Hey, everyone. (Speaking like there is a great big audience listening to me...lol) I know I haven't updated in forever. I haven't had a lot of time on my hands since school started. Anyways, I thought I'd go ahead and post my newest video of our youth band doing "My Glorious." We had some monitor problems and some obvious flaws, but it was pretty good for the first time we did it.
My Glorious
Add to My Profile | More Videos
1st Day, Preparing for the Convention
For those of you who didn’t know, I went on to a convention this past week in Maryland . It is the Church Media Convention for the online community (and other stuff) of churchmedia.net. I attended classes on various software and other media ministry stuff. I got to play in the worship band for the general sessions as the drummer.
We arrived Sunday night, and went to the church to join some fellow CMN’ers for the first time the next day. I met up with all the people from ChurchMedia.net Monday night. The convention actually started Tuesday, but the band rehearsed on Monday night. We met the Covenant Baptist’s band (the church where the convention was held) before we practiced and they showed us their sound system and stuff. It was cool seeing it come together, since we were from all over the country and most of us had never played with each other before. Jeremy Tuel was our leader and electric guitarist, David Hochheiser was our acoustic guitarist. They were both from Maryland and volunteered to play with us. Mark Finley was the bass player; from Texas , and our keyboardist, Richard Williams, came from Missouri . And of course me, representing Tennessee on the drums.
The church that the convention was held in was very cool. They had a new building; only been up for about 8 months. They had a nice sound/video/light system.
The soundboard was an A&H 32 channel board. Each instrument’s area on the stage was equipped with an Aviom monitor mixer which allows each member of the band to have his own mix. They are SO cool! The stage was completely silent if you took off your earphones. I got to play the church’s set of Roland TD-20 electronic drums.
I can’t remember what light board they had, but they had about 32 ellipsoidal lights in the front, and 12 par cans in the back. We didn’t use much of their video system, but we had laptop’s and stuff going through their projector. We had a Tricaster for video streaming with two cameras. I think at one point there were around 105 viewers watching the stream from the internet.
Day 1 of the Convention
Today, the convention officially started. There were classes on various things from Adobe After Effects and Photoshop Elements to Google Picasa and Drupal websites.
At the beginnings of some sessions, they gave away prizes for answering trivia sessions. I answered the question about Tim Eason’s wife’s name (he’s the founder of ChurchMedia.net) and won a glow in the dark USB cable! At one keynote, one lucky prize winner who answered a very difficult question received a TWO DAY OLD PINNAPLE PIZZA!
Len Wilson and Jason Moore from Midnight Oil Productions (www.midnightoilproductions.com) presented the keynote, or general session, on “Using New Media to Communicate the Timeless Message.” The had a ton of useful information. Unfortunately though, a lot of the “no-no’s” that they mentioned, our church does!
*The band played for worship at the beginning and end of the keynotes.
Day 2 of the Convention
Today the keynote and worship was at the beginning of the day. Richard did the keynote. There were more classes including Advanced Photoshop with Phil Graves, and Adobe Premiere Video Editing with Joey Famiglietti.
I won a 256mb USB drive the size of my finger nail by running up to the front and grabbing it first! We got to visit Bridgeway Community Church in Columbia , which is in the process of building a new 1,200 seat auditorium. We got to see their FOH position with a Yamaha digital soundboard. He pushed some faders up, then changed to a different page of channels and we watched as the faders moved themselves! Then we got to tour their video editing/production suite. It was awesome! They had tons of video switching and editing stuff with almost 10 video monitors.
Day 3 of the Convention
Today was the last day of the convention. We did the same schedule as yesterday; keynote and worship at the beginning with classes following. Phil Graves did the keynote about keeping focus about what it’s all about in our media ministries. There were more classes from Richard, Len and Jason, and more.
Joseph B gave everyone in the band a free USB flashdrive with almost 150 stock photos on them. That was cool. Now I have two of those things.
It was an awesome convention. I’ve learned a lot, and hope the people back home will be interested in some ideas that I’ve picked up on. It was very interesting to actually meet and get to know the people I’ve been talking to on the internet for a couple of years now. ChurchMedia.net is a big community, and just the fellowship at the convention was worth coming. When we met the church’s band Monday night, they said, “You guys say you’re from all over the country, but you seem to know each other pretty well.” That really says a lot about our community and what a great place ChurchMedia.net is.
