Kim reviews musician training or resources. Musician resources may be DVD training, songbooks or even enhanced CDs with video or music resources. Basically, the term is for anything that is not a regular listening CD, but has to do with helping musicians and/or congregations learn the music and play it for a local church worship service.
Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 12:47PM 
Whiteboard Worship TrainingOver the last 20 years, I have lead a lot of rehearsals and worked with a lot of bands. I wish I had watched this series of amazing teachings from Dan Wilt on some very practical guidelines to rehearsals. And that is just one topic covered by his new "Whiteboard Worship Training" sessions. WOW.
REVIEW :
Dan Wilt's "Whiteboard Worship Training" sessions are just about perfect. They are clear, excellent content with perfect, punctual and enjoyable presentation. There is a reason Dan is the premier teacher in the body of Christ on all things worship- he is a brilliant thinker and great presenter. The videos are literally 3-5 minutes each, and jam packed with truly usable information.
All wrapped up in his practical style that shows Dan is "one of us", who isn't talking down to anyone, but is sharing from years of experience and the joy of a gifted leader. The first video "How To Lead A Great Worship Band Rehearsal" is FREE. Even if you aren't interested in taking his whole course, go check out this one free video. Really great stuff. Dan has hit the nail on the head with this -- it is how we will all be learning in the 21st Century. Perfect.
Format: Online
Producer/Instructor: Dan Wilt
Check it out online at :
Learning with you,
Kim Gentes
band, course, dan wilt, musicians, rehearsal, training, whiteboard, worship in Bands, Musician Resources, Worship Leading Friday, December 19, 2008 at 3:56PM 
iWORSHIP FLEXX is marketed as "videos that follow your lead". An apt description, iWORSHIP FLEXX are professional videos related to specific worship songs. Each FLEXX product contains several songs (normally 7 different songs on each edition). Each song comes with several MPEG & Quicktime files - each file represents a song segment. Used with software like MediaShout, you navigate through verses, choruses and other song sections by clicking on these custom designed videos. iWORSHIP FLEXX is easy to use and contains exceptionally well produced content.
iWORSHIP FLEXX highlights very progressive video styling and graphics which may be a notch or two above what you are currently using in your services with adding static lyrics on some stock motion backgrounds. The folks producing iWORSHIP FLEXX have done a spectacular job at making the videos very crisp for their purpose- upbeat songs pop, while balads pull back and let the image breathe without disturbing the visuals too much. One thing I liked about the offering is that it provides intro segments, which let you cue up the song musically before the lyrics start hitting the screen. There is also a great extended video segment, letting you run consistently on the screen, even if your band is playing an instrumental section.
Technically speaking, you will want to make sure you are using a relatively new machine with FLEXX video demands. This model of doing VJ or worship lyric presentation removes the lyrics COMPLETELY from the process-- they are all embedded in the FLEXX video segments. And that is the point- what you are doing here is simply running a single video for each section of the song. The concept is brilliant, but does mean you can't have the old PC that ran powerpoint try to chug along on these meaty MPEG or Quicktime videos as you swap through song segments.
Churches that want a more progressive, higher level video experience will love FLEXX. I would say that some churches may find FLEXX a little too progressive, depending on their song selection. Over the years I have heard churches get more and more articulate about too much happening on the video screen during worship. I think FLEXX could be used well, but I am guessing some churches will want to be sure to watch a demo before purchasing for their more conservative environments.
Overall, its a great product, beautifully and artfully rendered, with a perfect mix of technical chops to make it "plug and play" with MediaShout or other higher end presentation software.
iWorship FLEXX has several titles out including:
Review by Kim Gentes
flexx, integrity, iworship, lyric, mpeg, presentation, video in Lyric Presentation, Musician Resources, Worship Leading Friday, August 17, 2007 at 6:26PM 
Friend, this is Kim Gentes. As a worship leader, I occasionally like to write about resources that I know are specifically helpful and made for worship leaders and musicians. In that category, we find there are a plethora of collection songbooks - from "best of" to those that try to include hundreds of songs. But most of the time, either the collection is too sparse (top 20 doesn't make sense a very complete worship resource, in my mind) or it is so expansive that the cost is outrageous. Recently I found a great new resource that includes a very extensive list of songs, at an exceptional price. The resource is this product you found here called "Survivor Songbook".
What is great about this songbook is not just its extensive enough to cover most of the popular modern worship songs- but it also includes an amazing set of files on the included CD-ROM. The companion CD disk (included in the songbook) has complete piano sheet music files and overhead masters for every one of the 200 songs in the songbook. The printed songbook itself has lyrics, chord charts and teaching articles. This means the songbook is of manageable size to actually use (wow! imagine that!). But that decent size doesn't mean you give up having access to every single piano sheet music score for the songs in the songbook. This is a marvelous thing, and allows you to print the score off for just the songs you need. Of course it also has the formatted lyric masters for the overhead and projection uses that most of us need. All the scores are in PDF format, so it is completely portable across computer systems, which is great! Check this out (above) for an overview, list of features, and song list of the songbook. I think this is the best songbook available anywhere! And while we normally give "Editor's Choice Awards" to CD projects, this song definitely deserves for what a great resource it is!
