If you have ever recorded a worship song, it is an exhilarating experience, but also a lot of work. First there is the writing, wrestling with the words to make them work with the music and rhyme, and say what God has put on your heart to say. There is capturing the right melodies, and putting them together. If you are making a studio recording, there is the process of lining up a producer, players or your band, and the preparation of the tracks if used. Then there is the recording, sometimes over multiple sessions. You and the producer sifting through the mixes, finding the right ones. Adding the effects, mixing, mastering. Then there is the distribution. Preparing the masters. Uploading them for the CD or digital distribution process. Tagging the MP3.s, Creating cover art. Social media, etc, etc. For a quality recording, it can be months of effort.
Worshipsong Band version 2.9is now releasing for all platforms: Windows, MacOS, IOS, and Android. We've added new capabilities to our app to help create better flow in your worship sets through adding a new 'Presentation' feature to the set list. Using this new window offers much more control of the flow of your set, such as:
We are always looking for ways to enable Worship Leaders to make use of more and cheaper resources. Our new release of WorshipSong Band gives users a whole new way to use our software. New features include:
Metronome and Guide Tracks
Worshipsong Band now includes a metronome feature. Any tempo from 20-150 BPM may be set, in times of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8,and 8/8. In addition, song timings may now be specified in tempo beats in addition to minutes/seconds. Adding songs just became a whole lot easier, and it's a snap to set up your chord charts to work in WorshipSong without tracks, allowing your band to use a click track even without any audio augmentation.
Guide tracks is our name for combined click and cue tracks. These are a part of many multitrack offerings. What is different about WorshipSong Band's guide tracks is that they need not be pre-recorded. WorshipSong now has the capability to automatically build a click track and play cues to accompany music you add to the app. As long as the song follows a consistent tempo, WorshipSong Band will supply the needed click and cues. And both click and cues follow you through the song as you loop and jump to different sections.
How does this save money? Take a look at the video below, where we show how you can use a simple rhythm track and get all the features of a full multitrack offering (except individual instrument control), as a small fraction of the cost of a full multitrack. Such rhythm and split tracks are widely available for just about any song.
Tempo Control
WorshipSong Band now allows tempo control of your songs. All features of the app such as looping,pitch control, chord charts, etc work with tempo control. This allows you to fine tune the speed of the song. Due to the app's sophisticated looping features, a song's tempo can only be adjusted prior to playing the song, but the desired tempo is always set in the set list.
Pads
These were actually introduced a couple of versions back, buy they a great to add ambiance to your set, as well as a good way to seamlessly link songs together with their built-in cross-fade feature. A single set of pads in all keys is all that is required, and WorshipSong automatically plays them based on the key of your song.
Remember, all versions of WorshipSong Band are available on all platforms, and we never release a version for one platform that is out of sync with the others. Whether you use Windows, MacOS, IOS, or Android, WorshipSong Band will work for you.
Bruce Adolph: Holland, you have had quite a history of being involved in worship music and now you are rolling out a “destination” website that offers several opportunities for those involved in modern worship music. Please give us an overview of what your vision is for www.worshipsong.com?
Holland Davis: On the surface the vision of worshipsong.com is very simple. Provide a way for worship leaders and worshippers to hear a complete song and download a FREE chart so they can teach the song to their church, bible study, or simply play it during their personal times of worship. It was born out of a conversation I had with Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa who said, “my sermons are free, why can’t worship songs be free.” So, I prayed and the idea for worshipsong.com was born.
Now, the unexpected surprise came when I received a call from an A&R guy in the industry who asked me about a song I wrote called “I Will Stand”. I asked why. He said it went from the 800’s to the 300’s on CCLI over one reporting period and he wanted to hear the song. What was the difference? Worshipsong. com. The only place the song was promoted was on the site. I learned from this experience that one of the benefits of worshipsong.com is greater exposure to worship leaders, which means greater visibility on CCLI.
Another surprise was the number of worship leaders and worshippers wanting to purchase the songs to distribute to their worship teams. I felt that a FREE chord chart allows me to fulfill Pastor Chuck Smith’s vision to make worship FREE, but I felt that a FREE recording would be asking too much. It takes a lot of money to record a song and I only felt it was fair to charge for the mp3’s. This led us to offer the ability for songwriters to sell their songs via worshipsong.com. This can happen one of two ways. They can sell their songs through our online store, or they can sell their songs by linking back to their website or iTunes. We also secured distribution into iTunes and 500 Christian bookstores via on-demand kiosks with selected songs from worshipsong. com. Our desire was really focused on ministry,
Worshipsong is pleased to offer a new service to our songwriters and artists. Worshipsong offers digital distribution into 500 Christian Bookstores via the myMEDIA BurnBars. These are kiosks where people can burn music on demand.
HOW DO I GET INCLUDED?
STEP ONE: Join Worshipsong.com
STEP TWO: Sign our Digital Distribution Agreement. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
STEP THREE: Upload your CD and Artwork to our FTP Site. A link to our FTP Site will be included after you enroll in our program.
- Mp3's must be encoded at 320 kbps
- Artwork must be at 600 x 600 dpi
- xl spread sheet must be completed (will send with ftp info)
- Files must be zipped in one file
- If you need help obtaining ISRC Codes, we can provide those for you.
STEP FOUR: Tell all your friends to find your music at their local Christian Bookstore.