The way I heard it, Vince Lombardi, coach of the Green Bay Packers, famously began the first day of training camp in 1961 by holding up a football and saying to his team, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Presented to a room full of talented, highly trained professionals, the point was obvious. The game, like so many human endeavors, still comes down to fundamentals. The basics.
In my many years of training audio teams, I often see a lack of focus on the basics. Fresh-faced, eager sound techs want to see a great vocal processing chain or be shown the magic combination of plugins for the perfect kick drum sound. Unfortunately, sometimes young Skywalker is disappointed when he realizes he already missed a few steps, and that’s where we’ll be starting.
As we roll into a new year, this feels like a good time to take a breath and look at how our processes have morphed, and maybe even atrophied, over the past twelve months. For most of us, just surviving Christmas is a feat in itself. Odds are your church raised the bar for the Christmas season. Some went full-on “Church-du-Soleil.” Let’s take the anomaly of Christmas productions off the table. For the sake of this discussion, let’s look back at your worship production over the year; pre-Advent.
The basics don’t disappear—they erode quietly when no one is paying attention.
I once had a pastor who talked a lot about the grind of working in a church. It’s very real. Some people are cut out for it. Some aren’t. And over time, that grind has a way of pulling your attention away from things that were once non-negotiable. The basics. Often, you don’t realize how far outside the lines you’ve drifted until you slow down and zoom out. That’s what I want to talk about here. And it isn’t limited to production. It applies to worship leaders, vocalists, musicians, and tech leaders as well.
New Year, Old Habits.
Let’s talk about drums and drummers and start with the easy stuff. When was the last time you changed drumheads and gave the kit a fresh tuning? For most churches, this should probably happen at least quarterly, depending on use. Fresh heads and a proper tuning give everyone a clean starting point, including at the consoles. This reboot usually involves at least three or four people: the drummer, someone in leadership approving the expense, and the audio team, FOH and broadcast, and possibly a monitor engineer if you have one. Don’t be afraid to bring in an outsider to choose heads and tune the kit. I know plenty of great drummers who still can’t tune a drum set in a way that actually works well in a PA or broadcast studio.
A well-tuned drum kit fixes more problems than any plugin ever will.”
From there, it’s about fundamentals, and I’m talking directly to you, the drummer. Play simple. Strike the drums with consistent intensity and consistent placement every time. Every fill should be intentional and lead the band somewhere, into a chorus, a bridge, or back into a verse. A studio producer once instructed me, make every part count. No throwaway fills just because you feel like you need to play something.
If your system only works because you’re there, it doesn’t really work.
Pay attention to your own dynamic range. Don’t be too loud in the big moments and don’t disappear in the quiet ones. Instead of thinking about your volume as one to ten, think more like three to eight. There is a sweet spot for drums, cymbals, and microphones when it comes to how hard you play. Work with your audio team to find that sweet spot in your environment. If you want more detail on that, see my article What Audio Engineers Need Drummers to Understand.
Work on self-mixing. Practice in a room without IEMs to make sure your cymbals aren’t overpowering what’s happening with the kick and snare. Remember, the better your internal balance is before the mics are even turned on, the better the result will be in the PA and in the studio. Nothing ruins a good mix faster than a drummer simply bashing cymbals. It’s truly an epidemic in modern worship.
And one more thing. Police yourself when it comes to tinkling cymbals during very soft sections. You don’t have to play just for the sake of playing. If it’s not adding anything to the moment, then leave the moment alone.
New Strings Are Great. But What’s the Other Guitar Doing?
Electric guitars are some of the most difficult instruments to manage in modern worship, especially when there’s more than one player on stage. Most worship music is recorded with multiple electric guitar parts layered intentionally in a studio. Problems start when those layers are brought into a live environment without anyone making decisions.
