The Poster

I just wanted to show some of the artwork and media that was created for the CD. It’s nothing unusual. Below and to the side you will see samples.  The first is the poster. I actually created two versions of the poster. We had a pre-release of 2 song about two months prior to the release of the CD. We called that the EP release and sold it for around $5. Then I just cleaned up up for the final and put a release date on it.

The CD Case artwork was created based on a template given to me by Discmakers.com. It contain areas for the different panels on the case and I added the rest. Easy, nothing complicated at all.

As for the poster I worked with Outreach.com. They basically were the same as Discmakers. I downloaded a template and adjusted my artwork to the template and sent it on.

All artwork was created in Photoshop and Illustrator. Final files were sent in JPG format.

Anyway, Enjoy the artwork. I will put more design work from other projects up soon.

CD Case Template

Floor Banner

Secret Church

Had an awesome night at Secret Church along with many other churches in town and throughout the world. Six hours of insane high speed bible study with David Platt. If you did not get to watch it, go online and download the video and study guide. It is worth watching. I am sure I will watch it again. If your church did not participate it should. Not because it is David Platt, but because it is an awesome church growing experience for your congregation.

Prayer for Salvation, Prayer for India, and Prayer for the word of Christ to be spread through the world as well as excellent illustrations and thoughts on the scriptures that will help you in your walk with Christ.

NO, this is not a project but I wanted to talk about it and encourage you to participate. If you want to see what other people thought about the night check out twitter and the hashtag #SC10 . This event trended to the 3rd spot on twitter within an hour of the beginning. If you have more questions feel free to contact me. I will get you in touch with people in the know.

Glory Side Cover Art

About a year ago we started on a project at work. This project would produce the first album by the P/33 Worship Ministry at Colonial Heights. Our worship pastor, like many others worship pastors, had a desire to share our style or worship and creativity with others as well as giving our church something they could be proud of and take home.

Through this process we learned a lot of things. I have never thought the process of putting out and album was easy, but as a first timer I would have to say there are a lot of details to think through. This article is my attempt to brush through many of them to give you an overview of the process. I will attempt not to get bogged down in the discussion.

1. Playlist – Yes, that is an obvious one. Every album must have songs but you have to know where they are coming from. Will they be originals written by employees or members of the church, songs that have been produced before that are the favorites of your congregation, or will you find a group of writers and purchase the rights to perform their original work. All three are good options, but we went with Originals from Staff members. Our church is fortunate that our Worship Pastor and our Worship Intern are writers and can turn out some really good stuff. On top of that we also found two songs that were congregation favorites performed by our choir.

As for the originals produced by staff member, all we had to do was write down the words and chords for the music and copyright them through the U.S. Copyright office. After figuring out the process of copyrighting the first song the rest were very easy. This task was handled buy our Worship Pastor’s Wonderful Administrative Assistant. She is now the copyright expert in our office.

The other two songs we had to seek the rights to perform. At first we attempted to approach the individual copyright owners for permission, but started finding it difficult to contact them, get the information back in a timely manner or even at all. Eventually I tripped across a website that had streamlined the process. Discmakers.com has all the forms and personnel that will handle the entire process for you. Within a month of contacting Disc Makers we had the permissions we needed and started the production process.

2. Music Production - The Production process has many levels and it is very difficult to talk about in one article and is probably the easiest place to get bogged down. That goes for writing about it and actually doing it. There are so many choices. First I will say this,  you are not trying to reinvent the wheel. Many people have completed this task before you and many other are accomplishing it at the same time. Learn from them and it will help you streamline your work.

In our process we decided to handle the recording and mixing ourselves and then sent the final mixes off for mastering. We recorded and mixed at 48k using the Digi003 Pro tools system on a Mac Pro. We borrowed mics and used different ones we had at the the church. We even used our pulpit mic. Anything that would produce the sound we were looking for was on the table. Matt Roden was the head of production on the Majority of the songs and Handled all the mixing as well.

No since in discussing techniques or issues we had here, they are to numerous to write about. Feel free to email and ask questions if you like.

As for the Mastering process we sent the final mix files to the mastering facility and over the next few weeks they sent files for us to listen to. We made comments on them and corrections were made. This continued till we were happy and the final master files were sent to us.

3. Artwork – I was in charge of all artwork and created the case art based on templates given to us by the replication facility. The main tools I used were Photoshop and Illustrator. It sounds like a simple process but I actually ended up producing 3 different pieces of cover art before we decided on the right one. It is good to start this process at the same time you begin the production process as this can take just as much time depending on the people you are working with.

4. Replication and packaging - We have the ability at our church to produce and package CDs and DVDs but producing 500 to 1000 at one time can be very time consuming. We decided to go with an outside company and that is where Disc Makers stepped in again. Disc Makers has a great plan in effect that allows you to receive your completed order in around 2 weeks. Using their website I uploaded the Mastered Wav files along with the artwork. A few days later they provided us with a proof that we poured over one last time. After completely the proof stage all we did was sit and wait.

This past Sunday we begin selling our CDs and sold 99. We have priced them to a point where we will break even around 450 CDs. The rest of the money we make will go back into our budget to produce our next CD Project.

If you have any questions or even want a copy of the album feel free to contact me or visit Colonial Heights.

We Shall See.