Day 1 – April 9, 2015
Hey guys! My name is Cody Bray and I’ll be sharing all kinds of awesome stuff with you as we lead worship for the Arkansas Youth Conference this weekend. I have had the incredible privilege to lead worship with our band Summerhill for the last six years. This will be our third time in those six years to lead for AYC and we could not be more excited about what’s to come this weekend. This year is extra special because this weekend we will not be leading as Summerhill, but as “The Collective”. Summerhill also released our new EP today, so a lot of exciting things are happening! According to the leadership team there will be roughly 3,000 students worshiping with us this weekend so you could say we are a little amped up.
What is “The Collective” you ask…
This was an idea our lead singer had a few years ago for us (as Summerhill) to start investing in the next generation of worship leaders. We partnered with two student lead bands and begin investing in them musically and spiritually. Over the last two summers we have lead worship for a summer camp as “The Collective” and it has been such an honor seeing these students grow into powerful leaders on and off the stage. Most of us in The Collective have been attending AYC for as long as we can remember (Me-12 years) so this is incredibly special that we have the opportunity to do this together. I believe God is going to use this weekend and The Collective to inspire young people to pursue worship and creativity in their daily walk with Him.
There will be three main sessions this weekend and multiple sets of songs. Our leader, Ryan, organized all of the set list and who would be playing which set (This was no easy task seeing how there are 14 of us in the group). Me and the other drummer, Cody Alderman, will be switching between the main kit and an aux kit. The two kits was something we decided on way back in the fall when Bethel started sharing videos from the “We Will Not Be Shaken” recording. It could not have worked out better because my new C&C Player Date I came in today so we will be using that and my old kit, the Tama Starclassic Bubinga. On a side note, this will be the last time I’ll ever get to play the Tama since it has been sold and will be shipped out on monday.
Let’s Talk Set Up.
The Main Kit will be my new C&C Player Date with a 22×14 Kick, 16×15 Floor, 13×8 Rack, and my 14×8 Ludwig Classic Hybrid snare. This kit literally came out of the box a couple hours ago so it’s decked out with stock remo heads, but it sounds huge. I did tape a little bit of toilet paper to the bottom head for some minor overtone control. I use a mix of Tama, some old pearl, and DW hardware (5000 series kick pedal) The cymbals on this kit will be a pair of 15″ Heartbeat Studio series hats, a 22″ Meinl Byzance Vintage Crash, and a 22″ Heartbeat Custom light ride. This kit was mic’d with a beta 52 on kick, Sennheiser e604’s on the toms, a SM57 on the snare, and a pair of Shure SM137 for OH’s.
The Aux Kit will be the 22×18 Kick and 16×14 Floor from my Tama Starclassic Bubinga kit. The snare is a late 70’s Ludwig Acrolite that I cleaned up a while back (Used it on the live record, def one of my favorite snares). I’ve got an Evans EC2 clear on the floor tom for some more attack and an EMAD on the kick. The Acrolite has a Remo coated ambassador and some 32-Strand wires on it. Cymbals will be a pair of 13″ Zildjian Mastersound hats, 20″ Heartbeat Studio series crash, and a 22″ Meinl Byzance Sand Crash/Ride. We’ve got a Roland SPD-SX gaff taped to the top of the kick and loaded with a ton of THAT SOUND samples from the organic and future drum packs. I’ve also got a pearl tambo mounted to the ride stand and a meinl medium shaker. This kit was mic’d with Beta 52 on kick, Sennheiser e604 on floor, SM57 on snare, and a single Shure SM137 for OH.
I’m trying something new with our Click/Track set up this weekend. I recently bought a Keith McMillan 12-Step to run MainStage Pads during transitions and spontaneous moments, so i’ve working on different ways to run it all simultaneously on one computer. This weekend I’ll be using a Yamaha MG10XU mixer along side my Macbook Pro. The audio from Ableton will be sent out the 1/8″ output with the clicks/guides and tracks panned left and right. I will then send the audio from MainStage through the USB channel on the mixer and pan it right so that the audio from it comes through tracks channel on the board. I like having the mixer by me so that I have control over the 12-step output.
Hope all of that made sense. Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments. Looking forward to connecting with you guys.
That’s it for today. We’ve got soundcheck at 8 am so i’m off to bed.