Worship Tech Tour | The Belonging Co. | Keys and Tracks

Welcome back to our continued Worship Tech Tour Series featuring The Belonging Co. 

This post covers all things keys and tracks within The Belonging Co.’s setup. For the fullest explanation of how all the hardware and software works together, it’s best to watch the video above of The Belonging Co.’s Music Director, Evan Fernald, walking through everything in detail. This is the too long; didn’t watch post. In other words, here’s a tight-packed list of The Belonging Co.’s setup as a quick-reference guide. 

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Do you want to improve your church’s ability to use tracks and keys to the best of your ability? Stewarding these tools can be hard. We want to help coach you and/or your keys players. Check out Worship Ministry School, where we have created courses on all things Ableton, MainStage, Keys, and more. We also offer one-on-one coaching. Let us help you today!

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 Who is The Belonging Co.?

PRESENCE OVER PRESENTATION. INTIMACY OVER INDUSTRY. PEOPLE OVER POSITION. ENCOUNTER OVER ENTERTAINMENT.

JESUS OVER EVERYTHING.

That is The Belonging Co.’s mantra. 

The church began with their lead pastors, Henry and Alex Seeley, opening up their home for worship in 2012 after taking a leap of faith and moving from their home of Melbourne, Australia to Nashville. Their hearts were drawn to those who didn’t have a church home because of the fluid schedule of so many whose lives revolved around a touring schedule. By the Lord’s grace, he drew a people together, and The Belonging Co. began. 

Now, The Belonging Co. holds services at two campuses along with its online ministry, has a thriving worship ministry, and even offers college degree programs for students.

Tracks Rig

Most churches have their keys player or drummer running their tracks. This is not the case for The Belonging Co. In fact, they have their own dedicated tracks setup and team to run the tracks. Obviously, most churches won’t have the volunteer or financial bandwidth to pull something like this off, but this setup can serve as inspiration as churches grow in their ability to run tracks effectively. 

Hardware

16 inch Macbook Pro running Ableton 10 Standard 

This is the central hub for all the tracks The Belonging Co. uses during their worship sets. It runs Ableton 10 standard as the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), and it generates all the sounds and click tempo that the church and the worship team hear.  

The track sessions themselves are built out in an interesting way. Every week begins with a file that holds a “master session” with every single song and every single stem (stems are like each instrument of a song) in one big, long session. From the master session, they then pull out all the songs not needed for a set and keep only the songs they do need. They may also keep a few upbeat songs in case the pastor requests to end on a high note. Then, midi controls are programmed to trigger all of the different elements of the software like starting, stopping, moving to the next song, etc.

Korg nanoKontrol 2

This is a very common midi controller device with faders and knobs that can be used to control many different elements of a rig. Notice below that the keys player has their own nanoKontrol as well. For the tracks rig, this nanoKontrol is used to adjust volumes and filters. 

OWC Thunderbolt 3 hub

It’s a thunderbolt hub. Not much to explain here. It allows everything to connect to the Mac.

Focusrite Clarett 8Pre

-       Run 10 outputs, 6 for the tracks

Whenever any sound needs to go from a computer to the mixer, an interface is needed. In this case, The Belonging Co. uses this device to send its sound across multiple channels for ultimate control. This is extreme. Most churches can get away with simple stereo outputs, but more inputs can be helpful for mixing, depending on the complexity. 

TouchOSC (on iPad) as a virtual midi controller

Traditional midi controllers like the KORG nonoKontrol help control various elements. However, it can be helpful to design an always-customizable interface to control things as well. This is the power of the app TouchOSC.

Boss DB-90

The Belonging Co. uses this basic metronome as a backup click in the case that the tracks software glitches or crashes. What’s more impressive is that the crew figured out a way to sample the click sound from Ableton and play it through the DB-90, so the band would have no idea that the click switched from Ableton to the DB-90. 

Keys Rig

Hardware

Korg nanoKontrol 2

See above

Focusrite Clarett 8Pre

See above

iConnect MIDI 4+

This device allows an ipad or other midi controller to communicate with multiple computers at the same time. 

Nord Stage 2 EX

The piano itself is the most important piece of gear in a keys rig. Nord has consistently provided reliable support with the most authentic feel. Even the sounds within the keyboard itself are used, Evan Fernald says, along with patches from the player’s library. 

iConnect mioXM

This is what the midi from the Nord Keyboard goes to, where the midi is sent to the broadcast room for ultimate control and editing.

Software 

TouchOSC (on iPad) as a virtual mini controller

See above. In addition to being a controller, notes for the music director and details about the flow of the songs are listed here as well.

Abelton and Mainstage

It turns out that about half of the keys players use Ableton while the other use Mainstage, and this decision is left up to the keys players themselves as they develop their own unique sounds. 

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We hope this list of gear and links can help point your church in the right direction as you build and improve your keys and tracks rigs! As always, know that the Churchfront team is ready to help with specific needs and training through our Worship Ministry School and other programs. Also, be sure to stay on top of our YouTube and other blog content. We’re here to serve your church.

