredible.

If there is a thesis to Building Your Band, the podcast and the website, it’s this: you probably don’t need better players or more skills to sound better, you need better production. These kids were teachable, and delivered those goods.

NC Workshop

June 1, 2016 By Pete Bulanow

buildingyourband1

We’re excited to be partnering with Pleasant Garden to produce a Building Your Band Workshop geared toward the next generation of musicians and worship leaders. There is a fantastic panel of musicians lined up to do the instructing, and our curriculum has been refined for a younger audience.

Anyone wishing to host a Building Your Band workshop at your church, please contact us to discuss how we can greatly accelerate Building Your Bands.

Remote GLS Stage Geometry

December 7, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Recently we had the opportunity to play music live for a remote Global Leadership Summit event (ours was in Jamaica). When we arrived, the stage was being built (right) and preparations had been made for a high quality rear projection screen, but there was no stage design for the band. We were only told we needed to stay out of line-of-site of the screen. This of course makes sense; the video presentation needs to be center stage, as it’s the main event and the band needs to work around that. However, with the particular stage geometry we were presented with, that was difficult, and sub-optimal. My sense is, there are ways to do this that are better than others. Perhaps Willow Creek has published some best practices and I just haven’t seen them, but in their absence, I thought I would offer some thoughts to get this conversation started.

Let’s start with the guidance that Willow offers (page 3):

Video Screen Philosophy

A single big, bright center screen is nearly always critical in the success of the Global Leadership Summit. Even the most sophisticated churches and conference rooms do not typically have the type of installed projection equipment required to keep the audience’s focus for two entire days (with nearly all of the content being presented by video).

Remember to place the screen as far downstage as possible—while still giving you room for the band, vocalists, facilitator or host. Placing the screen too far upstage will put too much space between the on-screen speaker and your audience.

Keeping the screen as close to the audience as possible will also result in a larger apparent screen size.

So there is a lot of good guidance here.

The way our stage was designed, it was difficult for the band to work effectively and connect with the congregation. We had a very deep stage which forced the band to the back to preserve line-of-sight to the projector. This resulted in much of the stage going unused and did not place either the screen or the band “as close to the audience as possible“.

A shallow stage would be a much better option (below). This would allow a rear-projection screen to be much closer to the audience, and the presence of the band would be greatly improved.

Even better would be putting the screen in front of the band (below). This would of course require front projection and a retractable screen. It would offer a flawless transition in and out of music. The screen could be partially dropped to display the top line of lyrics. Remote GLS Stage Design-4

A traditional stage design would be most comfortable to the band, to include putting the drums and bass, and possibly even the keyboardist on risers (as below). This could again be accomplished with a front-screen projection and a retractable screen. Remote GLS Stage Design-5

If you have any experience with playing / hosting a remote GLS, I’d love to have you chime in with your thoughts about what works and what doesn’t work. Here are my google slides, which you are free to use, and improve upon! I’ll happily grant you access to edit them as well (upon request). If there are other ideas I missed, or some detail I overlooked, please contact me with that information, and I will update this post, or just leave a comment below.

Thanks!

Apple and Alchemy

November 23, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

As a keyboardist and Apple aficionado who follows the likes of Gruber, Marco and Dalrymple, the acquisition of the soft synth, Alchemy, by Apple last year, and its recent re-release in Logic and MainStage, presents a unique opportunity to look at exactly what Apple has done with this acquisition. The improvements in design and functionality are what you might hope for from Apple. But it’s the reason for the acquisition that is perhaps the most interesting. Apple has a huge piggy bank; they rarely use it for acquisition. That they did use it must signal something strategic.

Background

Camel Audio announced their store was closed on Jan 7th of this year (2015). Dalrymple posted about this back in the day and called it a good move (don’t miss the speculations in the comments!). Camel Audio maintained customer support until July 7, 2015, and customers were encouraged to download the latest versions of the software and backup their data. Which I did. Twice. Today camelaudio.com doesn’t resolve and they’ve even deleted their youtube channel.

