Worship Musician October 2018 | Page 60

BETTER BY SUNDAY w/ PCO DON’T MISS THE OBVIOUS | Mike Graff If you’ve been using Planning Center for quite ADD NOTES. LOTS AND LOTS OF NOTES. some time, there might be features lurking right elements, especially if you have people on the platform who aren’t on staff (such as faith story under your nose that would vastly improve If you have certain notes about a song (repeat your worship-organization game… but you’re chorus twice, end small and fade into next staring straight past them! song, etc), about announcements (youth group If there’s something to be said about anything in on weds at 7pm, food drive starting next week, your worship service, say it in Notes. volunteers, etc). Take it from me. I ran a worship ministry for etc), or even prayer time (pray for the city, years under-utilizing PCO, and began to kick school, neighboring community, etc), you can STAGE LAYOUTS MAKE YOUR AUDIO ENGINEER’S myself once I found some very simple solutions pre-plan all of these things in PCO Notes for LIFE HAPPY. for issues I was facing, because they were all to see. literally right in front of me the whole time. Your sound engineer has a mighty task to But better late than never, and our ministry’s accomplish each and every week. And if the organization turned around in a heartbeat after that moment. So here are some quick-fire ideas that are literally staring you in the face right now. If you aren’t using these quick-tips, go and do it right I’m a big sound engineer is a volunteer, it’s an even believer in over- life easier is a huge win-win; it shows them you communication. your room sounding great and have a better bigger task! Anything you can do to make their care, and in turn will give them more time to get mix! away! The more So how does one help out a sound engineer SEND AUTOMATIC REHEARSAL REMINDERS information you make using the Stage Layout function is a huge time- available to the uploading a photo of your worship platform), public... the less and instrumentalists who are assigned to the If you utilize the Service Times and Rehearsal Times in PCO, you can let everyone know when they need to be there. But what you might not know is that you can set up PCO to automatically email everyone at a time of your choice to remind them of their upcoming commitment. With busy schedules and lots of distractions these days, reminders are a good thing! I would suggest reminding team members the day before any rehearsal or worship service. You with making their life easier? Well, within PCO, saver. Using a standard square template (or by confusion there you can drag-and-drop all of the vocalists service into their “spot” on the Stage Layout. will be when it This will show the sound person where they comes down to By having all of that waiting for the worship the details. entire process and give you more bandwidth to need to route mics, cables, power, and more. team when they arrive, it will smooth out the focus on leading worship well. can have those emails set up independently, and they will automatically default to those There you have it! It’s amazing how simple times if you ask PCO to do so. changes can bring so much value to you and I’m a big believer in over-communication. The your worship ministry. Take advantage of them, This will help solve the headaches of missing more information you make available to the and go lead worship well! team members immediately! public (i.e. your volunteers and anyone else in PCO), the less confusion there will be when it comes down to the details. This will go a long way in helping smooth out transitions between 60 October 2018 Mike Graff Chief Creative of internationally-acclaimed Coresound Pads, and worship musician/leader for over 20 years. CoreSoundPads.com WorshipMusician.com