Pullin’ back the curtain

Our department has recently taken on a monumental project. This Easter we launch Cross Point’s Internet campus. The amount of data we crunched (production interface systems, design concepts, wiring diagrams, and eventually awarding the installation contract) left our heads spinning.

When it came to the actual web content we knew exactly what we wanted to do –

1. Pete’s message would be a primary focus.

2. Pete would also need a way to interface with the on-line community after his message.

3. The corporate worship segment would have to rock.

Points 1 and 2 would be pretty straight forward, but I knew that point 3 would take some work.

There are tons of reasons why live worship music for the web is not an easy thing. First, it takes a 2nd audio engineer on a completely separate mixing console to build a mix exclusively for the web. Second, the band has to execute flawlessly. Any mistakes the band makes are broadcast for the entire world to hear. And lastly, it’s tough to make the worship segment look great without proper lighting and video equipment.

In a live environment there’s grace. The sound energy, the lighting, and the momentum of the live experience captures and engages more of your senses. At a live event the average listener rarely notices subtle mistakes, but when you just sit and listen to music from the web small imperfections that should unnoticed, are made very apparent when isolated to the web stream.

Enter our solution…

We periodically have all campus worship nights where we stack in extra production. We record the band to protools, design extra lighting for the room, and bring in extra video gear. After those nights we can take the recorded tracks and overdub a couple instruments, tweek the vocals, and bolster the entire sound. I used a producer/engineer friend of mine, Joe Causey, to produce the final project. We used his studio space to grab some extra guitars, vocals, and mix the tracks down. This enhanced mix gives our in house video genius a solid track to edit all of the camera shots to.

So take a listen to a before and after of the live mixdown…

Mighty to save live

Mighty to Save “live”

PS – Your favorite live worship records are never 100% live (Hillsong, North Point, Passion etc…)