BETTER BY SUNDAY w/ ONSONG
SWITCHING PATCHES IN SUNDAYKEYS WITH ONSONG | Jason Kichline
Modern worship music has evolved quickly
in the past few years. Worship teams across
the world have been raising the level of their
musicianship to match the great production
delivered by songwriting powerhouses like
Hillsong, Bethel, Jesus Culture, and more.
While much can be said about expanding
palettes beyond these few choices, it's fair to
say that modern worship sounds different than
just a few years ago. The typical four or five-
piece worship band simply cannot produce the
dynamics in many of these new songs.
If you take a critical listen, you'll notice a pads are instantly produced that make for great MainStage patches are automatically changed.
diversity of instrumentation. There's hammered transitions and fill out the sonic space without So know, I never have to remember all those
dulcimer, mandolin, synth, and layered effects. even touching the faux ivories. presets, allowing me to be free to call up any
If you had to add just one instrument to your
sound quickly. The smoothness and ease of
band, a good option would be a synthesizer, Still, one challenge is remembering the patches doing this is truly unparalleled by anything else
which gives you near infinite options to fill out and specific settings for each song. I've experienced.
a live worship experience. But if you're from a complicate this, churches like mine often play church like mine, it may be hard to find the time songs outside of the allotted set. I needed a This is just one way that I can use MIDI to control
or the resources to learn how to produce these way to pull songs and have my MainStage rig MainStage. I can also send control changes to
sounds. It's almost impossible to replicate this automatically ready to go. change the effects and sonic possibilities of my
To
depth and breadth on a traditional keyboard
patches when I get to say the chorus of the
rig without large investments. While it may be Enter OnSong. OnSong is a game-changing song. For patches that use delay or arpeggios,
daunting to learn about oscillators, LFO's and iOS app for keeping your entire song library I can have OnSong change the MainStage's
arpeggios... there are two products that will organized in one place. With OnSong you can tempo to what I've predetermined for my chart.
make this transition as smooth as a warm pad perform a wide variety of different functions With a few easy steps, I never have to touch my
playing through prayer time. such as importing and viewing your chord and MacBook Pro on stage and can play any song
lyric charts, creating and sharing song setlists, with consistent and repeatable results.
Sunday Sounds has created templates for changing keys with the tap of a button, and so MainStage that make it easy for any worship much more – all from just an iPad or iPhone. OnSong combined with Sunday Sounds
team to produce great sounds. MainStage is However, when it comes to integrating with templates in MainStage are a powerful but easy-
an inexpensive Mac program ($35 USD) for live something like MainStage, OnSong is also a to-use tool that brings modern worship sounds
performance. The Sunday Keys template ($40) powerful contextual MIDI controller. to any church. For more details on how you can
installs into MainStage and gives you multi-
set up a MainStage rig with Sunday Sounds,
layered patches for significant flexibility. I can When songs are loaded and viewed, OnSong read "4 Ingredients to Create a MainStage
load one patch that has four patches which can also send MIDI – digital musical instructions Rig" by David Pfaltzgraff in the February 2019
can easily be controlled, and then transition that nearly all electronic instruments understand, issue of Worship Musician magazine. To
from reflective strings to energetic organ or including my Mac. Whether through Bluetooth learn how to use OnSong's MIDI integration
synth with just a few faders. The layout of the or a wired connection, OnSong is able to to automate and improve your worship, visit
screen, along with a color-coded "skin" for a send and receive MIDI signals to and from onsongapp.com/sundaysounds
Korg nanoKontrol, makes it utterly intuitive. MainStage. This means that I am able to assign There's also "tonic", an ambient pad generator different MIDI presets to songs in my OnSong so you choose the key of your song and lush library so that as I swipe through my setlist, my
164
March 2019
Jason Kichline
Musician, Entrepreneur, Developer, Founder of
OnSong LLC, Mechanicsburg, PA
OnSongApp.com
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