What you’re seeing here is where I spend a good bit of time every Sunday morning not only playing, but setting it up and taking it down. Almost have it down to a science now, so it’s not as big of an operation as it first was.

Unfortunately, this morning we just didn’t have our act together. No train wrecks by any means, but things didn’t go as smoothly as they could have. As a worship team, we have a specific order we do things because other “teams” have things they are doing too and they depend on us doing or being someplace at a certain time for things to go well. We’re not so rigid that we have no flexibility, but with only one hour to all do our thing, there’s not much slack for anything that goes wrong. We had a bump right at the beginning and then another at the point we were supposed to go off stage. It was awkward, but oh well - a monster didn’t eat us and no animals were harmed in the process.

In the midst of all this, I did get to add a new item to my drums - a Roland SPD-20. It’s in the bottom right of the photo. Each of those square is programmable for different sounds so I can add more texture to the music if it calls for it. Additionally, I can use “triggers” attached to my acoustic drums so that when I strike them, a sound from the Roland comes through the PA. I started off triggering my kick drum today. That worked like a champ. My hope is that when I switch to my “regular” drums (I’m using my ’spensive ultra-fly Pearl Masterworks for a few weeks) I can get the same slamming kick sound from that drumset as well. Today’s experiment was a success. No problems whatsoever with that rig.

If you click on the photo, you’ll be taken to my Flickr page where there are a few more shots from today.