 Hi everyone, I hope you had a good break. Coffee, tea, some stretching. Great. So we completed chapter five, the spiritual aspects of worship ministry. But this class, this session, we want to want to go towards chapter six where we will talk about music and technology for worship ministry, right? Music and technology, it's more practical. Again, a lot of what this course is about just being practical. So we believe that sound and technology is extra important for worship ministry, right? The sound in general and technology in general is crucial because you want to have an evangelistic meeting or even for a Sunday service. If you want it to be effective and efficient, you need to have a good sound system. Otherwise, people at the back are not going to be able to hear. You can't keep shouting. We can and we can't. You will lose damage, your voice. And you are not simply going to be able to cater to your people to the congregation very well if not for the sound and technology. And if not for sound and technology, imagine church during the period of pandemic. We were forced, you know, the churches that did not believe in technology were forced to, you know, learn about technology, reinvent or rediscover or force themselves to follow the path of technology. And so, I believe that it is very important for all of us to understand the basics of what sound and technology is. And that's what this chapter is all about. Very briefly share a little bit about, you know, what are the different equipments that are used, can be used, sound and technology, okay? And especially in this chapter, feel free to ask questions, anything related to technology and sound, you know, this is only to help you better, okay? So, all right, let me just share the screen. Immediately, I've lost a lot of you know, what is this? Right, so the different sound systems for you is in worship settings, church settings. It's very essential. Without this, you know, we will not be able to do what we want to do or achieve in large numbers. Right? So some of the components that we need to know about, learn about, as a ministry leader, you need to understand some of these basic things, okay? So the first thing is microphone. Without this, people are not going to be able to hear you, who are sitting way at the back. So, microphones, they come in different shapes and sizes. They have, each have different purposes, right? We will learn just a little bit more about the microphones. Does anybody know anything about microphones that, you know, what are the, you know, the different types of microphones that are available, anything? Anyone with a little bit of recording sound, background, sound technology background, study sound. Okay, cool. So no problem, that's fine. So microphones are very essential, isn't it? In ministry, in our context of ministry is very important for maybe singing or preaching, teaching, whatever it is. Yes. So even this headphone has a mic. It's a very, it's, you know, even this has a name to it. So if without this, you will still be able to hear but not maybe not as clear as this one does, right? See, you hear this? See the noise creates it. So, the microphone that is pictured to your, you know, in this is from a brand called Sure, S-H-U-R-E. And in this particular model is called an SM58. Okay, now how many of you remember this old Nokia phone from the early 2000s called 3310? You know, this early 2000s, it's old, very old Nokia phone, 3310. You can kill a person with that phone. That's how strong it is, right? It can fall from, I don't know, how high it is still being packed. A lot of this generation would have not seen, I had the privilege of owning that phone. I had the honor of, you know, owning that phone for a period of time. No WhatsApp, no problem. No, a lot of things, no problem. It was the best phone I've ever had. So this microphone comes into that similar category is that it is very sturdy, is super strong. This is what we will call it as the dynamic mic. Okay, so it's used a lot for a live sessions, in person meetings, and a lot actually for dynamic. So this is a dynamic mic. In the next slide, we'll learn a little bit about the four different categories or types of basics of microphones. But this SM58 is like the industry standard for dynamic mics. There's not a single singer or sound engineer who will not know this particular model SM58. This is a workhorse. If you don't know what an SM58 is, don't even call yourself a sound engineer or you know anything about sound. So SM58, remember that it's the dynamic mics. It's very important. The four different types of microphones, as I mentioned, are the dynamic microphones, which is a directional. That means if you point it only towards your mouth and you speak to it, it will pick up. If you point it in another direction or anywhere up the heavens and speak some of the vocalists, instead of keeping the microphone like this, they will keep it like this, they will keep it down here. The dynamic mics will not pick up your voice if you keep it down here and sing. It's meant to be two meters or three meters away from your mouth. You can see this is the gap it should be for it to pick up. That's the dynamic mic. At the second type of microphones, what you see in this picture are called as the large diaphragm condenser mics. So basically, they are just dynamic mics and condenser mics. Under condenser mics, there are two kinds. There are the large diaphragm condensers and a small diaphragm condenser. So what you see in the image right now are large diaphragm condensers, also known as LDC. Those are the short forms that are used in the industry and it's important that you know them as well. LDC means large diaphragm condensers. It's used in the studios more for recording vocals or acoustic guitars, any of the instrument that would be an act. It picks up everything. It doesn't have to be directional, it's really directional. So these are very powerful. You can set a microphone far away in the room and clap and it will still pick it up. If I had a condenser mic for this room, it will pick up everything from the road to everybody parking the car outside, clapping, making noise. It can pick up very clearly. But it's very good for studio purposes, recording vocals, etc. These