Two electric guitars doing roughly the same thing in the same range is already a problem, unless you’re AC/DC. Accompanying electric guitar tracks only exacerbate what can degenerate into a cacophonous mess. This isn’t about talent or effort. It’s about arrangement. Someone has to decide who is playing rhythm, who is adding texture, and who needs to stay out of the way. Showing up with a pedalboard full of options is not the same thing as showing up with a plan.
Nothing ruins a good mix faster than uncontrolled cymbals.
And sometimes this isn’t about parts at all. Sometimes it really is about tone. Most electric guitars live in the 800 Hz to 2.8 kHz range. That’s the same range that, when unmanaged, makes people think the mix is too loud even when the SPL meter says it isn’t. With limited time and too much information fighting in that frequency range, something has to give. If the choice is between clear vocals or your guitar and dirty looks coming from the congregation, vocals are going to win every time. Work with your audio team, or don’t be surprised when your fader ends up at a ceremonial level.
Isolation makes this worse. In-ear monitors (IEMs) are incredibly helpful, but when guitarists only hear themselves, a click, and a guide track, they lose all reference. You can’t blend with another guitarist you can’t hear. You can’t make good arrangement choices if you don’t know what the other guitars are doing, whether those parts are coming from another player on stage or from pre-recorded guitar tracks. Don’t isolate yourself from the very people you’re supposed to be leading worship with.
Studios routinely record far more guitar parts than anyone ever hears at one time. Almost always, every one of those parts is included when you purchase or rent content from track providers. That’s true for all tracks, not just guitars. Just like in the studio, you need to use only the tracks that actually enhance your band. More guitars, or simply more stuff, doesn’t make things better. Intentional parts do. Someone, whether it’s the guitarist, the music director, or the worship leader, has to put in the time to curate which pre-recorded tracks to use and assign parts to the musicians so everything works together, tonally and musically. I’ve written two previous articles about coordinating tracks in worship: The Ethics of Pre-recorded Tracks in Worship & Are You Controlling Your Tracks or Are They Controlling You? , the same principles apply here: thoughtful curation and clear arrangements matter for every instrument on stage, not just guitars.
My favorite electric guitar players are the ones who ask if they can come early and work on their tone so it sounds good in the PA. Right behind them are the players who coordinate their parts with the other guitarist before they ever show up for rehearsal or a run-through. Both understand the same thing. Fundamentals make everyone sound better.
Singers: Time to Review the Game Tape.
As we roll into a new year, this is a good moment for some honest self-assessment. Just like with drummers, a lot of vocal teams have slowly moved away from fundamentals over time. Not out of bad intentions, but out of repetition, comfort, and familiarity. Week after week, small habits turn into normal behavior, and before long no one remembers when those habits started. If I hadn’t watched this get worse in church after church, I wouldn’t keep coming back to it. But I have. So it’s time to slow down, zoom out, and refocus on what actually matters when it comes to vocals on a worship platform.
Your personal worship moment should not replace your leadership role.
Let’s start with discipline. Your on-stage experience absolutely includes worship, but your job is to lead others in worship. Those two things are not the same thing, and pretending they are has created some bad habits over time. I see singers holding microphones and not using them. Hands raised, backs turned, not just off-mic, but off, off, off-mic, wandering around the stage in what looks like a worship-induced haze.
I’m going to be very direct here: the trend of dropping to your knees on the platform comes across as performative and self-indulgent. Yes, I said it. I’m sure it feels meaningful in the moment, but it comes across as undisciplined and distracting. You may sing. You may not. “If the Spirit leads.” But here’s the question my dad used to ask me growing up: what if everybody did it? If everyone checked out like that, nobody would be leading the congregation.
Beyond that, this kind of inconsistency creates real problems for the audio team and forces them to play vocal wack-a-mole to make up for disappearing voices. You were added to the team to lead worship, not to disappear into your own moment. Sing your parts. All of them. Every time.
If we can all agree that leading worship includes actually singing into the mic and engaging with the congregation, rather than the hazer, we can talk about mic technique. It matters. And it needs to be taught, reinforced, and practiced as a team.
