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Julius Grafton, publisher of Australia's CX Network Media in Epping, New South Wales, Australia, shares a personal recount.
The last minute call meant a 5:30 a.m. departure on Sunday morning to mix sound at my daughter’s church. Can’t be that hard, little Yamaha LS9 desk, bunch of QSC flown and K10.2’s for monitors.
At 7 a.m. after the drive down from Sydney the stage is kind of set up. The bright earnest young people are all far too happy -- and they’ve been at it for a while. I send one out for coffee so I can function. Real mess of cables. Drums, keys, acoustic guitar, bass, and four vocalists. Grab one of the two wireless handhelds and do a quick audit of the system. No signal at any of the four K10’s acting as wedges. Turn power on. Still nothing. Check gain controls. Weird.
Mad scramble
The bass player has a K10, as do the keyboards. Miraculously they have signal, as does the drummer’s in-ears. I was not anticipating 7 sends from front of house. Backup vocal 4 is dead; I trace the cable. It is two mic leads end to end, miles of tangle, into a stagebox channel marked "BV4." It goes to the other side of [the] stage and plugs into some Dante tomfoolery. Why run a whole 20-way multicore just 7 metres from the source patch?
Why run a whole 20-way multicore just 7 metres from the source patch?
I bypass the stage box, plug BV4 direct and it works. Never did get those sends 1 – 4 at the front of the stage working because the band needed to do "soundcheck," which is actually a full rehearsal of their four songs.
I ran a mic lead I found muddled up with Speakon and DMX cables in one of the messy packers from the loop out on the bass player's K10 to one of the front K10’s so there was one compromised send that had bass and vocals. The band seemed OK with it. Stupidly I ask them if it is all OK, and they all want this, that and the rest. No, I can’t take the bass guitar out of the front wedge. Next time don’t ask.
Rehearsal over, someone comes up and wants foyer music. Where does that come from, I wonder? Find a pair of channels with music already present called iPod. No idea from where it comes, assume it was sent by the video operator to my left, but now I know where it goes.
"The TV feed is third in sequence today," a breathless girl instructs me. OK, TV feed. Ka? The desk has two pairs of TV channels, guess it’ll arrive on one of them.
Another girl rushes up to inform me that MC mic 2 will be used first. Wha? I go find these hitherto unseen handheld wireless units to check that a) they have enough battery life; and b) they sound OK.
Yamaha LS9 (actual mixer used by Grafton)
It’s been a mad rush of troubleshooting and discovery. The LS9 has 25 channels of inputs, those seven foldback outputs (of which four cannot be made to work), and a send to the foyer (newly discovered) and at the last moment, ANOTHER girl runs up to tell me the feed in [the] parents' room is too loud. I know nought of this. Shoot me now. I find it, on output 15.
Out to the briefing, gain two things – more coffee and a rough idea of what the heck will happen, starting in 10 minutes. Four praise and worship songs, dude does intro, prayer requests, another girl does tithing (where they encourage donations into the buckets they pass along), then they cut to the TV news which comes from the video dude to my left.
Out to the briefing, gain two things – more coffee and a rough idea of what the heck will happen, starting in 10 minutes.
Miraculously, all this passes through the PA without misadventure.
But now the warmup pastor is introducing the lead pastor for The Message, and I have feedback.... The backup vocalists put their mic’s on stage, facing into the wedges. Being unaccustomed to monitors from FOH, I had only cut the main faders. I should have switched these channels off – to kill the foldback – as soon as they were not required.
I have a uni student watching everything I do, he is "In training." I explain in hushed voice how I made that mistake.
We get through the main message (40 minutes) with the lead pastor using a handheld mic. I fiddle around with the compressor to get his gain level as he talks in and out while gesticulating. Needs a head mic.
He invites the worship team (band) back, and I switch on the keys, since the thing is to play quietly behind the spoken word. It is too loud, even out of the main mix. I’m hearing his one monitor wedge. Turn it down at the head amp. He turns up the keyboard.
I didn’t expect the level of complexity they have in their smallish (200 people capacity) church.
It all ends well, apologise to the guy who copped that bit of feedback and explain I messed it up, but I know why, and it won’t happen again.
Deep breath
As I drive back to Sydney I ponder how many things go wrong when you didn’t set the system up yourself and when those that do have no idea. I should have seen it coming, but I honestly thought the semi-permanently installed system would be tidy and straightforward.
Some kind of briefing manual or documentation would help a novice like me, as well.
I didn’t expect the level of complexity they have in their smallish (200 people capacity) church. I was impressed at the teamwork and the happy vibe. Next time – if they ask me back - I’ll get up even earlier and be first there.
