Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

Remote GLS Stage Geometry

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Mountain Range with logo Recently we had the opportunity to play music live for a remote Global Leadership Summit event (ours was in Jamaica). 2015-10-22 10.50.18When 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. 2015-10-24 12.35.55 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“. Remote GLS Stage Design-2
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. Remote GLS Stage Design-3
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!

Love Unquantified

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

Sound 101 – Sine Waves

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Transforming Sound from the Time Domain to the Frequency Domain

Probably the most foundational thing any musician or sound engineer could take the time to understand is sound. And probably the most important way one could do that is to understand Fouriers theorem. If you ever said to your math teacher “how am I ever going to use this in the real world,” you are about to eat those words. I hope they’re delicious. Fouriers theorem says that any waveform (i.e. timbre) can be made by adding sine waves at various multiples (i.e. harmonics) of the fundamental (i.e. note). More mathily – Fouriers Theorem transforms sound from the time domain (the way we see and experience it) and rotates it 90 degrees to look at it sideways in the frequency domain (which actually provides insight).

The six arrows represent the first six terms of the Fourier series of a square wave (they are sine waves!). The two circles at the bottom represent the exact square wave (blue) and its Fourier-series approximation (purple).

Put another way, Fouriers Theorem shows us that sine waves are the atoms of sound. Isn’t that cool? It doesn’t get much more awesome than that people. All of a sudden, sound is much less mysterious. And the more you think about it, the more situations it helps you make sense of, the more situations you see people who don’t understand this get things wrong, the less mysterious sound becomes. (So that’s why they test our hearing with “pure” sign waves, because they’re checking our hearing at a given frequency and don’t want our ability to hear overtones to affect the results.)

Latin 101

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Just like the language of aviation is English, the language of music is Latin. Here are some terms that should keep you covered about 99% of the time (selected and edited from wikipedia): Two different kinds of articulation:
  • staccato: making each note brief and detached; the opposite of legato
  • legato: joined; i.e., smoothly, in a connected manner
Four different ways to talk about tempo:
  • accelerando, accel.: accelerating; gradually increasing the tempo
  • ritardando, often said simply ritard., rit.: slowing down; decelerating; opposite of accelerando
  • rubato: i.e., flexible in tempo, applied to notes within a musical phrase for expressive effect
  • a tempo: in time; i.e., the performer should return to the main tempo of the piece (after an accelerando or ritardando)
Six different levels of volume:
  • pianissimo or pp : very gently; i.e., perform very softly, even softer than piano.
  • piano or p: gently, softly
  • mezzo piano or mp: half softly; i.e., moderately softly.
  • mezzo forte or mf: half loudly; i.e., moderately loudly.
  • forte or f: strong, loudly
  • fortissimo or ff: very loud
And finally, two different ways to change your volume:
  • crescendo: growing; i.e., progressively louder (contrast decrescendo)
  • decrescendo: decreasing in loudness; i.e., progressively softer
If you know these – you’ve got the basics!

Post-MIDI Subdividing

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One of my favorite influences is an electronic recording artist Brian Transeau or BT. He is known as the “Godfather of Trance” in the EDM (Electric Dance Music) genre. One of the main reasons I like BT is because he assumes his audience is intelligent and have long attention spans. BT’s songs have recently been 8 – 12 minutes long but can be 46 minutes long, and it is only after he has produced these original versions, that he creates a 3-4 minute radio edit. BT made his first significant contribution to the world of music production in 2003 with his song “Simply Being Loved” which had 6,178 edits to the lead vocal track all done by hand in Peak Bias – placing the song in the Guinness Book of World Records. Here he is in the original music video: And this is just the vocal track which BT was gracious enough to release about a year ago… This song has 1,024th notes in it, but ultimately is still rooted in duples and triplets. My wife and I actually met BT at a theater in MD for the release of his next album, This Binary Universe, which was shown with video and in 5.1 surround sound. One thing the wiki page doesn’t explain, but BT explained to us, is that this album breaks the mold of subdividing by 2s or 3s in that it uses logarithmic curve to move from say a 512th note duple, slowing down to a triplet 8th note figure. So not only are we shifting from two different note values, but the interpolation between them is not linear, it’s a nice smooth logarithmic (or exponential) curve. Musically you might think about how a washboard is played or hear how a turbine spins up. Listen to Every Other Way. I’m actually producing a song with this kind of technique right now, using logarithmic and exponential curves to move between different kind of subdivisions, and I hope to release it in the near future. I’m doing this not as an end in itself or just because I think it’s an interesting production technique, but because I really think it serves the song. Can’t wait to share that!