GarageBand, essentially a consumer grade Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), introduced the idea of a softsynth, i.e. “software synth” or “virtual instrument”, to the masses with minimal fanfare. Before GarageBand, softsynths, which first debuted in 1999, were reserved for professional or prosumer musicians who used them to add to their sonic pallet inside of a host DAW (like the big three: Cakewalk, Cubase, or Logic). Using softsynths greatly reduced the complexity of tracking keyboard parts in a MIDI sequencer DAW. Doing everything inside the computer means there is no gain structure to manage and no loss of fidelity. Audio can stay in the digital domain and be processed with 32bit fidelity to minimize rounding errors. Softsynths were also cost effective, as you didn’t need to re-buy hardware. Eventually that sonic pallet became attractive to live gigging, although the threat of a crash and reboot always loomed large. With the creation of MainStage (at just $30), a lightweight host for softsynths specifically created for live environments, softsynths became a staple of modern keyboard gigging.

One of those softsynths that I considered a secret weapon both live and in my studio was “Alchemy” by Camel Audio. It was relatively light on the CPU, but strong on evocative sound. Producer, DJ, Technologist, and “Father of Trance” BT described it as “… the best synth I have ever used in my entire life. Hard or soft synth, the most elegant, animated, beautiful, evocative synthesizer ever made.” That’s no small praise. BT is Berkley trained, has conducted live orchestras, and since then even produced his own software plugin based on his “stutter edit” style – so that is not a resource-constrained compliment. Alchemy is world class.

A point of clarification- Mac Observer reported that “Apple Adds Alchemy Synthesizer Support to Logic Pro X,” but this isn’t quite correct. Logic, as well as many other DAWs, could already host any range of softsynths, to include Alchemy via a plugin standard called VST or AU. For example, Cubase made a point of explaining how Alchemy integrated back in the day. With Apple’s acquisition, everyone else actually lost access to Alchemy because Apple has not released it as a standalone product on the VST or AU standards. Instead, it is now locked away inside Apple products. I initially looked at this acquisition and its significance through the lens of MainStage, but the more I’ve thought about it, this might be more of a move for Logic. But before we get into all that, let’s talk about Alchemy.

Intro to Alchemy Softsynth

Below is what the most updated version of Alchemy looked like before Camel Audio shut off the lights, and is what Apple received (plus whatever else Camel Audio had cooking in the back room).

Instead of employing DRM (which often impacts usability) to protect their software, Camel Audio took a different tack and baked the user’s name right into the owner’s version of the software. The owner’s name is shown in two places, once under the logotype “Alchemy,” and the second upon startup in the “LED panel” in the center. In fact, when you first run the synth, this LED panel displays not only your name, but your phone number and address – basically all your support information. I imagine this did a pretty good job of dissuading folks from sharing their personal copy of the synth without saddling honest users with flaky authentication, an approach which strikes me as Apple-ey.

A couple key points to understanding this display:

To the right of the Alchemy Logotype there are three buttons: “Browse, Simple, and Advance” indicating three modes for interacting with the synth. The default mode (highlighted in blue) is “Browse” (pictured above), the purpose of which is to help with finding the right sound. This is typically the start of the keyboardist’s workflow.

Today’s keyboard workstations and softsynths usually have hundreds, if not thousands, of sounds on board. Indeed, Camel Alchemy shipped with 5GB of samples and over 1,000 sounds. With this many sounds it became possible to spend hours or even days searching for sounds and not actually doing any music (I’m not making this up. This was discussed in Keyboard magazine, and I was guilty of it myself!). Thus navigating and finding the right sound is a problem of significant importance. Camel Audio thoughtfully approached this issue by tagging all their sounds and letting the user select (top row) various categories, genres, or sound types to filter results (second row) displayed as sound names. I don’t know if Camel Audio was the first to use this tag/filter approach to find sounds (e.g. legendary heavyweight Absynth also does this, at right), but this approach works extremely well. Additionally, when selected, Alchemy displays a graphic of the sound library where the sound came from, a shout-out to the author, and a place to save user tags and user comments as well. Finally, Alchemy uses a five-star rating system for each sound (again, very apple-ey) with the default value set to three stars, which I find useful.

