Sound Advice
We Talk to Mike Tribble ofRidgecrest Baptist Church.
In every issue of Shure Notes/House of Worship, we'll be talking to your peers about the kinds of problems and solutions they've discovered in church audio. We're hoping you'll find their experiences helpful and their suggestions illuminating.
Tell us something about you and your church.
I am the "Audio-Visual" Chairperson which means I am responsible for all audio, video and theatrical lighting systems in the church.
Our Church is Ridgecrest Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist Church located in Center Point/Huffman area of Birmingham, Alabama. We have about 2,000 members and seat over 2,000 in our worship center. We also have a Family Life Center, Fellowship Hall and a Youth Room, each with sound reinforcement systems.
You're not a sound engineer. How did you get involved?
About 23 years ago I moved back to Birmingham and started attending another Baptist church and I volunteered to help in their audio committee. I started attending Ridgecrest about 8 years ago and accepted the Chairmanship about five years ago.
Did you have any formal training?
I knew nothing other than what I thought "sounded good" and others seemed to agree with my techniques. I would attend every practice, performance, service whatever was going on and I would "tweak" the boards and EQ's trying to improve what I heard.
You're self-taught, then. What kinds of resources were available to you?
Actually my main source of ideas was Shure's Guide to Audio Systems for Houses of Worship. I found a copy stuck in the back of an old pew we used as seating for our old front-of-house system. I have recently subscribed to the listserver at www.churchsoundcheck.com and I am learning something new almost every day.
Who do you work most closely with at Ridgecrest?
I work very closely with our Associate Pastor for Music Ministries, Johnny Kilgore, on the audio and video issues for our worship services and productions and with our Pastor, Brian Branam, for his PowerPoint¨ sermon notes and other video as requested.
Tell us something about the equipment you have there.
We have been blessed in that we have recently renovated our sanctuary. We were able to acquire a new front-of-house system using 72 channels on Soundcraft Spirit 8 consoles, Sabine Power-Q EQ's, Crown amps and crossovers and a mixture of speakers. We have a new 24 input channel / 8 output bus monitor system using Soundcraft Spirit Monitor 8 console, Graphic EQ's, Crown Amps and again a mixture of monitor speakers. We relocated this monitor system to the stage where the operator could actually hear what he mixes. We have two short racks at the FOH position with two dual deck Marantz cassette recorders for play and recording, a dual deck CD player for accompaniment tracks, an "old" Telex comm system that has dual jacks at each station, two Lexicon audio processors (reverb units) and an eight channel compressor system with patch bay from each of the 72 FOH channels. And 14 channels of UHF and VHF wireless mics.
Our video projection system consists of 2 Sharp front-of-house projectors and screens (approx 6' x 8' each) and an Intellivision projector and roll-up screen in the rear of the sanctuary for the choir to see the video presentations. We run Prologue's Sunday Plus program along with Microsoft's PowerPoint for our video production and sermon notes. We can also play VHS video and DVD video as well as mpegs and avi's through the system which has its own dedicated computer and dual monitor setup.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face?
Finding enough of the right kind of people, retaining the people we have, training the new ones, cross-training the bored ones, weeding out those that aren't gifted for this ministry.
What kinds of mics do you use?
Most of our mics are Shure. Why? Well, most of them were here when I got here and they seemed to work well and were undeniably rugged (as demonstrated by our youth on their mission trips). When it came time to purchase new mics for the remodeling project I searched the Internet, compared specs and prices and we again purchased Shure for our new wireless UHF handhelds and choir mics and the Pastor's wireless.
We're specifically talking about choir miking in this issue. Any tips?
Don't over mic. When we remodeled our Minister of Music said he wanted to be able to hear each section in the choir, so he specified 11 choir mics hung in 2 rows across the choir. We thought, wow — with 11 mics, we should be able to pick up individual voices if we wanted to. WRONG.... all we got was mud. It sounded terrible, I couldn't get any gain in the system. EQ was ineffectual at best and made things worse most of the time. I was at my wits end.
That's when Shure told me about something called comb filtering. I had read about it, but because we never had this many mics before it had never reared its ugly head. Now I had a textbook case of it. With Mark's suggestion I turned off (muted) 6 of the 11 mics and, WOW, what a difference. I played around with which mics I turned on and off until I found the optimum setting for our choir and now only run 5 and sometimes 6 mics for each service. The choir is so clear now, words are understandable, highs are crisp, lows are full. What a difference.
Anything else? Any thoughts for your brethren out there who are facing some of the same challenges you have over the past 20 years?
Remember who you are doing this for. I can't carry a tune, play a note, teach or preach, but God gave me a good ear and the ability to use the technology he created to glorify His name and spread His message to all that will listen.
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Also in This Issue: Miking a Joyful Noise | Band on the Go The Shure Calendar | Product Spotlight |