are not apt for live recordings or live settings. And then there are small diaphragm microphones. As you can see, they're much smaller and these are used for, if you've seen a drum kit, some of these are used for what we call as overhead mics. So there's a big drum kit and you'll see two microphones hanging on the top. That means it can pick up everything, all of the whole drum kit. And then some of these mics are used for choirs as well. If there are 40 people in a choir, we can't give mic to every single person. This is where the small diaphragm condensers come into play. You set up like say five or say eight of these condensers, in a SDC, it can pick up the entire choir. So if you sneeze, gone. Everybody in the audience can hear you sneeze. Okay. And then there are the ribbon microphones. The ribbon microphones are a hybrid of the dynamic mics and a condenser mic. It's a hybrid. It can be used for live and studio purposes. Okay, so these are the basics that we need to know of what microphones are and the importance of them. The dynamic microphones. Now under dynamic microphones, I showed you only one example, which is the Shure SM58. There are a lot of microphones, dynamic microphones that come under that category. Okay, and I just shared the industry standard okay. Then there are the large diaphragm condensers, small diaphragm condensers, SDC, and then there are the ribbon microphones. All right. Now once you have the microphones, you might think, okay, we are shorted now. No, where are you going to connect them? What are you going to do with those? It needs an interface. And that's where the sound board or a mixer comes into play. Okay, now you would have at least seen this no mixer. Yes, or a sound board, right? So this is an interface. If for example, it's like the coding system of a computer, it understands only binary functions, isn't it? Like 01010. That's the language that the computer understands. But we have a keyboard that has the letters that we understand, the numbers that we understand. And as you type in, there's the motherboard of the computer that translates what we type in to the language that the computer understands. And then again, it throws out the language that you understand. So if I say, hi. Instantly, the processor, it's taken what I'm trying to say, it's converted and translated it and giving you an output that you understand. It's acting as an interface. And so that's exactly what a sound board is, right? It takes the signal of me singing or speaking. It goes into this processor called the sound board or a mixer, and it processes it. And then it sends out the signal, which everybody else understands. It, right? It's a bridge again. And it's a very important bridge that, that, you know, it kind of every sound signal goes in, it's the signal is changed, and it sends out very different. Okay, so it is used to connect all microphones, instruments, you know, CD players, aux, whatnot. Not many people use CD or cassette players, but, you know, we get the point. So, and you, you see in this big image, I, you see this thing, can you see my arrow moving? You know, which you can be pushed up and down, up and down. Those are called as faders. Okay, faders, F-A-D-E-R-S, a fader, singular, okay, that you can increase or decrease the overall sound of a particular instrument to be a microphone or guitar, etc., whatever, doesn't matter. Okay, now this is a obnoxiously big sound board. You know, by the time we count how many channels, now channel is a very important word. Okay, remember this word called channel. Okay, now mixers come in all different shapes and sizes, but maybe similar shape, but different sizes. Okay, so these are also mixers. You see, it's much more smaller. And here, this one to the image to your left, you'll see it has only three channels, like one, two, three. And then one to your right on this image, you see it's a little bigger mixer. This will have about 20 channels. That means 20 channels. Okay, so what it simply means is you can connect 20 instruments or 20, in other words, 20 inputs. Okay, so let's say there are 10 singles and each of them have 10 dynamic mics or 10 SM58s for each of each of the 10 singles. And then there are still 10 channels remaining, isn't it? So one channel can be assigned to an electric guitarist, one channel can be assigned to an acoustic guitarist, one channel can be assigned to a bass guitarist. So 13 has gone down there. Right? One channel can be or derivation acoustic guitar, I think I did. Okay, so we have electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass guitar. So that's three gone. That's 10 plus three is 13. And then we have we are left with seven. A drum drums might need, let's say two condensers on top. So five gone there. So you have five remaining. So I mean, you can do whatever you want. So you understand what I'm saying, right? So that's a mixer or a sound board is an interface where all these different instruments can go in as inputs. Okay, that's what is called as channels. And mixer is absolutely very crucial, you know, for like, whatever we want to do. And this is just the this is the front side of the mixer. Can you all see it? Okay, now here, you see numbers mentioned, isn't it? From number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, seven, eight, okay. And all of this onto two, you have 24 channels in this mixer, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Now, here's a scenario that happens every Sunday at church. Okay, so there will be one person at the sound board in the, you know, in the middle of the, you know, who will be set up in the middle of the conversation or in the sides. And then there will be a couple of people on stage connecting, you know, the instruments. So there's a person at the sound board will say, okay, hey, which channel is the acoustic guitar in? And the person on stage will say the acoustic guitars connected to channel number seven. So he will know that, okay, you know, the acoustic guitars connected to channel number seven. So if he wants to increase the volume, decrease the volume, tweak how the acoustic guitar sounds, he will only control, do all of that with the effects that's connected to channel number seven. Okay, so this is