The third row exposes some rapid sound editing parameters as well as some macro sound editing parameters that are among the best implementation of these ideas that I’ve seen. First, there are two X/Y “joystick” controllers connected to a variety of parameters. Although this approach is not without precedent, it’s a useful one. One of the most compelling and original features of Alchemy is the eight zones in the bottom right. With a mouse or other X-Y controller(s) you can move around in this area and smoothly fade from one set of parameters to another. Getting a keyboard to change parameters without glitching (or typically “zipping”) while playing notes is, I-don’t-know-how-to-put-this-but-kind-of-a-big-deal, and is essential to the “playability” of the synth. Using these eight zones in real time facilitate playing the parameters themselves, modifying the timbre, adding depth to the sound.

Alchemy Today

Now that we have looked at Legacy Alchemy, let’s see what Apple did to the front panel, while in the same default browse mode:

Clean. Familiar. Somehow bigger. I really like it. They didn’t mess it up. Basically everything is intact. That’s a lot of restraint on Apple’s part.

The only addition I see is that in some sounds (not a majority though), there are labels written in the eight zones instead of just numbering them (see right). This could be helpful to remind you what that zone sounds like, or to help you to avoid a zone. Typically I like about five of the eight zones and really want to avoid one or two.

The thing that I see missing is a little graphic and credit to the author of the sound bank that the sound comes from, but that was probably more important in the past and not relevant to Apple’s business model, as we will see. The user tags and comments area remain intact, as does the five star rating with the default set at three stars. It’s really interesting to me that Apple kept the default at a three star rating, since they also use a five star system in iTunes and iPhoto, but the default there is no stars. This is a little non-standard for Apple.

Let’s look at the simple mode from the Legacy synth:

This mode assumes you’ve found your sound and want to save screen real estate. It has just the real-time performance parameters on it you need to leverage this synth.

OK, Apple’s take:

Once again, everything is intact. Just a much cleaner more logical design – better in every way.

The design has less skeuomorphic cues – the graduations on the buttons and the diagonals on the joystick are gone – although the metaphor of buttons, knobs and zones remain intact for keyboardists who may actually map these parameters to real-world physical interfaces (I certainly have/do).

Let’s take a look at the Advanced Mode, meant to expose all the parameters to the no-kidding sound-programmers and sound-tweakers out there (as modifying the default sounds, if only a little, is a must for any “legit” keyboardist).

Lots of skeuomorphic textures and indentations are present, as well as recessed areas to group controls.

Ok, Apple’s redesign:

Again, this design is better in every way. Perhaps the most obvious improvement is actually drawing out (in ORANGE!) the “Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release” or ADSR loudness envelope that each note pressed on a keyboard will follow. Seeing this makes me wonder why on earth this wasn’t done in the original version; it’s that obvious of an oversight in past versions.

This is the only place we see this color of orange. Before this, blue was the accent color over a greyscale panel. Here a new color is introduced, and it’s used to map any control that may impact the note envelope (e.g. other gain controls). It’s a bit unusual to see a color in only one place, kind of like a font used only once, but in my opinion the use of a new color is warranted because the envelope is a singularly critical part of the sound, and there are a handful of parameters that impact it. Designating those with this new color adds clarity.

Upgrade Summary

As a lover of this synth who is emotionally invested in it’s ongoing success, I really am relieved to see it lives again, wasn’t destroyed, wasn’t “simplified” into a consumer product, didn’t have its paradigm changed (e.g. FCP), still looks familiar, and quite honestly is looking better than ever.

The sound (timbre) of the current release is exactly the same as the legacy version. It’s fun to see all the knobs in all the same positions making the same sounds, but with a flatter (there I said it) user interface.

I would be surprised if there is a single keyboardist out there who wouldn’t clearly view this as an improvement.

Dollars and Sounds

When Camel Audio sold this synth, it went for $249 US and it came with a nice default set of samples and sounds (5GB of samples and over 1,000 sounds). But that default set of sounds could be expanded with additional libraries of sounds that Camel Audio continued developing (at ~ $59 each). This kept the synth fresh and relevant to whatever genres you were currently exploring, and kept funds flowing in to Camel.