Post-MIDI

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Technology has had a huge impact on music. It’s made us play steadier (I would argue even when not playing to a click). It’s allowed us to use samples. It’s let us loop in real time. It’s let us use loops, or play sync’d to other tracks. It’s let us auto-tune in real time. And it’s allowed us to program sequences that were otherwise unplayable. All of this has changed our ear – the way we hear music. One group (Dawn of MIDI) has responded to this by playing acoustic music live that otherwise would seem like it was programmed. They do this by playing crazy meters, time-with-in-a-time where different people play different meters at the same time and it somehow works, that you wouldn’t think people could play. And they do this by playing intricate and repetitive patterns that, ok is indeed minimalist like Steve Reich, but is normally the domain of machines. Humans are unpredictable and random, machines are anything but. Technology can inform our music. Integrating cultural influences such as these allows us to speak into that culture, they give us that platform for doing so. But practically how could that translate? In a live situation, most typically this can mean integrating programmed loops or tracks. In a studio situation this can be a lot more intricate, and can mean being aware of technology and what is happening.

Unity and Diversity in the Band

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unseemly guitar pedals by Pete Bulanow

unseemly guitar pedals by Pete Bulanow

Now if the kickdrum should say, “Because I am not a snare, I do not belong to the drum kit,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the drum kit. And if the BGVs should say, “Because I do not have the same spotlight as the worship leader, I do not belong to the band,” they would not for that reason stop being part of the band. If the whole band were a guitar, where would the sensibilities of the keyboards be? If the whole body were a bassist, where would the counterpoint be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the band, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one instrument, where would the band be? As it is, there are many parts, but one song. The bassist cannot say to the keys, “I don’t need you!” And the keys cannot say to the guitarist, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the band that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor (we call them the rhythm section). And all the MIDI cables and guitar pedals that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our worship leader needs no special treatment. But God has put the band together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it (looking at you house engineer), so that there should be no division in the band and tech, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

~ Not 1 Corinthians 12

If Blood Will Flow

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Sting - ...All This Time (16 Tracks) - Booklet (3-6)-2On this day (Sep 11th), I could not recommend a more poignant video than “All This Time” by Sting (Netflix). The DVD was meant to chronicle a small invite-only concert at his home in Tuscany, with a dress rehearsal Sep 10th and the main show Sep 11th. In the video, you see real-time reactions to the events as they unfolded, and the decision to go ahead with the show later that night, albeit leaving the setlist open. (Wikipedia) Leading up to the production of the show, you see the rehearsal space and you get incredible comments from the musicians involved. Sting is the consummate band leader and loves to give his people a chance to shine – there is so much we can learn from him in this regard. But if you recall my post on my ideal band size of 6 or 7, Sting’s band is sixteen, with multiple keyboards, multiple percussionists, brass, strings – it’s insane. Which leads us to some of my favorite quotes:
He’s got two percussionists, he’s got Jason playing the acoustic piano, Kipper playing the keyboards, and Jeff playing the organ, electric bass and acoustic bass, and guitar. He has all these elements going on at the same time, and it’s working, and it’s very soft, it’s very sensitive. And that was probably the most surprising thing, because on some nights my band is way louder than this and there’s only four guys, and it made me think, hmmm, maybe I better rethink some things when I go home. ~ Christian McBride
and
Songs have to be simple. They can have a subtext that you can find, but you shouldn’t be singing about an issue. You shouldn’t be saying, down with this or down with that, that’s just journalism. Art is something else, something veiled. And I often feel like songwriting is something like putting yourself into a state of receptivity, or to be more cosmic about it, a state of grace where the song can reveal itself to you. And I think you’re lucky if you can be in a beautiful place, because nature is full of stories, full of images. Powerful, healing images. ~ Sting
Ultimately, one of the greatest gifts of this project is the new rendition of the song “Fragile,” developed just days before the concert. Absolutely breath-taking, and hauntingly prescient:
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one Drying in the color of the evening sun Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away But something in our minds will always stay Perhaps this final act was meant To clinch a lifetime’s argument That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could For all those born beneath an angry star Lest we forget how fragile we are On and on the rain will fall Like tears from a star like tears from a star On and on the rain will say How fragile we are how fragile we are How fragile we are how fragile we are