again, basics of sound board is what it looks like, very important for, without this, life will be a little hard. It's not impossible, but very, very hard. Okay. So an equalizer or also known as EQ, are you hearing? So this will come under the tone controls. So everybody's a tone control. Okay. Okay. Maybe I heard you say tone control. Okay. So here's the thing. So once you connected your microphone to the mixer, okay, now everything is not set automatically beautifully. When you speak, you know, you might sound horrible. Right. So how do you control the tone? Okay, let's say, okay, can you increase the bass? You would have heard all of these things guys, you know, can you increase the treble? Can you I'm sounding to my voice sounds too flat or my voice sounds too bassy. Can you do something? And so this is where the tone controllers come into play or the EQs come into play is, okay, you decrease the bass of a voice, you increase the treble of a person's voice. So you balance it out. And so this is a very handy equipment for a church to have. This is what equalizer basically looks like is we're talking DBs, isn't it? Or frequencies, high frequency to low frequency. Okay, you see the 32 hertz to 16k kilohertz. Okay, so all these ones in say 32 hertz, 64 hertz, they're all in the lows. Okay, so if you want to increase the bass or decrease the bass, you play around with this frequency, you want to increase the trebles or the highs, you increase, you play around with the 4k, 8k, 16k frequencies, you push them high, becomes really quicky, you know, something like this, that affects the treble. Okay, so equalizers are very important. And how the use and the purposes of that is also very crucial. So you're the senior pastor of a church, and you've hired a sound engineer for your church, and he comes and says, pastor, we need an equalizer for our church. If you have no idea what an equalizer is, your first response is going to be, why do we need that? What's its purpose? Why can't we manage without it? So for you to even have a conversation with a similar language of your sound engineer, you need to understand these basics of these functions. Okay, what they control is the loudness of an audio signal is signified by the amplitude of a signal. Now, what we're talking about now is amplifiers. Now, what is an amplifier? It's something that amplifies a signal. Okay, what's a magnifying glass? It magnifies a certain object or a letter, whatever, right? So just like that, this is a more technological and electrical device is it amplifies a signal. That's what it does. So some of the pointers, what's mentioned is the loudness of an audio signal is signified by the amplitude of the signal. When the signal travels through a wire, the resistance of the wire causes reduction in its power. Okay, so when a signal travels through a cable, there is a loss in power. And so what by the time it reaches the amplifier, what it does is it amplifies all the lost power that was lost during its travel, and then it pushes it. Okay, so that's for basically an amplifier is I can go through some of these pointers. It's very important ways for us to understand the difference between the different amps that are available amps is a short form for amplifiers. There's an electric guitar amp, bass guitar amp, just a general amp that for your soundboards, etc. So a lot of small churches, when I talk to say small churches, really small churches that can't afford a soundboards or mixers, they will only manage with an amplifier. An amplifier will maximum have say, three or four channels, you can have two microphones, two instruments, that's all you can, you can kind of adjust with that. Right, one of the famous amplifiers in India is the Ahuja amp. Everybody would have seen in the black story looking thing like a brick. So a lot of the small churches use those things. So by using amplifiers at different stages, the audio signals then can then be safely transmitted over a wired connection. So it just keeps the sound consistent. That's why we need an amplifier. Another thing, do you know what this is? Yeah, so this is a snake cable. So I mean like snake, snake, snake, snake. Because of its length, now here's the thing. So you see the head of the snake, right? And then you see all the different channels and pins that's out there. So that's like the tail of it. So the head, for example, let's say that the stage is big and you check and then the sound board where the mixer is, is far away right from the stage. So not all cables that connect from the guitar is long enough to go all the way to the mixer board or the sound board. So the snake comes into play is so I can connect, plug in all my short cables on the stage to this one that to the head of a snake and then this tail runs all the way to the mixer board. It's just one cable, one thick cable that runs all the way to the mixer board. And from there you use all these different pins to connect to the mixer board. Okay, now again this is necessary if the sound board is far away from the stage and if you have a lot of inputs. And this is very necessary. Now again, this is an analog version of the snake, but there are, we've moved into a digital world now. So into a digital world. Now again, this snake is a very expensive. This, yeah, this to make one is very expensive. This can be, all of this has to be custom made. You find a vendor who makes these, you give an order and he makes, he customized it for it, you know, according to your need. Now inside this, right, there's one big, thick snake. There are multiple cables. Now there are chances that wires can snap can get damaged. Now if one wire gets goes wrong, the whole snake is waste, is lost. Because by the time you open up the entire thing and then figure out which cable is gone wrong, it's a very expensive affair. But what to do? This was what we had to manage with for the longest time until a digital cable came. It was just one single MIDI cable or D cable. This is one thing cable that connects to the mixer to the snake on thing. It's a very cheap fix. And also it's not as bulky as, you know, this big one. It's not as heavy. However, this was still used, you know, is something that we need to know as well. Yeah, this is how the effect