This is a business model that Apple could have followed, but discarded. It appears to me that all or many of the sound libraries are included for free in the current version of Alchemy, which again, costs the consumer nothing. It’s just a free update. Apple’s version of Alchemy comes with 3,000 thousands. and 14 GB of content, if you download it all. These are probably the best of all the expansion libraries, which when bundled was an $850 synth.

Apple likely didn’t drop “Apple Money” to purchase this synth, but they dropped some significant coin on a well-researched fit to serve both MainStage and Logic. By well-researched I mean, there are a lot of softsynths out there that put an extensive load on your CPU. That’s fine in the studio with Logic where it is OK to render out a complex softsynth part in even longer than real time and “freeze” that audio rendered out. But MainStage is a different application. It needs sound to be computed in real-time (typically < 10ms), so anything it can’t compute in that period of time means clicks, glitches, noise, and hung notes, none of which is tolerable. Alchemy serves the interests of both MainStage and Logic, because it has so much sonic goodness and is light on the CPU.

Apple knew what they were doing. They took a great product, and made multiple products better – and significantly so (it’s even in GarageBand). Honestly, I’m both floored and relieved by this. In my mind, this is a textbook example of an acquisition done right.

★★★★★ for the Alchemy team.

Strategic Analysis

If Gruber has taught us anything, it’s that Apple’s priorities are #1) Apple, #2) the consumer and #3) developers, in that order. So let’s take a look at how these priorities align and guess some of the reasons behind this acquisition.

This is an obvious win for MainStage, which is now a simply breathtaking deal at $30. You could spend a grand or two for a hardware synth and not be this sonically flexible or ugpradable. But with that money, purchasing Apple hardware starts making sense. So Apple might actually win some new hardware purchases, while the consumer would seem to be assured that Apple wants to continue to be the platform of choice for music production. Developers can still develop synths for MainStage, but they better up their game. Heavyweights Native Instruments and Spectrosonics are competitive, but they can also bring a Macbook Pro to its knees in a live environment. You’re going to have to be out-of-the-box, someone like recent upstart Output with “reversed” or “pulsed” sounds (see right) to have something to say these days. I don’t know how you would go head to head with Alchemy.

The more I think though, MainStage might just be the “free candy” to get you hooked on Alchemy, so you have one more reason to buy into Logic. My DAW of choice is currently Cubase, and the more I think about it, I may also be their target audience.

Previously, a DAW might cost $700 new. Those prices have come down, Sternberg Cubase now goes for $550 and Cakewalk Sonar is $500. But Apple shook things up once they lowered the price of Logic to just $199 back in 2011. That is the price of an upgrade in Cubase! Additionally I’ve heard good things about the quality of Logic’s onboard effects, giving you less of a reason to spend money on 3d party software (I’ve spent thousands on Waves on reverbs and compressors!). With Alchemy included in Logic, sequestered away from the other DAWs, there is another compelling reason to make the move to Logic. If you’re a developer, I don’t know how you stay competitive at these prices. You’re going to have to think differently about the studio space (e.g. Ableton Live or Propellerhead’s Reason), or offer extremely high-end solutions (e.g. Protools), and those alternatives exist. But I think Apple wants to own the traditional MIDI-studio DAW space, and with their quality/cost it will be very hard to compete in this space.

I think this acquisition did two things. First it increased the value of the Apple platform for pro music, which is good news for everyone: Apple, Consumers and Developers. Secondly, I think Apple is playing chess with DAWs, and this is another attempt at a checkmate.

So you don’t have MainStage what are you waiting for? And if you’ll excuse me I’m off to buy Logic.

Jamaica 2015 Report

November 7, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Friends and supporters of our music ministry trip to Jamaica –

Thank you for believing in us, and for helping to take this trip from a dream into reality. You must be wondering how things went, and I’d like to take some time to share some of the highlights of our trip with you.

