As we continue our look at using iOS devices in worship, today I want to discuss a way I’ve started using my iPhone along side our worship time at Madoc Baptist.

I have to give credit where credit is due, because I got this idea from Rob Rash and a post he wrote back in August called “Creating Ambience with an MP3 Player”

Something I’ve always liked in bigger worship bands, is the use of synths. While having a piano or keyboard player, a lot of them also have someone on synths, creating some really cool sounds. One of my keyboard players bought herself a microkorg a while back, but hasn’t brought it out.. as she doesn’t feel confident with it, even though shes a fantastic player. Then one day, I was reading through my Feed Reader, and I found the post by Rob, about creating the same ambience I wanted my keyboard player to create, but by using an MP3 player.

Rob pointed me to Karl Verkade who is an amazing guitarist, who creates ambient pads, and he even gives them away for free to churches!

The intent of these pads (at least for me) is to cut down on dead space in between songs. I’ve had times when for one reason or another, there was just too much dead space in between a song.. either a guitar went way out of tune and needed fixing, or a piano was intended to start the song, and piano player forgot. There are a number of things that can cause dead space between songs. The pads also create some great sounds to have during a song if you want to just play it through the whole song. Continue Reading…

Continuing our look at using iOS Devices in Worship, it only seems natural that we talk about controlling that device. If you are going to run an application like OnSong, how are you going to turn those pages if you play a guitar, or the piano.. sure it’s simple if you are a singer, you’ve got free hands, but what about those of us who have our hands occupied during worship?

Cue the PageFlip Cicada. This is a bluetooth pedal that you can use to wirelessly control your digital sheet music. When I was on the hunt for a bluetooth pedal, I came across all the usuals that come up during a google search, but, I just wasn’t ready to drop $150 on a pedal that would turn pages for me, it just seemed like to much.

Then I found it.. the pageflip.. a wireless pedal for the.. budget minded. For just $79.95 you got an the same functionality that all those expensive pedals brought.. but at a fraction of the cost. I was sold. I made my purchase, and literally within a few days, my pedal arrived. To be honest, my pedal actually arrived before my iPad! They were really quick on the shipping!

So when you buy a pedal for $80, does it just turn your pages? No! In OnSong you can control a number of functions with your pedal. Yes you can set it up to just turn the pages, but, if you are practicing, and would like to play along with a metronome, you can set it up right in OnSong. A single click on the pedal, and a metronome will start playing. Maybe you have a click track that you play along with? Well you no long have to run your clicks from a seperate device, you can put cue your click track to play on the step of a pedal (more on that tomorrow)! You can use the footpedal to automatically tanspose a song within OnSong, or maybe you want to turn the volume up on that click track, it’s all there.
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