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One thing that working in church tech has cured me from is describing the noises my car makes when talking to my mechanic. You know the statements, “When I turn the wheel, I hear a ‘frump, boom, boosh, pow' noise.” I have visions of a fight scene from the old Batman TV show. Poor mechanic.
The same thing happens when my worship leader stops rehearsal to tell me that her monitors have a sort of … fill in the blank with a laundry list of non-descript adjectives for which I did not have a button on my console to fix. This seems especially prevalent around Easter when we have more staging, more people, and more equipment than ever on stage.
I can remember thinking to myself in the Easter planning meetings how quickly everyone forgets the trauma we just endured getting Christmas wrapped up—and now they want to do it all again. I am sure you and I could have a long chat over coffee recounting the crazy stories of things our leadership and creative teams have dreamed up. We'd probably mostly laugh now, but in the middle of it, not so much.
Problems & Solutions
Easter is the time we often bring out the big choir and the entire local symphony to proclaim what Christ has done. But often with all that celebrating we run into some unique technical roadblocks.
First, talk to your worship leader/band and see what is necessary. For me, a backup mic for the pastor is a necessity; the drummer wanting top and bottom high hat mics is a little lower on my list. This may be counter-cultural, but do not sacrifice redundancy for needless sound. That doesn’t mean to surrender what you need to achieve the creative endeavor; you just have to find the balance. Remember also that you can only physically keep track of so many channels at one time. If you get too much going on, it just sounds like noise.
When you just simply do not have enough inputs, like I did one year when we had multiple drum sets on stage for the opening song, I used a small analog mixer to help me keep it under control. For example, I used a little Mackie console on stage for all the percussionist’s inputs and then used its left and right main output to go into my console at FOH. This did two things: it allowed the percussion player to mix his in-ear monitors and to dial in his instruments [the way] he thought it should sound. Frankly, he’s going to know a lot better than me. While this did cause me to forgo gates, comps, and the ability to mute individual mics, it did free up five channels. I have also done this same thing with a submixing console at FOH. There I ran things like the click, fill track, and the iPod into it—those things that didn’t need my expensive preamps on the main board.
Choir Mic'ing
Choirs? Oy vey, don’t get me started. Imagine 50 people all giving you monitor adjustments, for the two wedges on stage. I’m sure you feel my pain and, at this point, I am preaching to the choir.
The fact is, I have seen it all too often, the “if less is more, then imagine how much more, more would be” mentality when it comes to choir mics. The truth is, this hurts you. Three good mics properly placed will easily cover a choir of up to 50 people. When you start adding more mics, you end up limiting your sound through phase cancelation. If your choir is just too soft or timid, try adding some “ringers,” and I don’t mean bells. This is where you give handheld mics to certain members to help fill the sound. Also, record the rehearsal and fold that back into the band tracking. Yes, some may call it cheating, and cheaters never prosper, but what they forget is that cheaters don’t get feedback either.
Ideas on Overflow
How about that last minute request for overflow seating? Yeah, that one is always fun. You can’t get mad because it’s a good problem, but yet it’s also a massive inconvenience. My advice here: plan ahead for it and just assume you’ll need it. Revolutionary concept, isn’t it? You’d think, yet it took me getting caught off guard a few times to sink in. I started planning ahead after getting burned one Christmas. Sooner or later it will happen. You need to provide a way for a pastor to talk to those people sitting in overflow. They needed to be led and directed, and that can be difficult from the stage in another room, especially if the pastor speaking doesn’t know that there are people in overflow. Now, I always set up a simple hand-held mic just in case an announcement needs to be made to that group. I also draft a couple of ushers, and the pastor tasked with that room ahead of time and teach them how to adjust the volumes and make sure things are working. That way, I know I don’t have to worry about that room as much and can focus on the main room (not that those in the main room are more important than the overflow people … even though they arrived on time).
Then there was the time the pastor wanted to come down off the stage during the Easter service and interact with the audience? Also, he wanted it to be like Saturday Night Live where the people he was talking to were staged and mic’d up … ready to go. I didn’t want to risk them turning their mics off, so I power locked them on, but then I had to worry about live microphones in the audience—a true Catch 22. I was afraid the pastor would forget who to call on first, so what I did (right or wrong), was to dump everyone into a VCA and put a slight gate on their mics. Once they said their first word, I quickly deactivated the gate and then muted the channel when they finished. Because their first sentence was long enough, the gate wouldn’t close again, causing a distracting blip in the audio. That was how I kept my sanity through it; I am sure there are other ways, and I know we sound guys are never short of opinions.
Parting Thought
Do you ever feel like MacGyver? Pulling off last-minute miracles? While I don’t use a paper clip, chewing gum and pocket lint, I have been on a shoestring budget while being asked to pull off a Cirque Du Soleil-style performance. Yet, regardless of the circumstances, through the art of mixing and production we get to help proclaim the greatest message of all time: He Is Risen!