Our exciting jo 2015-10-24 07.35.53 urney not only met, but exceeded my expectations. I am deeply grateful for the talented team of musicians who took vacation, leaving their families and jobs, to offer themselves and their expertise to our Jamaican brothers and sisters. This team (of mostly introverts!) gelled together well and honored the individual gifts of one another. 2015-10-22 10.50.18 Our schedule was packed, and taking on such a full trip with a bunch of introverted musicians was a trick. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and didn’t even get to walk onto the sandy beach across from where we were staying until the following Monday, the day before we left.

The pressure of our schedule was compounded when we lost 10 hours of rehearsal and soundcheck time our first morning together. We arrived at our scheduled time for our 10 AM sound check, and the stage wasn’t even put together! ….And so we had to relaxed our expectations and tried to vibe with the flow of island time. “It’s all OK, mon. Everithin’s gonna be alright!”

Our first task was to provide music for the Global Leadership Summit, hosted by Willow Creek. The mission of the Global Leadership Summit (held annually near Chicago at the Willow Creek church) is to better equip present and future leaders in the church for leadership.

Dave Falconer of jamaicalink.org

Two Jamaican representatives attended this year’s actual #GLS15 at Willow and they selected the presentations they thought would be most applicable to the Jamaican audience. These were shown on a huge video screen, center stage. Our role as a team was to provide music and worship leading, playing some key songs after the music session and during the break.

2015-10-24 18.35.56 While providing an opportunity for corporate worship, we had the dual role of “setting the bar”- showing what is possible – in a conference room full of Jamaican pastors and worship leaders. We didn’t take this as an opportunity to show off our individual proficiencies, but rather wanted to demonstrate how to serve the song, serve each other, and serve the congregation in creating space for corporate worship, modeling after Christ’s servant leadership.
The feedback we received was extremely positive. I spoke with the Willow Creek representative, Randy Johnson, with some ideas about stage design in this unique environment. He took that opportunity to comment that the quality of the music exceeded his expectations, which really warmed our hearts. When you pull together a group of extremely thoughtful and talented musicians, producers and worship leaders who all understand their role, and who have a heart to give their all to the worship experience, that’s not necessarily inevitable, but we’re very thankful for the synergy this group had.

2015-10-24 12.35.55

The second major part of our ministry was to host a full-featured music workshop for a number of churches near Montego Bay. This is the same curriculum we’ve been developing for more than a year now. We tried to let everyone see behind the curtain of how we do things as much as we could.

Here are some of the things we covered:

At the initial plenary session we discussed the big picture, explaining everyone’s roles.
We talked about the foundation: the drummer as time keeper and the bassist as the glue that ties the time to the harmonic content of the other instruments.
We talked a lot about “sonic space”. Acoustics at churches in Jamaica is a significant issue, as most seem to be highly reflective. So listening to how all the musicians play together to fill that space is paramount.
We also talked about the importance of the sound technician, the most underrated musician out there, but perhaps the most important.
We talked about the most visible musician – the lead vocal or worship leader – and the importance of modeling a melody that is singable, in a key that is singable.
Finally, we discussed how everyone in the band is serving the song and making space for the most important member – the congregation. Much of the excitement and energy of playing live comes from making space for the congregation to respond, even though we have no idea how they will respond or how the (or even if) the Spirit will move.

After talking theory for hours and taking questions and comments, we closed with a two-hour worship concert in which we participated in and demonstrated all the important principles we had been talking. This allowed people to clearly see how all the theory works in practice and illustrate how we choose to serve the song, serve each other, and serve the congregation. This final worship concert was probably the highlight of the entire trip for us, and the response was terrific.We were encouraged by the responsiveness of those who had attended our workshop. Their pastor (Duane Maden) came to us afterward and told us how much his community needed to hear what we had presented. Another person told us they had been to all the concerts in this church, and this one was by far the best they had attended.

We went to Jamaica thinking that we would be ministering, that we had much to give. But the result was that we received perhaps even more than we gave. It was so fulfilling to be part of the Global Leadership Summit there, and it was incredible to see the impact of the BYB curriculum on people’s understanding of how to do music. Certainly there are intrinsic obstacles to overcome in Jamaica, and certainly there is much more we could do, but we feel great about the connections that were made.

