Who plays in a church band?

22 May 2008, 13:23

Thought I would check out who is playing on church bands. I see reference to it often so I figure there must be a lot of you out there.
I will start off- I play in a church band.
Actually, I mostly sing and play flute. I used to do a lot keyboards years ago and am now getting back into it (our church just upgraded from an Alesis Q8 to a Fantom X7 and it inspired me to get back into things). I used to play in a Christian College touring group on my old Roland JV-80 (with the pop expansion card). Back in those days, Cakewalk for Dos was the king and we actually did a year of touring with a laptop (most of the musicians got kicked of the group due to low grades). It was a blast having the sequence every song. We even had a drummer come in to record the drum tracks with his midi kit. I find it odd how I never had issues with the JV-80 28 poly limit. We still sounded good.

So there is a littlte bit about me- how about the rest of your Churchezes?

Sonic Cell User Group
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/SonicCell/

Re: Who plays in a church band?

22 May 2008, 15:08

I play in about 3 bands...play in 3 churches every Sunday, and spend almost each eve at a rehearsal. I use a FX8, Yamaha clav P100, and an XP80

I bring more than a song

Re: Who plays in a church band?

22 May 2008, 16:24

Are you "hired" by the churches or is this all volunteer. I have been reading Worship Leader magazine a lot and see it mentioned that in the US, a lot of churches hire their musicians (which is just suprising to me but I guess you get what you paid for when it comes to the quality of musicianship a church may need areas where there are not volunteer-musicians- or the church is just so big it needs to raise the quality bar and hires).

Sonic Cell User Group
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/SonicCell/

Re: Who plays in a church band?

22 May 2008, 16:35

i'm in the UK, and i volunteer

I bring more than a song

Re: Who plays in a church band?

22 May 2008, 19:11

I play keys (FX8) in church 6 of 8 weekends. One service Saturday evening, and two on Sunday morning. One out of the other 2 weekends, I play bass on Saturday and have Sunday off. the 8th weekend I don't play. This is all volunteer work. We are also in the process of building a new church and should be moving in September. I spend a lot of time working on that as well since we are doing a lot of work ourselves to save $$$.
We recently added a "Hear Back" personal monitoring system and went to mostly in-ear monitors which greatly increased the overall sound volume in the building. We plan on replacing that with an Aviom system in a few years.

I am currently using my Fantom to put together some practice CDs for a chois special for the 4th of July weekend. We'll be recording each vocal part and boost each part for sopranno, alto, tenor, and bass so they can hear their respective parts over the rest.

Carl
Fantom X8, SRX-06, Mackie DFX-6, Peavey KB/A 50

Re: Who plays in a church band?

23 May 2008, 14:43

I play in the worship band at church. We have 4 vocalists, 2 guitarists, 1 drummer/percussionist, 1 bass player, 1 piano (Clavinova), and one keyboard (me on an X6). We are all volunteers from within the church.

Getting our "mix" right is always a challenge. I would be interested in hearing more about the "Hear Back" personal monitoring system - I priced an Aviom system a while back, but it was too much...

Re: Who plays in a church band?

23 May 2008, 18:24

I picked up the Hear Back 4 Pack brand new on Ebay for $1050. It retails for about $1500. Includes the Hub, 8 channel snake, 4 mixers and 4 cat5 cables.
It only has 8 channels (1 and 2 are a stereo pair, and 2-6 are mono), as opposed to 16 full stereo on the Aviom, but it's a nice low cost solution for a small band.
We sub-mix our vocals into one channel which frees up some room. Most of the time, we run 1 guitar, keyboard, bass, drums, and 4 vocalists.

You can get the details of the system here:
http://www.heartechnologies.com/

Here is an Ebay link to another listing from the same seller I purchased from:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Hear-Technologies-Hear-Back-Four-Pack-Personal-Mixers_W0QQitemZ190224215053QQihZ009QQcategoryZ47093QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Carl
Feel free to stop by. Evergreen Bible Church, Vancouver, WA.

Carl
Fantom X8, SRX-06, Mackie DFX-6, Peavey KB/A 50

Re: Who plays in a church band?

23 May 2008, 21:04

I crack the whip and play other percussion in the " AllStar Catholic Grade School Nuns " band

GregC

Re: Who plays in a church band?

30 Sep 2008, 12:00

Little late to the party, but thought I'd chime in.

Currently playing pretty much every week 4-6 songs. We have a full-time (paid) leader on guitar and vocal, and the rest of the band and sound techs are volunteers. Been using an Alesis QS7.1 and Korg X50, my new Juno Stage just shipped today, looking forward to using it.

Re: Who plays in a church band?

30 Sep 2008, 14:22

I play keys/guitar in a church band in Australia. We usually have acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums and keys.

I use the churches Kawai ES3 board but lately have been using the X8. I have gotten into RPS and now love this board live. I can have a nice piano and pad and with the press of a key or pad I can get 3-5 patches together for a big chorus or just use some ethereal sounds for some fill.

I have 16 sounds in a .svq and then can turn them on using the pads and RPS, I have one black note at the bottom that can turn them all off plus I have a few white keys at bottom and top assigned to turn a few patches on at once.