processors looks like. Again, to one controls. Okay, let's talk about speakers. Fine, you have the microphones. Great. You have the sound board which acts as an interface. Fantastic. You have the snake that connects everything to everything. So where is the device that's going to give an output in a language that you understand. Okay, so on one side you have the microphones that you're speaking and then the signal is sent to the mixer board that translates the signal to digital thing. And then it has there needs to be a device that receives the output and gives an output. So without speakers, everything else is an absolute waste. Right. And so, yeah, these are these are some of the speakers that you would see what you're seeing on the image right now, something called as a stage monitor. Stage monitors. This is something, you know, it's set for person on the stage to hear themselves. Okay, it's very important for a person on stage to hear themselves. So these are called as stage monitors, basically. And then there are other speakers, you know, that would be stop sharing. That's the end of it. And then there are other speakers you would have seen which is kept, you know, which is which is known as the FOH speakers. FOH. Simply means front of house. Because are you doing okay? We're learning something. Yes, Pastor, we are learning. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Okay, so these are the basic sound equipments you require for an effective usage in ministry to be effective efficient in ministry, right? We need to have speakers, monitor speakers, front of house speakers, snakes, amplifiers, tone control, tone control and equalizes they are they are like an icing, you know, on the cake, you don't really need them unless you can, like, you know, you have someone who understands and they can push it to another level. It's a great piece of equipment like equalizers. But if considering the size of the church, you can, you know, you can have a discussion about if it's necessary or not. But good microphones or good sound, sound board or good speakers, these are crucial. Good microphones, good mixer and good speakers are the basics around which you can build everything else. That's the sound and technology. Okay, now let's move on to some of the recording equipments that will come in handy for in worship industry. The regards to audio you need again, you know, like we spoke about sound boards or mixer which act as an interface. In similar world, in similar in the world of recording, you have interfaces that need that receive signal from a microphone that goes into your laptop and use another output. So those are called as again, simply called as interfaces or audio card or sound card. It's what it's called, right, the sound card. I'm not sure if I can find an image of that. Let me see if I can find an image of that. Sorry, I'm just giving you a minute. Amazon site. Let's see. So if you're in India and if you want to buy, so this is an audio interface. I've mentioned this in the notes, you'll see this. So if you want to just use your laptop, if you want to have a very small studio setup in your bedroom, and you want to record your own songs, your creations, you know, this is a very small thing that you can have. So you have a laptop, that's great. So that acts as an interface which connects to this thing called the sound card or that you know, this red looking thing. It has only two channels, you know, one mic and one for your instrument. This is actually a good deal, 21,390 rupees. So you get a headphone. All right, so when you connect this to your laptop and you start recording, you know, this is what is called as a DAW, audio workstation. Okay, a digital audio workstation. It translates the DAW signal into sound. Very crucial. And I'm, yeah, if you're into music and recording, this will come. And I've mentioned a couple of softwares as well that will come in handy. Okay, that we can stop sharing. So that's related to audio and video. You need some good cameras. Some of the cameras that I've mentioned there, it's not an exhaustive list, it's just some of the cameras that I like. But then a lot of latest ones have come for good picture quality that you can invest in if you want to record for yourself and also for the church, isn't it? Like if you want to live stream your services, you know, you explore which camera will work best according to the budget, you know, of the church, you can invest in a good high definition camera. That's the one thing that you need to remember is it HD, you know, then you can discuss about 4K, 8K, etc., right? A good camera and a good tripod. It's a stand that, you know, you require. That's another important thing to have. And then you have, you need to invest in your video editing softwares. I've mentioned some of the basic, not basic, but good ones. iMovie, Final Cut Pro is most used, Adobe Premiere Pro is very well used, you know, editing software, etc. Okay, that's audio, video and and some of the projection software that's used to project lyrics. I've mentioned those softwares as well, like ProPresenter 6. ProPresenter is what we use at APC, at least at Central. There are other softwares like EasyWorship, which other locations use at APC. So ProClaim is another software. We haven't really explored ProClaim as much, but ProPresenter and EasyWorship are softwares that are used to project lyrics, or even for summits, like by Scripture versus etc., even MediaShop. Okay, so explore some of these tools. Lighting is, again, another icing on the cake you can explore if you have a budget, you know, if you can see each of those faces that good enough, that's works. If you can see the preacher, great, you know, don't have to do anything, but if you want to add some more drama to the room, make it, I mean, it's beautiful, it just makes, it's an experience, isn't it? So then venture into that, explore that a little bit, depending on your budget, and have a chat with your senior pastor, and take it from them. Okay, there are some tools that I've mentioned, very few that you can explore or use for your worship ministry back home. Okay, any questions? All right then. Great, I hope that was helpful. Thank you for joining. See you all next week. God bless you.