Grace & Peace
Pete

New to Hymns

September 21, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Taylor Carson

Whenever you rehearse a hymn, even one of the new hymn rearrangements, you quickly get a sense of whether the vocalist grew up singing out of hymnbook or not. Probably half the musicians I work with know them and probably half don’t. It seems to manifest somewhat like an accent – you either have that native accent, or you don’t. You either hit those special queues that aren’t exactly notated, or you don’t.

What I’d like to suggest is that not having that native hymn accent is not necessarily a liability in creating an arrangement, and can even work to be an advantage. Yes, it does take a little extra investment to nail down certain notes that you need for it to “still be the hymn”, but once you have that, someone new to the hymns can bring something fresh, something immediate, something a little raw and unpolished but emotionally relevant.

I recently had this experience. A friend introduced me to Taylor Carson by way of this video, and I knew I wanted to try something with him. It took about six months for the timing to work out, but I eventually got him into the studio to sing “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” on a track I’d been experimenting with. Taylor didn’t grow up singing the hymns, but he was willing to put in a little extra work to get the essentials down as I heard them, and then was more than willing to put all his heart into a performance.

I absolutely love what we captured in the end. It felt fresh to me. It felt real. It felt raw. It felt so very honest. His take made me hear the hymn, and even the lyrics of the hymn, in a new way. Which is what I think we’re supposed to be doing with sacred music. (Psalm 33:3)

Please tell me what you think!

Available on iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

Photoshopped Worship

June 8, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Teo on Bass by Aaro Keipi

You don’t have to spend much time on the web, let alone Facebook, before you come across an article on how Photoshopping (i.e. digitally altering) a picture has gone too far, how it creates unattainable standards of beauty, and/or how it is evil. Photography forums populated by the people who routinely use Photoshop will even agree and mock users who over-photoshop or worse do it poorly (e.g. three hands).

You can’t discuss music in the church for more than about two or three sentences before someone invokes the word “excellence“. Certainly our goal shouldn’t be do to things poorly, but how far are we willing to go it in the name of excellence. Is it possible to Photoshop a Worship experience, and is it possible to go too far with it? What happens if we slip up and allow people to see three hands (e.g. expose that we use backing tracks)?

Are we giving up anything in the name of excellence?

Where is the elusive line where things have gone “too far”?

While there are purists in any field who argue photoshop is an artistic compromise or even unartistic, I personally can’t get behind the purists. I think filters like the guitar pedals on The Edge’s guitar are part of his sound, part of his instrument, part of his art. Back in the film day, the dark room was part of the craft of photography. Today we have Lightroom and Photoshop, and these are arguably part of the craft of digital photography today. In fact, all my images on this blog were post-produced in photoshop, and if not photoshop, then lightroom.

In the audio world, would we ever suggest that mixing can occur without using compressors and equalization? Or if you’re a mixing engineer, that mastering is not a necessary part of the process of creating an album?

I think it may be helpful to understand something better by understanding it’s opposite. The opposite of “excellence” is sometimes framed as “inclusiveness”, as in the only thing keeping us from excellence is that we’re not being exclusive enough thus we’re allowing less talented folk to participate. While I understand this particular tension, I think another tension exists between “excellence” and “authenticity“.

We think it’s ok to use delay and equalization and compressors, but not as much pitch correction because we expect people to be able to sing on pitch.

The reality is that bad photoshopping, which I’ll generalize as “over-production” is an issue not just in church music, but in society as well. However the problem is compounded in the Christian context due to a pervasive perception of inauthenticity (via hypocritical moralizing or simply wearing a happy “fake” face).

I think it’s safe to say, we’ve seen production, we’ve seen over-production, and at this point there is a thirst for under-production if it provides for a genuine experience. Where we do use production techniques (and I do), we do ourselves and our message a favor to not overdo it.

The Long Worship Tail

April 24, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote a seminal article in Wired magazine about “the long tail” in which he essentially describes the success strategy for Amazon. The gist is that while a brick and mortar store can only afford to stock the top hits, Amazon can stock even obscure titles that get purchased much less often. The insight is that the long tail of those non-hit records actually contains an equal or greater area than the hits.

