By then, we had decided that, with some hustle and dedication, my team of the Fred Brush (elec guitar & bass), Winslow Stillman (acoustic guitar & vocals), Brian (keys) and Rylee Hayes (vocals), and myself (drums, lead vocals, synthesizer, and production) could probably manage to crank out one music/lyric sing-along video per week... we were off and running! Little did I know that it would last more than a year.
My answer was to record various songs from the band's song list and then create lyric videos that could be included in a contemporary "e-service" that we could send out with the church's group email announcement each Friday... how we did it was an exercise in craziness.
I would start on Sunday afternoon by creating a basic multitrack recording in my Digital Audio Workstation; consisting of a simple piano part, a very simple drum tempo track, and a vocal 'scratch track'. Then I did a rough mix and sent that mix to guitarist, the late Fred Brush who recorded a bass track and emailed it back to me. I mixed that into my rough mix and forwarded it to Winslow Stillman who recorded a rhythm guitar track and also recorded some basic vocal harmonies, and emailed those tracks to me to add to the mix. Next the mix went to Brian and Rylee Hayes who added piano and vocal parts and sent them back to me, again to add into the mix. And then back to Fred one last time for his artistic lead guitar playing. After I had all their audio contributions, I went to work creating real drum parts, sweetening strings and adding some other lush additions, along with additional percussion sounds. Then, at last, got into the tedious task of doing a 'final mix', which was quite challenging.
After the final audio mix was good enough to satisfy me, I created a video with scrolling lyrics to the songs, so the congregation members could sit at their computers and sing along with the PUMC Connections Band, just like they had done each Sunday morning at church before the pandemic hit.
I'm extremely proud of the work we did (all by email). The quality of these recordings speaks for themselves. I'm also extremely proud of the fact that we did each one of these recordings in no more than four days, to meet the deadline of the church office for sending out the congregational group email on Friday mornings. And we did this for more than 14 months... 56 studio quality recordings; again, all by email, plus three personal recordings from guitarist Winslow Stillman and seven personal recordings that I did on my own. Below are links to all the videos in an archive that I created on YouTube. You can listen to, and sing along with, or with some add-on software apps, you can even download them to your own computer. They are organized in order of their production and their posting dates on YouTube for the church's email self-guided pandemic services. There is also an additional listing of just the Advent/Christmas songs; and another listing of my favorites based on musical styles, voices, and/or my own feelings.
I hope you enjoy this collection of our Connections Band recordings, and that you will feel free to share the links with others who may have an interest.
--Sincerely, Tom Bernett
THE FIRST EFFORTS:
In the Pinehurst, NC area, the pandemic shutdown officially began on March 30, 2020. It took me a couple days to come up with the idea of a recorded musical outreach program for our PUMC Connections service congregation, and about two weeks to actually produce the first Connections Sing-A-Long Video....those first productions were posted on April 11 and April 17, 2020, just in time for Easter.
By then, we had decided that, with some hustle and dedication, my team of the late Fred Brush (elec guitar & bass), Winslow Stillman (acoustic guitar & vocals), Brian (keys) and Rylee Hayes (vocals), and myself (drums, lead vocals, synthesizer, and production) could probably manage to crank out one music/lyric video per week... we were off and running! Little did I know that it would last more than a year.
