ENEWSLETTERS IN BRIEF
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM
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Founded 30 years ago, the Church at Rocky Peak has occupied its current site on 115 acres in the rocky foothills of Chatsworth, Calif., since 1986. Two years ago, with a shift in style from large vocal groups to guitar-based praise music, the sound system in the 1,100-seat sanctuary, installed in 1997, began to show its age and consequent inadequacy to handle the new musical program.
“The church began seeking input from within the congregation,” says systems designer Matt Hyde, of Sound Advice in Chatsworth, who maintained the original system as well as adding acoustical treatments to the sanctuary in 1997.
The change in music styles to a more contemporary, guitar-driven (in the manner of David Crowder or Chris Tomlin), and more participatory worship style caused very few problems for the congregation. But it did challenge the mixing skills of the church’s audio volunteers.
“To overcome the deficiencies of the room and the sound system,” says one of the church’s worship pastors, Dustin Kleinschmidt, “the mixes became louder.” The sanctuary is more than twice as wide as it is deep, and coverage was done by an LCR cluster system, not the ideal choice for the space.
The new musical focus also involved the church scaling back on special large productions that were time-consuming as well as expensive to produce, so the church could concentrate its efforts and resources on producing consistently high-quality sound every weekend.
A longtime Digidesign Pro Tools user, and very familiar with digital consoles in the studio environment, Hyde gradually became convinced that the digital format was viable in the live-sound arena. “The interfaces are simplified enough to where you could move around quickly,” he says. “But the ability to impart your mixing wisdom by saving settings to the computer is what really sold me on digital consoles as a solution in the worship environment, even for churches without a sophisticated sound department.”
For Hyde, the Yamaha M7CL digital console hit the mark, making the technology easy enough to use for a non-professional, while retaining the sophisticated features of which digital is capable.
In fact, the system that Hyde specified and installed is entirely Yamaha: from the M7CL console through the DME24 DSP unit (via the console’s 16-channel in/out AVY16-ES card and Cat-5 cabling) to amps and the company’s IF and IS series of installation loudspeakers.
“Yamaha’s whole approach to the live sound package — from console to amps to speaker systems — makes system integration much easier,” Hyde says. “You don’t have to go shopping from brand to brand, and you have everything at your disposal that you need.”
The 1,100-seat sanctuary of the Church at Rocky Peak is approximately 150’×63′ from the lip of the platform (76’x30′) to the mix position very near the rear wall. The room is 25ft. high at its highest point. …
ANIMATED VISUALS AT VICTORY CHURCH
Victory Church, a growing church based in Oklahoma City, believes in the power of music and dance to resonate in the hearts of worshippers. Sixty-five full- and part-time staff members reach out to attendees through its Victory School of the Arts with classes in dance, music, and drama, and through its annual Resonation worship project, and again with a DVD capturing the event.
In December 2006, Victory Church released its annual Resonation worship project on DVD and CD. The project was recorded from a two-night live music worship event held at the Oklahoma City church and enhanced with visual clips from stock footage company Artbeats.
“I love the fact that I am almost always guaranteed to find the footage that I need and be able to get it within a day or two,” says Matthew Munger, creative director for the church, of his choice of the Artbeats clips. “Taking the time and money to film underwater effects would have been huge. Also, the quality of the Artbeats was better than what we could have captured in the field.” …
For this year’s two-night music worship event, Munger and the crew used a wide range of clips to a variety of animations and visualizations to enhance and help tell the story of each of the 15 original worship songs, from stock footage collections including Water Effects 1, Cloud Fly-Throughs 1, and Incarcerated. According to Munger, they were able to achieve a particularly unique effect using a water effect clip from the Artbeats Water Effects 1 catalog. …