Basic Time Signatures

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I happened to be in the studio when one of my favorite drummers was tracking some parts, and I don’t recall if I was supposed to be helping produce or why I was there, but for some reason I butted in and said, “You just need to stick in an extra 2/4 measure.” Remarkably, he didn’t know what that meant. He told me to just play it for him once, so I did, and he immediately got it. It wasn’t a matter of capacity or ability, he was a drummer with incredible feel and never missed a beat. He just didn’t know how to count. That’s happened to me often enough that I now recognize training and musicianship do not correlate. Still, learning the language of counting helps us communicate, so let’s talk about it. After all, it would have saved us maybe a minute of time and at $100 an hour that’s as much as it costs for a tall coffee! When I started piano lessons at age five, I recall the only requirement was that I be able to count to 4. To play most music these days, you can get away with being able to count 4/4 time, and 6/8 time. The basics are: the top number in a time signature means how many counts in a measure. The bottom number in a time signature means what kind of note (think a fraction of 1 over that number) gets one count. The most common time signature of 4/4 time says that there are four counts to a measure, and a quarter (1/4) note gets one count. When counting 1-2-3-4, the accents are on 1 and 3, and the time signature has a duple feel to it.
  • So a 2/4 measure means two counts to a measure, and a quarter note gets one count. Counting 1-2, the accent is on count one. This is essentially a half of a 4/4 bar.
In 6/8 time, there are six counts to a measure and an 8th note (1/8th) gets one count. Counting 1-2-3-4-5-6, you see the accent is on 1 and 4 and there is a triplet feel to this time signature. Think Indescribable.
  • Similarly 9/8 time has nine counts to a measure and an 8th note gets one count. Counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, we still have a triplet feel, but it’s three groups of three, which is slightly different than a waltz. Count 1 is accented more than count 4 and 7. Think Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring.
  • A waltz in 3/4 time has three counts to a measure and a quarter (1/4) note gets one count. Counting 1-2-3, the accent is on count 1 and there is a slow triplet feel to this time signature, with each measure feeling consistent. Think Stronger.
Those are really all of the basic time signatures, but it’s worth it to dig deeper.

“Is there, like, a specific place I’m supposed to be looking?”

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Grand Piano (Pete Bulanow)

Grand Pianos are heavy (Pete Bulanow)

New Zealander Lorde recently made history by being the first female and first solo artist to win the best rock video award at the VMAs. In her short time on stage, somewhat bewildered by it all, she asked the question: “Is there, like, a specific place I’m supposed to be looking?” This is a telling question. If we don’t want people to be bewildered on Sunday morning, we need to have an answer to this question. The visual “melody” of the song if you will, must be clear. Lights can help create this focal point, but at a minimum, the worship leader must be visible. More than once, I’ve seen a worship leader sitting at a piano on the ground level with an unidentified voice coming from the sound system. If that worship leader needs to play a grand, get that piano on stage, or get them playing a big sample-playback keyboard on the stage. We have to get this right. Let’s talk about sound for a moment. Reality is generally coherent. For example when a twig snaps in the forest behind you, that means something is behind you. With artificial environments, sight and sound can be decoupled (become incoherent), to the detriment of the experience and the bewilderment of the observer. Certainly, at a bare minimum, have your speakers up front where things are happening. Similarly, more than once I’ve actually seen speakers in the middle or even back of the church. The point is not just to make sound louder, it’s to make it all make sense. Disembodied voices are disorienting. Now if you have a nice stereo setup, it makes sense to align the audio with your visuals. If backing vocals are slightly to the left, it may improve coherence to mix them that way. But if your drum kit is off to one side, I would still recommend panning it to the center of your mix (same with the bass), or if panning something off to one side means you will hear a different mix depending on where you sit in the house, then keep everything centered. The goal is to make it easy for people to understand what is going on and minimize the artificiality of technology.