An FOH engineer can isolate and evaluate individual sources in ways a worship leader simply can't during rehearsal. The most effective teams create space for those observations to shape the rehearsal. Photo courtesy of Luis Morera at Unsplash
The rehearsal has barely begun when someone raises a hand.
"I don't have any guitar."
A few minutes later someone notices a keyboard isn't passing signal, a monitor mix needs attention, or the worship leader pauses to work through an unexpected issue. None of these interruptions are unusual, but together they can keep a rehearsal from accomplishing what it was intended to do.
While no rehearsal is ever completely free of interruptions, many of the most common ones can be prevented. It starts long before the first song—with the work you do before the team ever arrives.
1. Perform a Good Line Check.
Before a rehearsal starts, your top priority should be the stage setup. When the singers and musicians show up at your church, the guitar stands, mic stands, instrument cables, and DI Boxes are already in place. Needless to say, this requires prior communication between you and the worship leader so that no one is surprised when there are two electric guitar players instead of one. Having a good stage setup is only one part of the equation.
The FOH engineer and worship leader should function as co-leaders of the rehearsal experience.
For the instruments that you already have on stage such as the grand piano and drum set, a line check should be performed ahead of time. This is when you can discover there is a bad XLR cable somewhere, or the mics inside the piano cover need to be repositioned.
For the instruments that can only arrive after people show up, such as electric guitars with pedal boards, be sure to do a line check to ensure their rigs can give you a clean signal without any issue.
It is very frustrating when everyone has to be forced to stop the rehearsal 30 minutes into it and spend 10 minutes just to troubleshoot why the keyboard has no sound. “Oh, the ¼-inch cable has a bad connection!” A diligent line check can completely avoid this scenario.
After the line check, you are now ready for a gain check. Setting a good gain structure is a prerequisite for a good mix. There are plenty of resources for learning how to do a proper gain check. After the line check and gain check are done (and only when they are done), you are now ready for the band to start playing. This brings us to the next point.
2. Know the Music.
Speaking on mixing live sound, someone warned me once that I should never “set it and leave it.” But if a good line check and gain check are done and the overall mix is pretty good, what else would I need to do? The answer is that you won’t need to do much if you don’t know the music, but if you know the dynamic and the instrumentation arrangement of the songs, you will automatically place your fingers on the fader and be proactively engaged in the music making.
If you know what's coming next, you'll mix proactively instead of reactively.
Do you know what happens after the first chorus during the 4 measures of turnaround? How does your worship leader build from Bridge 1 to Bridge 4 before coming back to the big chorus? If you know the answers to questions like these, you will anticipate rather than react in the moment. You will make sure the motif from the piano is heard clearly between the end of chorus and verse. You will also make sure the acoustic guitar is not buried in the mix because you know ahead of time it will go from hard strumming to fingerpicking at the bridge.
Every adjustment at the console should serve a single purpose: making it easier for the congregation to engage with what's happening on stage. Photo courtesy of Denisse Leon at Unsplash
Sometimes the worship leader will change how he/she approaches the songs in the middle of a rehearsal. After going through a song once with everyone on stage, he/she realizes that instead of pushing for a last full big chorus, an a cappella with just the vocals and a light synth pad might make more sense musically. When this happens, you shouldn’t just stand in the back and wait to see if they need you. You should write down the change just like everyone else should on the stage. You are now probably looking at changing the approach for the vocalists mix and might adjust the effects for the a cappella chorus.
3. Plan for stopping points to communicate.
It is important to remember that the stage and the tech booth are not two separate countries that require a diplomat to talk to each other. I believe that musicians, singers, FOH engineers, lighting techs, camera directors, and so on are all part of a bigger team that leads people to worship God.
The FOH engineer often hears what the worship leader can't.
With this in mind, the worship leader and the FOH engineer should plan on a few stopping points during the rehearsal to engage with each other’s opinions of the music. This can be done publicly over the mics and speakers so that the team can be aware of issues and adjust accordingly. “The drums are not too loud overall, except for the bridge when the crashes were hit continuously. The crashes were so loud that they bled into the vocal mics in front of the drum set. Can you play more quietly during the bridge?” Comments like this are very helpful, and most musicians that I know of would certainly welcome them.
Your stopping points at times should be done in private. I would recommend having a pre-planned 5-minute break for every rehearsal. Use this time to discuss what you have observed with the worship leader privately. “Your backup singers are flat every time they sing the chorus.” “The harmony for the pre-chorus is not working.” Or “the pitches from the violin are really off.”
From a worship leader’s point of view, I need and I appreciate comments like these from my FOH engineer. I cannot always hear everything accurately, especially when I am using IEMs. The FOH engineer is often my biggest asset during rehearsals because they are able to listen to how the music actually comes across from the stage and therefore provide invaluable feedback.
In order for this to happen positively, however, you need to build this kind of a conversation into the rehearsal plan. Make this a rehearsal routine and a part of the culture between you and the worship leader.
A five-minute line check can save thirty minutes of troubleshooting.
Many people in your church would like to volunteer by giving their time and talents. It is the leaders’ responsibility to do everything they can so that volunteers can enjoy a deeper worship experience instead of walking away frustrated because things were not organized or prepared. No one in the worship team should be feeling anxious and worrying if they can make it through the music set after a rehearsal.
Take the time to draw a rehearsal plan with your worship leader. Remember to perform a good line check and gain check, know the music that the team is playing, and communicate with the worship leader throughout the rehearsal.
