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Isolation solved the volume problem—and created a listening problem. In solving stage bleed and clarity issues, we’ve also made it easier for musicians to stop engaging with each other. The result is a band that’s technically tight, but musically disconnected.
We’ve all seen it by now. Church musicians turned social media influencers posting videos of their In-Ear-Mixes online. I’m not going to mention any names. A lot of these are talented players, skillfully and professionally executing their parts and sharing the perspective from their IEM mix for all of us to hear. Different musicians, different worship styles, very different church environments, but they almost all have one thing in common.
They’re missing everything else.
Almost without fail, what we hear is their instrument, a click and guide track, maybe the onstage music director, and a hint of vocals.
Over the years, whenever I’ve had the chance to sit with a professional monitor engineer and methodically cue up individual musicians’ and vocalists’ IEM mixes, I’ve been shocked by how many worship team members are mixing this way. I’ve said before that the implementation of IEMs has revolutionized live performance. They’ve solved more problems than they’ve caused. But one of the biggest problems they’ve created is the double-edged sword of isolation between the musicians, the singers, and even the congregation itself.
Playing together means actually listening to each other.”
Years ago, when someone asked Larry Mullen Jr., drummer for U2, why he always looked so intense when he played, he answered, “I’m just trying really hard not to mess up.” I’m pretty sure the word wasn’t “mess,” but you get the idea.
I can relate. We’re in a high-pressure environment, and more than ever worship musicians are tethered to pre-recorded click, synced backing tracks, and guides. Losing your place, dropping a beat, or missing a cue can result in a total trainwreck, and nobody wants to be the main cause of that derailment.
IEMs didn’t just clean up the stage—they quietly changed how bands listen to each other. In removing bleed and chaos, they also removed many of the subtle cues musicians rely on to stay connected. What replaced it is often cleaner—but not always more musical.
You’re fired!
There was a time when plenty of highly successful musicians weren’t comfortable playing with a click track. I know of one famous Christian touring band that ended up firing their drummer while working on their first album because he simply couldn’t lock in with the click. Before that first professional studio experience, he’d never really needed to. And if you’d heard them live, you never would’ve said, “Wow, that guy is all over the map.” Sad story. But like so many technical advances in the recording industry, there’s often a trail of victims left behind. That band chose to shoot their wounded and move on.
Of course, these days it’s basically unheard of for a musician who can’t play with a click to be successful. It’s the standard now, and I don’t have a problem with that.
Great musicianship isn’t just about precision—it’s about interaction.
What I do have a problem with is hearing IEM mixes that are basically solo performances with a mind-numbingly loud click track. When I hear those mixes, I can’t help but think we’ve lost touch with something special about music. In a lot of cases, the ability to isolate yourself and your instrument from everything else on stage is revealing a deeper dependence on what should only be one part of your experience as a worship musician.
The wish list.
I wish drummers would work on feel, touch, and self-mixing, not just precision and raw aggression. I wish bass players would work on finding the groove with the kick and snare, not just locking to the click. I wish guitarists would spend more time blending and arranging their parts with the other guitarists and musicians on stage. More often than not, when there are two electric guitars on stage, neither one is really listening to the other. Keyboardists and pianists who isolate themselves from the rest of the band will almost always start filling in extra low-end content that may already be covered by the bass guitar or other instruments or tracks.
I’ve written extensively about vocalists blending together on stage, and one sentence from that article applies just as well to musicians: How can you blend with what you’re not listening to?
What was it like in the old days?
When I worked as a professional drummer, we didn’t use tracks or clicks live. But when we were in pre-production for an upcoming album, we always rehearsed with a click in preparation for the studio. In most cases, the click was primarily for me, unless there was a long section without much else there rhythmically. We cut tracks live as much as possible while playing to the pre-recorded click. Drums, bass, guitar, and a scratch vocal. Our best results always came when I was locked in with the click and the other musicians were locked in with me. That’s why we still sounded like a band playing together, because that’s what we were.
During those years, with help from some great producers and engineers, we learned about proper subdivisions of the click based on the tempo of the song. The goal was to get enough precision to allow for punching in, fixing parts, and aligning with the occasional sequencer or delays, but not so much that it limited our ability to play slightly on top of the beat or slightly behind it. Most of the time, that meant quarter notes. Sometimes half notes, depending on the speed of the song. That’s one reason I’m surprised now when I hear a click track in 4/4 at 120 to 140 BPM set to eighth notes. That’s very busy. It leaves almost no space for any human feel at all. At tempos like that, quarter notes will usually allow the band a little more subtle variation in the feel of the song.
How much do you trust your engineer?
We’ve taken a very effective tool, the ability to craft almost any mix we want in our ears, and pushed it to an extreme. On top of that, we’ve put an unnecessary burden on the audio engineer. If the band is incapable of self-curating its parts, then you’re leaving it to the engineer to make the final calls on what gets heard and what gets cut. Not because something is bad, in and of itself, but because it isn’t being managed at the source.
Here’s a real-world example.
In almost every worship environment these days, the audio engineer is getting two electric guitars that haven’t worked together on figuring out who’s doing what where. In many cases, they aren’t even listening to each other. Then add two or three more electric guitar parts coming from the tracks, which the onstage guitarists often aren’t listening to either. When I’m in the A1 seat, I’m looking for the guitarist with the best tone at that moment and letting that one drive the day. Too many uncultivated parts, too little time, and we’re moving on. So don’t complain when you listen back to the broadcast mix and don’t hear yourself. I know it sounds like I’m picking on guitarists here, but the point applies to all musicians and singers on stage. When you operate in a vacuum, you’ve got no idea whether what you’re doing is helping or hurting the whole of the worship experience.
Another isolating factor has come from leadership.
We’ve all heard some version of this: This is not about you. You’re not jamming in a club. Lead the congregation in worship. All your energy should be projected outward, inviting everyone in the sanctuary into worship. That’s all good, and I agree with the sentiment. But I think sometimes worship musicians and singers take that too far and start ignoring each other. That gets really easy to do when you can’t even hear each other.
I don’t know about you, but when I first got interested in playing music, I wanted to be in a band, making music with my friends. Heck, the kind of guys I ended up playing with had already designed album covers and stage names before we ever got our first instruments. In my mind, being blessed with some natural talent and then developing enough discipline to get good enough to play professionally was supposed to be fun. And it was.
I can’t think of anything less fun than walking onto the worship platform every week and playing in total isolation with a click while eight to ten other people around you are doing the exact same thing.
The beauty of playing worship music with your teammates is doing it together. We worship with our instruments and voices, and the worship itself should be greater than the sum of its parts.
What if every member of the congregation could only hear themselves?
That would completely change the idea of corporate worship.
Some of us have developed bad habits. Some of us have developed crutches. I think it’s time to take the training wheels off and learn how to ride on the road with your teammates.
Start simple. Just turn everybody up some and, as I like to say, don’t forget to listen.
