Darren Houston

Hey everyone! I know we haven’t posted anything in a while so I just wanted to update everyone on the new.

This is Colton, Darren’s younger brother, and we are both going to share his blog!

Pretty much our time is spent at work/ school and church. Darren is continuing his way on the sound board and media side while I am soon to take over our churches youth worship band! (I also do the word media for the songs in the Sunday services)

I think I can speak for the both of us and say that we have changed in all aspects of  life tremendously over the past year and we can not wait to let you know of the many new things God is doing and preparing us for in the far and near future!

Sound production is one of the funnest things to do. I was listening to a song the other day, and I thought, WOW! There has got to be so much stuff that goes into producing this song.. Which in all actuality, there is. There is all the time it takes to sit down with the artist, and find out what all they would like, although sometime the producer has a lot of the ideas to present to the artist. There is the time it takes to record all of the instruments, sound effects, reverb, if it’s a live recording all of the echo effects, and then on top of that, then go back for main vocals and background vocals, if there are any, and then bring all of that together, to make a beautiful sounding piece of art. Then I thought, man I love to just sit and listen to track over and over and over just so I can get the full effect of what I didn’t hear the time before. In this field, there are so many different choices for equipment and options within brands and brands in brands, sometimes it just gets confusing… At the present time, i use an Allen and Heath GL3300 for live sound production at CBC in Fort Worth, Texas. My live feed from there is sent and mixed down into Adobe Audition, and then brought together in Garage Band. I have found that mixing it down from the live performance and making it sound almost as if it is in a studio, is a good way to produce tracks that maybe I don’t want Live Mics in the mix, just in case there is ever the chance to produce a live venue, that way I can always make it sound fresh. For secondary audio, I use a Mackie Onyx 16 with Firewire direct recording. I have come to absolutely love this machine. With a direct feed into Garage Band via a Firewire 800 cable, I can record and reproduce things “on the fly” without having to waist time and go back and do it all over again. Cool feature with this unit too is that it has the capability to reproduce effects from Garage Band, directly back into the board and out to your mains or a monitor feed. This is great for adding reverbs and such if there was ever a need for it. The plan for this upcoming year is to produce an album for the church called “A Cornerstone Christmas”, which would consist of voices from our worship team and band, as well as our Lifesong worship group. As this gets closer, more information will be released and news of dates for purchase will be established as well. You can visit the church site simply by going to www.cbcfamily.org.

Just sitting at another Rangers Game. Just finished with the Mercy Me concert and he just sang the national Anthem and he did and AWESOME job!! They are awesome anyways. Sorry for not posting more than I do. I wish there was a way to make my blog and my Twitter or Facebook update at the same time. Oh well. Enjoy.

Here at the Rangers game with some friends from church… Not the funnest thing to do, but great being with friends!!