Roland Announces TD-30KV Electronic Drum Kit at NAMM 2012
Roland has announced a new electronic drum kit at this year’s NAMM. Roland has taken more steps to make these digital drums look, act and sound more like real drums. There is also a new USB port so you can load .mp3s onto a jump drive and play along with your favorite tracks. This would be great for loading up upcoming song sets to practice with.
We use digital drums for our youth room and for mobile applications like off site conferences and retreats. We have last years model of Roland’s digital drums. They could work in a main service setting but most musicians and drummers will prefer real drums. Digital drums work great in small rooms and acoustics sets work well in big rooms.
I’m a Guru [video]
This video is hilarious and so true. The guys over at churchtechtalk.com produced this. We’ll talk about them more in another post…
Dropbox – Simple, Free File Sharing
If you’re still running around with a jump drive or using a local server to share files in your church or ministry, you need to check out Dropbox. You can install it as an application on your computer, cell phone or ipad and have access to any files you “drop” in the folder on any other device logged in with that same account. You can even share a folder to another account. My church uses this a lot. All of our laptops and computers have it installed and when I design something or someone asks for a file I just say, “It’s in Dropbox.” and they know where to find it.
Roland VR-5
This is a great all in one audio/video mixer. I’m planning on putting it in my 2012 budget it’s so good. It has 3 camera inputs and 1 VGA input. You can also put videos on an SD card and mix them in as well. The SD card can also be used for capturing your mixed video. Alternatively there is a USB out for online streaming, composite or s-video. Mixing is very easy and can even be ran with the dual touch screens. What’s also great about this mixer is the price, just $4,995.
iFixit – Free, Step by Step Repair Manuals
Recently we had a laptop that got dropped and needed some repair. Apple gave us an estimate of about $1200 to replace the main logic board. We originally just left it broken and used the external display to run a flat screen in our foyer. Then, after a software update, I got stuck with only the main screen working. I later found out that when the computer is booting you can close the lid right away and the main screen will shut off and you will see only external. Anyway, I decided to hunt for a new logic board on eBay and see if we could fix it ourself. And now we come to the main point of this article, iFixit.com. The website is great for easy, step by step manuals for many products. In this situation we ended up also changing out the video cable and then LCD screen. All guides were found on iFixit.com.
Vimeo Releases New Features
If you’re looking for an alternative for YouTube or just a real quality site for uploading sermons and other video, Vimeo is the best I’ve ever used. They have a free and paid service but either way you won’t be dissapointed. Our church is currently using it for baptism and testimony videos along with a few videos for our I’m New page on our website. We also use it to post videos of the entire message of a singles ministry we are a part of called Momentum. Vimeo has recently released a few more sweet features.
Creation Swap – Free Designs & More
So graphic design is my biggest weakness. This is why I love Creation Swap. Formerly known as CreativeMYK.com, the updated site now promotes more than just free content sharing. You will soon be able to “purchase professional photos, bulletins, banners, postcards, logos and more sold by thousands of church artists worldwide.” This feature will be released in April along with the ability to print products and have them delivered to your door. Live now is the networking section with features like job postings, artists for hire & discussion forum.
Audio Blog – behindthemixer.com
I had this blog recommended to me so I thought I’d share it here. It’s updated often and it has some good tips and reviews targeted directly and church audio. Check out Behind the Mixer at behindthemixer.com. The site is ran by Chris Huff who has been in the industry for 15 years and currently runs sound at Franklin Community Church, in Indiana, where he’s also the volunteer Tech Director.