It’s probably counterintuitive that there are more albums sold that aren’t hits, than there are that are hits, but that is his insight.

If we think of mega-churches as the big hits that everyone knows about, there is a similar counterintuitive dynamic going on in churches.

Approximately 94% of church worshipers are in churches smaller than 500. Only about 2% of church worshipers are in churches larger than 1000.

– source

I think our instinct might be that most people go to larger churches, but as it turns out, church attendance has a similar long tail, with 94% of worshipers in churches under 500.

Perhaps this should inform our efforts to support and love the church by focusing our efforts not just on the large churches but perhaps moreso towards smaller ones.

Love Unquantified

February 26, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Christianity has, in the broad picture, struggled with trying to cope with and understand (quantify?) love.

XKCD

On the one hand, there is the interpretation that our good works need to outweigh our bad works to get into heaven (wasn’t this always “those Catholics”?). At the other extreme, faith alone is all that is required to grant eternal life disconnected from any actions (the Penitent thief). Then of course there are some mitigating factors where “faith without works is dead”. Of course it’s all grace though faith, but I’m not sure that really clarifies much. Good thing I’m not a pastor; I don’t need to provide the answers.

Although this website exists within the context of Christianity, this is not meant to be a theological blog. In some cases, we may wander into philosophical territory or get a little meta, in this case, we’re just getting philosophical about the topic of love… in this case, a love for one’s craft.

Perhaps this is easiest to see with vocalists, but I argue it’s every bit as visible with the other instruments, and that is the very intangible but attractive component of an artist love for singing, love for playing, or love for mixing.

My point is-you can not quantify the impact of a vocalist who loves to sing, or a bassist who loves to lay down the groove, or a sound technician who loves to mix. There is no number to assign to that. There is no compression ratio. There is no frequency response. There is no lick. No right note. No harmonic interval. No decibel level that is the right one. There is no correct answer in music.

There is only love. Love for what we do, for who we do it for, for why we do it.

Auditions

January 1, 2015 By Pete Bulanow

Djembe by Pete Bulanow

At some point in the process of Building Your Band™, probably not long after its inception, you’re going to want to add musicians beyond those you personally know. Normally this is done is through a process of auditions. I’ve seen a trend of using video interviews to weed out the first round of auditions, and that could have some utility if you have a lot of auditionees and don’t want to have to face them all and/or if you want make the barrier to entry higher. But eventually you’re going to want to meet with someone face to face.

For some reason, this seems to be perceived as a rather stressful situation. But I want to argue that stress is what happens when we let someone into a band that shouldn’t be there. I would suggest that there are two reasons we’re holding auditions. One, because we want to work with good people, not just talented people. And secondly, because we want to be able to set those people up for success and not create situations in which they can’t live up to our expectations.

We’ve all been in bands that have worked, and others that have not worked. This is my list of things that I think are important when everything is working, and therefore these are the things that should be covered in the interview.

Prerequisites. There are going to be any number of prerequisites that are informed by your community values. Those may or may not be things like membership or a particular faith experience or testimony.

Dependability. In two areas, punctuality and preparation. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to rehearse because a key person isn’t there. Being late or not giving yourself enough setup time disrespects everyone else’s time, as does not having done your homework (learned the chart, prepped your sounds). This is not something you want to be fighting every time this person plays. As high as you can set this bar in the audition process, do it. Close the doors at 1 min after the appointed time. Require them to bring marked up copies of their charts showing their prep. Ask for references.

Equipment. I just can’t take a musician seriously if they don’t have their own equipment. The most obvious question is how are they staying proficient if they don’t have their own axe? First comes the commitment to their craft, then comes the gig, not the other way around.

Keyboardists need to differentiate themselves from pianists, and part of the way they do that is having command of an arsenal of sounds (vice playing yours). Similarly you couldn’t possibly know a guitarist’s sound without hearing their rig. And wouldn’t you want to hear the bassist’s amp so you have some idea how they hear bass? I would even ask a drummer to bring in their own snare (and if they have any favorite cymbals) so you have a sense of their taste as well. And if your acoustic guitarist shows up without a built-in pickup, it raises questions of how they will play week to week. You wouldn’t even think of asking a mandolin or cellist to audition unless they had an instrument, right? The instrument is such a vital part of the sound that every person brings, I think it deserves to be part of the audition.