Vocal teams benefit greatly from having a designated leader, and the new year is a good time to implement one if you haven’t already. Whether that’s the worship leader or a trusted, experienced singer on the frontline, their role includes monitoring and reinforcing these basics. Establishing simple, shared language goes a long way.
For example:
Off-mic position: eight inches or more from the mouth
Ensemble position: three to six inches, slightly off-axis
Lead vocal position: one to two inches, directly on-axis
Cupping the mic like Bono: no. Just no.
If you’re leading a song, start in a lead position. If you’re singing a single harmony part alongside the leader, you may need to stay there as well. Otherwise, group harmonies should move toward an ensemble position. When multiple singers are doubling parts or singing in unison, going off-mic produces a smoother, more musical blend. None of this should be improvised in the moment. These positions need to be worked out during rehearsal, agreed on, and repeated consistently.
Good vocal blend starts with musical awareness and clear direction, not faders. It does not happen automatically, especially once IEMs and large stages enter the picture. Blending vocals in this environment takes effort from the platform and the booth, and it only works when both sides agree on what “blended” actually means.
Just like with drummers, vocal teams that own their fundamentals on stage make everything downstream better. When singers use consistent mic technique under the direction of their newly appointed 2026 vocal leader, they are already helping the mix before a fader ever moves.
A good starting point is having all vocal monitor mixes set with voices at roughly the same perceived level. From there, each singer can bring their own voice up just enough in their ears to feel anchored. Maybe ten percent louder, but not so much that they lose connection with the group. If a singer’s own voice is way out in front in their IEM mix, blending becomes impossible. You cannot blend with what you cannot hear.
Try this: if singers work under the assumption that what they hear in their IEMs is exactly what the congregation will hear, and blend accordingly, everything improves. Pretend the FOH engineer cannot re-balance you at the console. When vocal teams “blend” themselves this way on stage, they give the engineer something musical to work with instead of something to fix.
And briefly on consistency. Mouthing lyrics in rehearsal and then singing full voice in the service, or vice versa, hurts everyone. “Sand-bagging” destabilizes the mix and forces unnecessary compensation. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about responsibility. When you step onto the platform as a singer, you are a worship leader, and that role demands reliability.
The Cluttered Garage Soundbooth and the Guinness Truck.
Before we even get into show files and scenes, let’s acknowledge the obvious. The new year is also a natural time for some basic physical cleanup. Bad cables should be tossed or repaired. Backstage areas and sound booths can now be cleared of whatever piled up during Christmas and the rest of the year. None of this is groundbreaking, and it doesn’t need a manifesto.
FOH is not a hiding place—it’s a leadership position.
But there’s real value here. After weeks of complexity, pressure, and mental load, a day or two spent simply organizing and cleaning can be surprisingly cathartic. You’re still being productive, but without having to solve hard problems. A clean, clutter-free booth or backstage area just feels better. It clears your head and helps reset your brain after the intensity of Christmas production. Sometimes that alone is enough to make January feel manageable again.
The new year is also an excellent time to digitally clean up the console. I’m as guilty as anyone. Old show files, scenes, snapshots, and definitely outdated macros kept around because, “I might need that someday.” Next thing you know, there are show files on the console from two years ago, and nobody remembers why they exist.
I treat this the same way I do a junk drawer or a cluttered garage. If I haven’t used it in a year, it gets tossed. Not archived “just in case.” Gone. Outdated scenes don’t make you safer or more prepared.
This is also a good time to take an honest look at how dependent you’ve become on external plugins. If your show only works because of a long chain of processing that only you understand, that’s a problem. I always come back to the Guinness truck test. If I get hit by it on Saturday night, can someone else sit down on Sunday morning and make sense of what I set up? If the answer is no, that’s a problem. Straightforward routing and processing isn’t a lack of sophistication. It’s wisdom in disguise. If you’ve ever been the next-man-up after a Guinness truck incident, you’ll appreciate the simplicity.
