ProPresenter MasterClass: Part Four – Arranging Music for Speed and Precision
The goal of this post is to help arrange your music for speed and precision at your church events, from start to finish.
Again, the three Keys I follow in setting up and doing anything in Pro Presenter are:
- Organize content in a consistent manner
- Preparation is key to setting up a lyrics operator for success
- Save everything
Our next item for setting ourselves up for excellence is the ARRANGEMENTS feature of PRO PRESENTER. Every song has the arrangement manager at the top right 3rd button from the left after the transition button and timeline button. When you import a song from CCLI, they will group the song into choruses, verses, bridges, etc. I recommend that you always review the import with your LEAD SHEET to ensure you don’t need to change anything or edit anything to match what your worship leader wants to do with the song.
I would suggest getting a consistent format for coloring your song parts. Here below you can see I use Green for Chorus’s, Blue for Verse 1, Brown for Verse 2, and Light Blue for Bridges, and then Pink for Tags. By formatting all your music consistently, you will easily be able to identify the parts of the music when you are running the lyrics on a given Sunday.
Suggested Tweet: "By formatting all your music consistently, you will easily be able to identify the parts of the music when you are running the lyrics on a given Sunday. @stevodirks"
Once you have labeled the parts and colored them in the format you choose (pick a standard color for every part and stick to it) then you can begin to make an arrangement for the first time you do the song. Every time you do the song differently just create a different arrangement and title it with a notation about what changed (for example: YES AND AMEN w. 3 Tags). This will allow you to pull up what you have done in the past and quickly make changes on the fly. Also for the occasion where your worship team says one Sunday morning, “Hey I want to add a TAG to the end of that song” to which you will be prepared and ready to say, “Sure, absolutely no problem at all.”
One more tip: At the end of each Sunday I would encourage you to export your Sunday file to a MASTER folder on a backup hard drive with a FOLDER labeled PRO PRESENTER BACKUPS or something like that with folders for each Sunday. By exporting your entire project you will ensure being able to access anything from that SUNDAY in the future but you won’t have to keep it all saved in your program files each week.
Organizing, preparing, and backing up everything will allow you to be ready for anything that you and your church want to do. Setup your library for success by creating one song and then changing the arrangement for changes that are made week to week. Keep your background library trimmed down to only what you are using on a given Sunday. Format your songs in a consistent manner with colors for the different parts of the song. Utilize the arrangement function of each song so that you can make changes, additions easily.
Next up in our MASTER CLASS series we will delve into Templates, Sermon Notes, Looping announcements, and Building excellent playlists.
Suggested Tweet: "Keep your background library trimmed down to only what you are using on a given Sunday. @stevodirks"
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