From the early days of the Gutenberg press, technology has played a key role in developing tools for communication in Worship settings. Today's Worship Leader has the ability to plan and present media and materials like never before. New digital tools enable Worship Leaders to streamline preparations amongst large numbers of musicians, speakers, and volunteers, helping everyone focus creatively on the message being presented, rather than getting bogged down with the distractions of clutter and confusion.
In this guide, we will take a look at three categories of digital apps for worship - Planning, Presentation, and Performance - with a particular focus on utilizing AirTurn's hands free control technologies for Worship Performance apps.
Planning Apps
From the order of worship, to the selection of music and reading passages, to the assignment of various participation roles, streamlined planning becomes essential as more people and more services are involved.
Planning Center Online
Imagine being able to schedule your choir or Worship band rehearsals, select music from your online digital library, and send out playlists and even audio files for practice, all with just a few simple clicks. Planning Center Online is a subscription-based service that gives Worship Leaders a wide array of scheduling and planning tools with the ability to easily communicate between team members. Custom plans can be created for each Worship Service or event, containing instructions, notes, and best of all, a central online storage space for media files like audio, video, and PDF files for digital sheet music that can be accessed by all participants. Scheduling requests and reminders can be sent by email and text to all members, and calendar conflicts can be easily avoided since every participant can block out dates ahead of time. User permissions can be set, and information accessed accordingly over the internet from any computer or mobile device, such as iPads, iPhones, and Android apps.
Planning Center has an excellent companion iPad app, Planning Center Music Stand, which we will go over in more detail in the Presentation Tools category.
Ready to get rid of your old overhead projector and boxes of alphabetized transparencies? Whether you're looking to add projected slides of sacred text, background graphics or video, backing tracks for musicians, or just an easier way to manage libraries and playlists of worship hymns and songs, you'll find some great options with the tools highlighted below.
MediaShout
MediaShout combines worship presentation tools with the ability to simultaneously edit and play your presentation without interrupting your audience. Designed for volunteers and professionals alike, MediaShout makes it easy to create beautiful presentations and deliver Life's Most Important Message to any size audience. Here's a small sample of what you can do with MediaShout:
Work with multiple displays, so that you can control what you present and edit without disturbing what your audience sees and hears.
Add lyrics from CCLI's Song Select or other third party sources, or just add your own and have them displayed with still graphics or motion backgrounds
Find and display Bible passages from over 50 included translations, searchable by chapter and verse, or keywords.
Play graphics, audio, video and DVDs by themselves or as backgrounds and soundtracks in your presentation.
And much much more!
The PC version of MediaShout is compatible with the AirTurn line of wireless page turners to trigger and advance media events hands free. AirTurn compatibility with the Mac version of MediaShout will be coming soon.
Performance Apps (for iPad)
Imagine being able to carry your entire library of worship songs, hymns, sermons, and all your bulky binders in a sleek, 1.5 pound device, and being able to find any song or sermon in that collection instantly. More and more Worship Leaders are discovering the ease and convenience of replacing their paper libraries with tablet computers like the iPad. With the addition of the AirTurn BT-105 Bluetooth hands-free page turner, the iPad becomes a truly useful reading tool for speakers and musicians who want to present and perform without the need to touch or swipe the screen to turn pages or advance playlists.
Have the ability to login to Planning Center View any plans you have been scheduled for View any PDFs attached to any items in your plan Choose which PDF to display for each item Rearrange the pages for any PDF
Turn pages and advance songs in your playlist hands free with an AirTurn BT-105 Bluetooth page turner
*** NOTE: This application requires a subscription to Planning Center Online & their Music Stand Subscription which is an additional $10/month above your standard Planning Center Subscription
Teleprompt+
Have you ever been amazed at how newscasters can deliver the news and keep their focus straight on the camera? No, they don't have super-human memory - most likely, they use expensive script-reading tools called Teleprompters. Now with the iPad, you can deliver your sermons and presentations in the same manner at a fraction of the cost, thanks to a terrific iPad app called Teleprompt+. With Teleprompt+, you can either type in your text directly, or import text files from your Dropbox or Google Docs account. The text can be set to scroll at 100 variable speeds and viewed with variable font sizes with several visual cue options. You can record the audio of your speech, and with the iPad 2's built in cameras, you have the added option of being able to record video as well. You can use the AirTurn BT-105 to pause, play, speed up and slow down the script hands free for a more natural presentation.
OnSong
OnSong is quickly becoming one of the most popular iPad apps for Worship musicians working primarily with text-based music, such as chord sheets or lead sheets with lyrics. With OnSong, you can manage huge collections of chord sheets for your band or worship team on a simple, lightweight device. Quickly pull and reorder lists and flip from one song to the next with ease. Highlight chords or change font size with a brush of your finger. By far one of the coolest features in OnSong is the ability to transpose all the chords of a given song into any key instantly! And of course, you can scroll the music and advance songs in your playlist hands free with the AirTurn BT-105 Bluetooth page turner.
You can import songs directly from online sources, or add your own songs with the built-in editor. Just type the song like you would expect and surround your chords in square brackets inline with your lyrics. It's that easy! OnSong automatically detects sections and titles for you when you end them with a colon.
You can also import your existing songs using iTunes file sharing. OnSong supports PDF, Word, Pages, JPG, PNG, TIFF, ChordPro and text file formats.
When you have your set just the way you want it, share it with your band members over Bluetooth with their iPads.
unrealBook
unrealBook is a PDF reader for the iPad with a lot of great features. In addition to being able to create playlists, you can link audio files to your songs and have them play while you read your music. unrealBook also enables you to mark up your music with digital ink and text. One of the coolest features of unrealBook is its ability to link multiple iPads, so that one master iPad can open songs and turn pages on all the slave iPads running unrealBook and loaded with the same song files. unrealBook is compatible with the AirTurn BT-105 for hands free page turns and advances through playlists.
DeepDish GigBook
Do you have a large hymnal or a collection of worship songbooks with hundreds of songs per volume? After scanning them, you're left with some rather large PDF files, and it can take forever to flip through the pages to find the songs you're looking for - not exactly the best way to manage a digital sheet music library, eh? Well, with DeepDish GigBook for iPad, you can easily create "super bookmarks" to virtually "extract" individual songs within those large PDF files. Super-bookmarked songs can be tagged for key signature, type of song, tempo, etc., then quickly accessed and placed into custom playlists as if they were individual songs in any order you like. DeepDish GigBook is compatible with the AirTurn BT-105 for wireless, hands free page turns.
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From the early days of the Gutenberg press, technology has played a key role in developing tools for communication in Worship settings. Today's Worship Leader has the ability to plan and present media and materials like never before. New digital tools enable Worship Leaders to streamline preparations amongst large numbers of musicians, speakers, and volunteers, helping everyone focus creatively on the message being presented, rather than getting bogged down with the distractions of clutter and confusion.
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