Photos courtesy of Hope Community Church.
If you want to take your production a higher level of excellence and ease, talkback mics are an immediate next step. Talkbacks allow the band to hear from an audio engineer, a music director (MD), the worship leader, and even your broadcast director (in some rare cases). They’re a cheap way to make rehearsals and live sets significantly smoother.
I’ve got five I want to cover. Let’s jump in.
FOH Talkback
If you only have room for one talkback mic (whether on your console or in your budget), it must be this one. No one likes yelling, and no one likes to hear yelling, so giving your audio engineer a mic at front of house so he can talk directly to the band, whether through their in-ears or stage wedges, will make for straightforward sound checks, rehearsals, and sets. Most consoles made in the last decade come equipped with a channel specifically for this mic, featuring an input, a mute button, and a volume knob all in their own little spot, though sometimes the input is on the back of the console with the rest of the inputs. In that case, it will be labelled “talkback” or something similar.
No one likes yelling. Talkback mics eliminate the need for shouting and keep communication clean and clear.
Some ground rules for this mic:
- Keep it muted if you’re not talking through it. Leaving it open will create odd house noise in the band’s monitor mix, and they’ll also hear everything you say. Every engineer gets a little frustrated at times, and there’s no reason for the band to hear what that sounds like.
- Use it only if you need it, especially during sets. It’s ok to joke around during rehearsal, but during a live set, leave it alone unless something is on fire. In fact, don’t use it during a set at all if you’re using stage wedges.
My recommendation is to buy a mic with an on-off switch for this talkback. For whatever reason, it’s easier to remember to shut it off when the button is on the mic as opposed to reaching up to hit the mute button on the console. Perhaps it’s because your thumb is still touching the switch from when you turned it on; I don’t know. That being said, this doesn’t need to be an expensive mic, either. Find whatever switched SM58 clone is on Amazon for twenty bucks and call it good. If you don’t want to use a switched mic, any old handheld mic will do.
Keep your talkback mic muted when you’re not speaking — it protects the mix and keeps the team focused.
Worship Leader Talkback
This is the next level of talkback finesse. Everything about your worship production will improve if your worship leader can talk directly to the band to help them remember transitions or to call out spontaneous tags or chords, much like a music director would do. At LifeMission, we do a lot of spontaneous tags, so this mic gets a ton of use.
Giving your worship leader a footswitch talkback can transform how spontaneous musical moments happen on stage.
Here’s the secret—it’s not a mic at all. It’s actually just a footswitch.
The tried and true option is the Pro Co Panic Button. This footswitch simply takes a mic input and switches it between A and B outputs. One goes to FOH, one goes to an in-ear mix. This is a great option for wired mics because it’s clean—the mic goes into the switch, and then you run your outs to your stage rack or snake box.
You can use it for wireless mics, too, but that requires some finagling because the wireless receiver must connect to the footswitch, which lives in front of the worship leader. You’ll end up with mic cables at weird angles and long cable runs if your mic receiver lives in a rack, but the pros of easy communication outweigh the cons of cable management.
If you add this, it’s a great idea to make it easy to route this mic to your engineer’s headphones so that he can easily hear the talk back, even during a set.
Talkback mics are an inexpensive, high-impact upgrade that instantly boost rehearsal and live production flow.
MD Talkback
You might not need this one. At most churches, the worship leader is the music director (MD), so an MD talkback isn’t necessary if you already have a worship leader talkback. But, since MDs are becoming more common, I’ll tell you the secret to setting it up.
Actually, there’s no secret to it, really. Just add another mic channel, but don’t send it to FOH. Just send it to the monitor mix so that your MD can talk to the band at will. If you have limited stage noise, you can just leave the mic on, no need for another footswitch. If you’d rather have a switch, another Panic Button will do the trick, here.
Some setups are more elaborate, like this tutorial that utilizes a Streamdeck pedal and Bitfocus Companion to integrate an MD talkback into the entire production team communication flow. However, the more complicated you make something, the more likely it is to break, just keep that in mind.
Drummer Talkback
This mic is just for rehearsal and only in churches with an enclosed drum kit. Remember what I said about yelling? Well, an enclosed drummer has no way to communicate without a mic, although I’ve seen a few drummers get creative by contorting their bodies over the kit to talk into an overhead or snare mic. A talkback mic will make for easier communication during rehearsals, so
This mic should also be one with a switch because you don’t want bleed into the monitor mix. It makes for simpler rehearsals and saves your drummer’s voice. It’s sort of a no-brainer if you have the need.
For Extra Fun But Also Smooth Production—Splice In Your Broadcast Director
This will be an easy option if you use the Streamdeck setup I linked earlier, but it’s also something you can do without extra software if you have the right comms for your broadcast team. Any comms system with a rack-mounted hub should have a channel for an external feed. If you have space for bus on your console, you can send that bus to your broadcast comms to help cue them into what’s happening onstage, which will make for better shots and smoother production overall.
It’s probably best to make this a one-way feed. There is almost no circumstance under which your director will need to speak to the band, but if you want to, you’ll need a comms rack with two outputs, one that goes to the broadcast team, and one that goes to FOH, and then don’t mix those up.