Worship Tech Tour | The Belonging Co. | Vision, Building, and Strategy

Over the years, Churchfront has tasked itself with touring and interviewing some of the most influential churches of our age, giving our audience a behind-the-scenes look at how the technology of these churches enables their ministries. 

Now, it’s time to approach these tech tours with more space to breathe and think about why specific systems, philosophies, and approaches are adopted by churches. And we think the best way to do this is by breaking down tech tours into a series of episodes. So, this is post one of many to come in which we will break down the technology ministries of churches. 

In this series, we will be jumping into the life and ministry of The Belonging Co. in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Who is The Belonging Co.?

Presence over presentation. Intimacy over industry. People over position. Encounter over entertainment. Jesus over everything.

This is The Belonging Co.’s heartbeat. 

The church began with their lead pastors, Henry and Alex Seeley, opening up their home for worship in 2012 after taking a leap of faith and moving from their home of Melbourne, Australia to Nashville, Tennessee. Their hearts were drawn to those who didn’t have a church home because of the fluid schedule of so many whose lives revolved around a touring schedule. By the Lord’s grace, he drew a people together, and The Belonging Co. began. 

Now, The Belonging Co. holds services at two campuses along with its online ministry, has a thriving worship ministry, and even offers college degree programs for students. 

For the purposes of this blog, The Belonging Co. also prides itself with a unique approach to how they steward their technology uses. From their building design to their philosophies, their tech approach has paved the path for all of their other ministries to thrive.  

Who is Sean Loche?

Before diving in, meet Sean Loche. 

Sean is the Executive Creative Pastor at The Belonging Co., and his role is to oversee the worship, music, production, communication, and events to ensure each team is cared for and functioning at their highest capacities. 

Sean’s highest goal as he leads his team is to create space in the church for a clear and undistracted encounter with Jesus. This means intentionality and an attitude of constant heart-checking to ensure the focus is on Jesus instead of any person or thing.

Although much of the content of this post is re-written to be more readable, this content comes from an interview between Jake and Sean, and the entire interview can be watched above. 

The Vision

At the most basic level, the goal of The Belonging Co. is to foster an encounter with Jesus without distraction. It’s not about production for the sake of production, but what is produced is the result of intentionality and a Spirit-centered philosophy. 

The room doesn’t hold the highest-end tech gear across the board. Instead, the focus is on stewardship, intentionality, and efficiency. Some gear is entry-level. Some is not. But it’s not about the latest and greatest tech; it’s about helping people to encounter Jesus. 

The Building

Before acquiring the building The Belonging Co. currently uses, the space was used as a medical distribution center. After purchasing the space, The Belonging Co. brought in an integration company named Diversified, and they helped design the space in a way that would remove distractions and keep things minimalistic. 

The result of their work is staggering. 

Every element of the building is simple, yet artistically intentional. Loche likened the approach to that of church designs hundreds of years ago where stained glass windows, architecture, and other artistic elements of churches worshipped God and pointed to God through its art. 

Although technology has changed how art is portrayed, The Belonging Co. sought to embody a similar approach to its own design. One example is the way one specific back hallway of the church building was designed, a hallway that most will never even see. This hallway holds photographs taken by a church member that tell the story of Psalm 23 through photos. It’s subtle, yet intentional. 

The Architecture of the space itself is intentional, too, lending itself to fostering the dream scenario for a worship tech nerd. The production, worship and creative departments weren't an afterthought in the building and design process. Instead, it was a core part of their strategy. 

The floor plan is laid out with great care. The worship auditorium is right next to the post-production suite where the broadcast studio is held for mixing audio. There is also a separate studio for cutting the broadcast video. There are a few other offices, and one of them is even dedicated to editing photos and videos that for social media.

Strategy in Using Technology

The Belonging Co.’s strategy for using their technology in worship is to track absolutely everything. This means using multiple cameras and recording multi-tracks in Pro Tools for every single service. 

The reason for capturing everything in every service is so that, at any moment, the production team can choose a cut they like, mix it, and produce it. This is how every live album is made, like The Belonging Co.’s new “See the Light.” Capturing and producing this way eliminates any effort to manufacture true and authentic worship. Instead, the authentic worship is captured all the time, and the reactions and emotions are real. 

The Belonging Co. runs 8 cameras, all capturing in 4K, so that is a massive amount of data. In order to process and access the data quickly, they run Synology servers. This provides seamless integration. No importing required. All of the mixing is done in Pro Tools so that all of the processing can be done quickly without extra steps. 

All of this technology is integrated into the church building with great care, and it provides not just those in the room with an encounter with Jesus, but also with those viewing the services around the world. 

Wrapping up

This wraps up this first post in The Belonging Co. Worship Tech Tour series! Keep an eye out for future posts in this series, and remember to check out The Belonging Co. for yourself, including their newest live worship album, “See The Light.”

As always, we hope this post brings fruit to your worship tech ministry at your church and, ultimately, that Jesus is made big in your church because of it.