Product Link http://amzn.to/nTMbI5
Many blessings,
Kim Gentes
CDROM, PDF, award, christian, editor choice, kingsway, redman, sheet music, songbook, songs, soul survivor, worship in Musician Resources, Songbook, Worship Leading Friday, August 17, 2007 at 6:17PM 
A couple weeks ago, I was rummaging through my music collection trying to find a chord chart for the song God of Wonders, the recently popular worship song that also enjoyed extensive radio play. The problem was, I didn't have a CD and songbook combination that was done in a congregational format that I could duplicate with my local church praise and worship team. I quickly remembered that the recently released Integrity Hosanna project with Paul Baloche had covered the song God of Wonders. I listened to the CD, but didn't have time to check out the music immediately. Then, about a week later I received a new product from Integrity called "God of Wonders Video Songbook". I read the cover and quickly discovered it was a CD-ROM, which I immediately threw in my computer's CD-ROM drive.
What I saw very encouraging! In about 5 minutes I had become hooked on this new tool. A day later, I brought the CD-ROM to my home and put it in my home PC. In 10 minutes I had learned the song I wanted to learn, using the age-old method of all successful students- watching and copying someone who could do it well. The genius of this resource isn't that it does something new, but that it does something old- play by example! You might be tempted to think this would be either too easy or too amateur-ish to be useful and effective. You would be wrong. First, let me describe how this resource works.
When you place the CD-ROM in your drive a window appears on your screen with a menu of songs selections. Clicking the first selection, Paul welcomes you to the video songbook and lets you know what to expect. For each song from the "God Of Wonders" album, two selections exist- a chord chart and an instructional guitar video. When you select the music note icon next to the song, the appropriate chord chart appears via the Adobe Acrobat program. Incidentally, all the software programs that are used to run the media on the video songbook are actually included on the CD-ROM for installation on to your computer (although that will likely not be necessary, since most computer will already have all these common print and video viewers installed).
In my case, I clicked on the chord chart for "God of Wonders". I printed the chart out and set it down next to me. Then I selected the video icon and immediately I had Paul Baloche in my home teaching me how to play a very cool (but accessible) version of God of Wonders on my guitar. In about 10 minutes I had listened and played along with Paul on three repetitions of the song. I learned the strumming pattern, chords, special finger placements, right & left hand accents and all that was necessary for playing this song in either my small group or for leading it from the acoustic on Sunday morning. As it happened for me, Sunday morning was the next morning. During the pre-service practice I taught the song to the band using what I had learned on the video songbook. Our first song in congregational worship that morning was God of Wonders. As we got to the end of the musical portion of our service, I went back and repeated the song as our last song that morning! It was very encouraging- people were engaging in praise to the Lord and the music of the song was played well and really supported the saints as they worshiped!
Over the days that followed, I went back and walked through each of the songs on the video songbook and found the same helpful instruction and ease to use arrangements on most songs. One of the songs (Jesus You Are), is even presented in two keys to allow you to follow and learn in keys best suited for your group. I was stoked!
The bottom line for me is this- using a musical/worship resource is only as good as its application in the local church life. If I can't actually use it in some form with my local congregation, I have a hard time seeing its value. This video songbook resource answers those concerns and blesses the Body of Christ by giving us all a great tool for learning some wonderful songs. I would not hesitate to recommend this resource to any guitar player or worship/praise leader that uses guitar.
My hope is that this new format of resourcing becomes a standard for all projects that present songs intended for use in the local church. If you are a worship leader, get a hold of this new resource- you'll be glad you did! To the worship publishing companies out there-- more, more, more! Instead of doing another rehash collection of souped up old favorite worship songs, we need this type of innovative and resourceful tool from you! To Paul Baloche and all the folks who are working to towards getting actually useable resources out to the local church and their worship ministry staffs- thank you and keep going! To all the high (and low) profile worship leaders out there- please consider what Paul has done here and how it offers such value to the Body of Christ and be spurred on to see what God could uniquely have you do to give to His body through such resourcing.
This resource is simply a great tool for the church; there really isn't any other way to say it. It is for this reason that the God of Wonders Video Songbook is receiving our "Editor's Choice Award". I think it will be a touchtone product that will hopefully lead to a new frontier of resourcing the local church in worship.
Blessings in the Lamb!
Product Link http://amzn.to/p1yp1o
Kim Gentes
CD-ROM, CDROM, PDF, digital, god of wonders, paul baloche, sheet music, songbook, video in Acoustic Guitar, Musician Resources, Songbook, Worship Leading