A word about your mix. With a full band, sometimes a choir, maybe an orchestra, and ten or twelve frontline singers, it’s easy to fall into the trap of turning everything up. The most liberating thing I ever learned about mixing live is something I’ve repeated for years: you don’t have to hear everything all the time. One of my favorite mix engineers likes to say, “If everything is big, then nothing is.” As you restart the year, give yourself permission to work from those two concepts. You’re responsible for the whole mix, not individual moments of ear candy or filler. Your job in 2026 is not to recreate a CD from a famous worship artist on a giant sound system. It’s simply to engage your congregation in worship. That requires restraint, intention, and the confidence to leave space when space serves the moment.
Leadership: Who Was Actually Listening in 2025?
The start of a new year is one of the few organic moments churches have to reset habits. Not by changing vision statements or adding new layers of production, but by looking honestly at the systems we rely on week after week. One of the easiest places to get off track is how we evaluate our services.
Most churches do some form of review or post-mortem. That part is not the problem. The problem is what gets evaluated.
It’s easy to default to the Sunday stream. On Monday morning, the service is sitting right there on YouTube or Vimeo. You can pause it, rewind it, take notes, send links, and make assessments quickly. It’s efficient. It feels objective. And while it definitely deserves your attention, it’s only telling you part of the story.
The online experience and the in-room experience are related, but they are not the same. The stream is mixed intentionally for phones, laptops, and living rooms. The in-room experience is shaped by the PA, the room, the people in it, and how sound behaves when hundreds or thousands show up. Thinking the stream is an accurate representation of the auditorium is not a good assumption.
The hard reality for a lot of medium-sized and even large churches is: more people are in the auditorium than watching online. If your evaluation process leans too heavily, or exclusively, on the stream, you are weighting the smaller audience more heavily than the larger one. That is rarely intentional, but it happens all the time.
Compounding the issue is where decision-makers actually experience the service.
The pastor is often seated on the front row, directly in front of what many of us half-jokingly call the pastor blaster. Systems get designed, tuned, and occasionally “sweetened” to sound great right there. I understand why. Keeping the boss comfortable matters. But that seat is almost never representative of what the rest of the auditorium sounds like, especially in the “cheap seats”.
The worship leader, who is frequently also the department head, is on stage wearing in-ear monitors. What they hear is clear, and carefully dialed in.
The tech director, often one of the few full-time staff members directly involved in the service, may be in a video booth, behind glass, or wearing a headset calling camera shots. Their attention is split, and their ears are rarely free to evaluate the room honestly.
The audio engineer may be a high-capacity volunteer, a contractor, or even another staff member. Regardless of the role, that position shouldn’t be above review or exist without accountability.
None of these positions are bad. All of them are necessary. But taken together, they explain why so many churches struggle with the in-room audio experience without realizing it. Very few people with decision-making authority are actually experiencing the service the way the congregation does.
Without intentional listening from the house, you’re left with complaints and comment cards instead of actionable knowledge.
This does not require a massive overhaul or another committee. It requires ownership. Someone needs to be responsible for evaluating the in-room experience regularly, weekly, not annually and not only when something has gone wrong. Not someone on comms. Not someone multitasking. Someone who can sit in the room, move around a bit, and listen intently.
They do not need a title. They do need credibility, a little knowledge, perspective, and the maturity to offer feedback without an agenda.
If your church already has a regular review process, the new year is a good time to make sure it isn’t unintentionally weighted toward the stream or shaped by someone who wasn’t physically present in the room. And if that role doesn’t exist in your church yet, 2026 should be the year it does.
This new year,
My hope is that churches get serious about the basics again, not as a step backward, but as a way forward. When fundamentals are ingrained and become muscle memory, they stop demanding attention. That’s what frees up energy for creative and authentic worship, instead of constant correction and recovery.
So here’s the question worth asking as the year begins: what areas of your worship and tech teams need a reboot at the fundamental level? I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, in 2026, don’t forget to listen.