Theory: scales / chords (M/m/7ths/sus) / key signatures / time signatures. You don’t need to bury someone with theory, but you have to have a sense of how far they have gone and how much that impacts them given the context of the kind of music you do. I was surprised to learn one day in the studio that one of my favorite drummers didn’t know what a 2/4 bar of music in a 4/4 song was. However, it made little difference, because I could play it for him and he got it after one try – beside the fact that his time was always impeccable. But there is a judgment call here. If you don’t know the difference between a M7 vs. a m7, do you want to spend rehearsal time explaining that? Or maybe you don’t care enough and can say “ignore the 7ths, someone else will cover those”.

Proficiency. Sure you need to play at a certain level, but communicating what needs to be played is part of that. Ideally, someone could learn a song by ear from an MP3, both riffs (specific key notes) and chords (which they voice however they want). I wouldn’t require someone to know how to read sheet music “notes”, and in fact I would consider needing notes to actually be a liability. So, a solo instrumentalist that can play by ear is invaluable. In fact, everyone should be able to improvise. And the ability to read a chart, even sight-read a chart is just as important when the inevitable set list changes come up.

Time. Everything that happens musically happens against this canvas. So the ability to play in time or to set time even, to create a pocket, to not rush or lag, but to push or to pull just the right amount, even with contradictory dynamics (fast and soft, slow and loud), is essential, as is the ability to play to a click. Everyone is somewhere on this scale. This is one of those things that never stops being important, and continues to be more important the longer you do this. Make playing in time to your satisfaction part of the audition.

Pressure. I’ll be honest and say I don’t understand the argument that an audition is a lot of pressure. Playing with a half dozen or dozen potential team members in a closed room is not pressure. Playing with a fantastic band and not being able to keep up is a lot of pressure. Having to cover the intro to a song in a service in front of hundreds or thousands of people with stage lights alternately blinding you and leaving you in the dark is a lot of pressure. I would argue an audition should be friendly and positive and you should set that tone, and folks better be able to handle that little bit of pressure.

Capacity. This is the ability to remember changes or arrangement choices, and it’s something we all have to build up. It looks like this: “Ok people, listen up, we’re going to double the intro, then go right into a chorus before dropping back for the first verse. We’ll then do a normal chorus, verse 2 and chorus before going into the bridge. On the bridge I want everyone out except the acoustic guitar and kick on 2&4, and then we’re going to build back up on a double bridge, then right into the chorus a cappella with only the drum kit. Then everyone in for two more choruses, and end on the first line of the first verse without resolving. Got it?” Ideally someone can hear that once, see it in their head, maybe jot a few notes down on their chart, and not miss any of those changes an hour later when you’re doing it live. And do that equally well for six other songs.

Personality. All things being equal, even things being a little unequal, personality plays a huge role in getting the gig, and more importantly, in getting called back for the second or third gig. This is true for session musicians – the best our discipline has to offer – so why wouldn’t it be true for us simple live musicians? We need to be able to take direction, to accept critiques and suggestions, to try to respond to the vision of a producer. So make critiquing and suggesting changes part of your audition process. See how people handle it, how they respond. See if they take it personally, or if they really try to hear what you are saying and try to do it. Get off on the right foot and let people know that taking feedback and open honest communication is key to success.

X-factor. This is art. Although music has some logical and even mathematical structure to it, it is ultimately judged on the basis of intuition and interpretation – the ephemeral “beauty” if you will. This is another way of saying that not everything that counts can be counted. Auto-tune gets you perfect pitch. An emotional gut-wrenching interpretation comes from a heart overflowing. You can judge what you hear against some of the other factors we mentioned, but don’t get too wrapped up in doing a consumer report index for each audition. Folks are either above the line (in) or below the line (not in), and you’ll know the answer to that question. If they are above or below the line you can rank folks, but there is no number that says they are in or out.

So those are my thoughts. Anything else you think I missed?

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