If you’re into media ministry or have any technical interests, you need to check out www.churchmedia.net. It has a forum, online tutorials and reviews, and a very low priced HUGE library of media to download called the Media Exchange Center . Anyways, this has been a really great experience and it’s definitely hard to describe in a blog post. Be sure to check out the pictures by clicking the link below.
http://picasaweb.google.com/maydavidj/CMNConventionPhotos?authkey=HjXKR7Zsb-M
I just got this video saved and uploaded from the camera. It's a month or two ago when the I got to lead a Sunday night service with the youth band at Boone Trail. I will upload more videos of the rest of the service later.
Check out this video: No One Like You
This Sundays services went really good. The band came togethor and the worship time was awesome. I liked Tracy's prayer at band rehearsal when he said "Lord, take this mess and make something of it." Lol! We did quite a few things different this Sunday. Like, Tracy and Jeff (the worship pastor and preacher) didn't wear their ties (gasp). We even started with music instead of annoucements! Tracy's son Aaron did sound, so it was naturally louder than with our usual sound guy. Tracy had Richard (the drummer) start the groove to the first song before the him and the singers went onstage.
We did a lot of very energetic music this week, and you could tell that people were getting into it. We did Israel Houghton's "You Are Good." At the end of it, Tracy looked over at me and the other guitar guy and got so excited at our "dancing" he jumped up in the air and landed on the final note of the song. Once again, (gasp!).
Sunday night, we did "Agnus Dei" as the invitation after a message on worship with Wayne Bledsoe. After we ended it, Tracy prayed and encouraged everyone to literally go worshipping, and we kept playing the song for like ten more minutes...we didn't want to stop. It was cool that some people stayed and just kept on singing with us until we stopped playing.
A lot of people got involved this Sunday, and me (and I think it's safe to say that most of the other band members too) really enjoyed kicking it up a notch. It just goes to show what a response you get when you just do something a little different; not worry too much about what people will say. I've read in 2nd Samual 6 about David dancing and worshipping; what I got out of it was that while worship is very serious, it is NOT dignified!
I woke up Friday night to lights turning on and screaming...It was midnight and my dad spotted a bear on the front porch eating the cats' food. When he realized we were looking at him, he climbed over the porch rail (I'm sure his weight almost broke it!) and slowly made his way to the woods. By the time I got the camera out, he was already around to the backside of the house. I managed to get this picture...you can just barely see his form in the picture. I had to go up with the brightness/contrast of the photo to get it to where you could make out his outline in the darkness. He was a nice bear though. Hopefully he won't cause any trouble. We saw cubs about a year ago, so I bet this young bear has brothers and sisters!
I went with my uncle to Rogersville on Wednesday, July 4th. They had a big festival with all kinds of stuff. They had 4 or 5 different music groups opening for John Michael Montgomery (I think that's his name.) My uncle Mark's band was one of them. They play "Americana," which is like a mix between bluegrass, rock, and country. It turned out really well and sounded awesome. Gary Hensley Band sounded great through John Michael Montgomery's huge PA. It was funny when a couple of guys got a "kick" out of standing in front of the subs. They were amazed that when my uncle hit his bass drum, the speaker moved and air came out!
Check out Gary Hensley Band on their website at: http://www.ghband.net/
My family and I went to see the fireworks in Johson City Tuesday night. I didn't want to go at first, as I would be out late for the next three nights, but I said since we were getting food, I was in! We gave our business to three establishments around the parking lot we were at...First we went to Taco Bell, then Hardees, and finally TCBY for ice cream! My grandparents met us, so we all sat and watched the fireworks togethor. A local radio station had music synced up to the display and it was pretty cool. The even used a few songs we do at church- one of them was "I Am Free" by the Newsboys. Anyways, that's about it.
This Sunday night I decided to go to New Salem Baptist Church to see their Patriotic Musical. Some of the people I play with down at Seviers UMC were in it. They did a couple of worship songs before the musical started. The musical was good, but I was also very impressed with their band. They had two electric guitars, bass, drums, and piano. Most importantly though, the people were worshipping! It was a great worship experience for me too. As I walked out, I saw many sheets and ads for various ministries they did. If you were from East Tennessee, you'd know that most of the smaller church's around here are...dead, so to speak. So, it was exciting and encouraging to one of them doing ministry, growing, and getting their people involved in an uplifting, energetic worship time. So this was kind of a plug for them; their website is: http://www.newsalemchurch.net/.
David
Well, since this is my first post, I'll just introduce myself and give you an "introduction." I'm David May. I play many instruments and do sound/lights/other production stuff. I lead worship for the youth service with my friend, Dillon, and play in the band at Boone Trail Baptist Church. I feel called into full time ministry as a Worship/Music Pastor. Through this blog, I'll be sharing my thoughts on music, worship, church life, productions, random stuff, stupid stuff, and whatever else is worth talking about!
That's about it for now, hopefully you'll find some stuff here interesting!
David
