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We asked a panel of Worship Arts Summit Track Coaches to share some of the tips and techniques they'll be demonstrating at the Summit.
John is a 16-year veteran of live audio and touring. He has traveled full-time with Shane & Shane, Lincoln Brewster and Chris Tomlin, as well as worked with many other top Worship Leaders and Christian artists. Besides running sound, one of his main passions is teaching the next generations about audio. He has also been a featured seminar leader at multiple worship conferences throughout the US. You can contact him and/or find more at his website www.TechTraining101.com
A lot of times I think we technicians get lost in the technology of our job. We need to stay immersed in the art of it to balance it out, because quite honestly, none of the people in the audience care about the model number of the soundboard, or the frequency we cut to get that great acoustic guitar sound. They only care that the overall experience sounded good.
It’s that whole left-brain/right-brain thing that we technicians have to tackle. The brain experts say the left half of your brain is responsible for the analytical, or technical side, of things, and your right brain is responsible for the artistic, or fun side, of things. So there has to be a balance of both sides working to get a good sound. But much like a painter doesn’t think about the exact “model number” of the blue paint he is using, we need to know our paint (frequencies) well enough to paint without thinking.
So when I say critical listening, I mean really getting inside the source. What does it sound like? What should it sound like? Then get inside of the mix and find the space each instrument is taking up. It’s really more about how each instrument interacts and less about each instrument sounding amazing by it self.
How do you get inside a source or a mix? Stop listening to talk radio and start listening, I mean really, REALLY listening to music, all kinds, not just your favorite. I’m sure there was a time you actually enjoyed it. Get back to that place. Then start listening to how a producer or mix engineer placed the guitar, think about what is making that piano sit so perfectly in the mix. Get some pictures in your right brain (art side) about what things sound like. Then try to recreate that experience next time you have a song that sounds similar. Once you’ve successfully recreated a few things with this thought process, you’ll be much more free to create your own colors, so to speak.
A very simple little thing you can do to help get a more natural sound is to find an offending frequency and cut it out.
The way I usually do this is to picture the way the instrument should sound, then boost the low mid EQ, sweep the frequency around, and listen for the most offensive sounding frequency. Now, cut that freq. out to taste. You will most likely find that the instrument now sounds more “natural”. In the class we go more in depth on the what, why, and how of techniques like this one.
Don’t get overwhelmed with everything sounding perfect individually, it’s one big painting, and honestly it’s more about how the blue looks next to the green than which blue or green it is.
At the end of the day, take a deep breath and realize that all we are really shooting for is two things; a natural reproduction of the sources the band is giving us and a clean cohesive mix. Beyond that, it is completely art and up to the eye (ear) of the beholder. But that’s where the fun is.
John Mills will be teaching a series of mixing clinics at various Worship Technology Summit events in 2008.
Senior Market Developer for Shure, Inc., Doug has been employed in the Pro Audio and Music Industry for over 25 years and also serves as worship leader in is home church in New Jersey.
One of the demonstrations we’ll be sharing at the Summit is recreating situations that happen in the big room. This room will be like many churches — less than perfect acoustically. Well, far less than perfect.
But that’s what we’re all dealing with, right? We’re trying to make the space work for all kinds of situations and many times the room doesn’t work for anything. So what do we do? Burn down the mission and build a new one? Maybe. But before we do that, there are a few things we can try first that aren’t quite as radical.
Let’s begin with the people who are responsible for the sound in your church.
Do you love music? Do you listen to music? Do you listen to music critically? Can you articulate what it is that makes a mix sound “good” or “bad”?
If you’re an engineer or a musician and are not on the road toward developing your listening skills, you are doing yourself and your church a huge disservice. You can’t do anything related to music, or audio, in my opinion, unless you spend a great deal of time listening.
Training your ear to identify frequencies will help you to prevent problems that occur all the time in our meetings, like feedback. It will help you to create mixes that have energy without hurting people. A trained and musical ear is mandatory for creating a mix that inspires and lends emotion to the worship.
There are things that the soundman is responsible for and there are things that are beyond your control. The worship leader or music director is responsible for the arrangement of the music. But if every musician is playing on every beat of the entire song — and every vocalist is singing in unison every line of every verse and chorus with no space in between, you are going to have a very difficult time mixing.
If the band on the platform is paying attention to the details of a musical arrangement, many of your sound challenges disappear.
Work with your worship leader to find arrangements that have space — where musicians come in and out, where vocalists sing with different textures and harmonies at different times, where everyone pays attention to dynamics and alters the sounds and tones of their instruments and are in tune.
If the band on the platform is paying attention to the details of a musical arrangement, many of your sound challenges disappear.
There is a difference between a sound check and a rehearsal and we’ll be exploring them in real time at the Summit.
A sound check is NOT a rehearsal. A sound check allows you to get what you need to establish an appropriate mix for the audience and if you’re lucky enough to mix monitors for the team, you can take care of this during this time, too. Once you’ve determined that everything is working, you’ve set levels and EQ’d the basics, you’re ready to move on.
The rehearsal is for the musicians to practice their parts. Now, you have the opportunity to fine-tune settings from the sound check.
The problem with many churches sound is the intensity of the level — the volume.
The church has gotten louder. There are a number of solutions to this problem, but the one that seems to be almost universal in quieting the church is the adoption of personal monitors.
We will be demonstrating practical methods of making sure that excess volume from the platform is minimized.
Try this one: Have the band play a song during sound check with all the monitors off. Tell them that you want them to play and that you understand that they won’t hear themselves very well but to play anyway. Let the band get used to hearing themselves in the room. After a few minutes, they’ll start to get accustomed to the sound and hear themselves in the space.
Now, bring up their monitors. But before returning to previous settings, ask them what they need. After having played only through the mains, you may find that they don’t need as much in their monitor as they did before. This works very well in many situations.
There are many, many practical techniques to address this issue. We’ll be covering as many as we know about.
You can meet Doug at the Summit. He’ll also be participating in a number of events on Shure’s behalf this year. Check our Shure’s touring schedule on the Calendar in this issue.
Mike Overlin is the Manager of Worship Resources for Yamaha Corporation of America, and a worship leader and consultant with the Free Methodist Church in Southern California.
Record your praise team rehearsal every chance you get. This serves a number of purposes. For one thing, it gives your audio team a chance to practice the skill sets required for recording during the time that the praise team is rehearsing.
In addition, it allows the praise team to hear and evaluate what they are doing both from a quality standpoint and from an arrangement standpoint.
One of the skill sets that is not always as highly developed in the typical worship team musician is the ability to do and evaluate at the same time.
In other words, the musicians need to develop the ability to choose what they play based on what they hear others doing —with a sense of the song’s arrangement in mind.
Listening back to your rehearsals goes a long way toward developing and ear for on-the-fly flowing worship.
Sheri Gould is a graduate of the University of Illinois. She has taught voice privately for 30 years. She has been a worship leader and music director in various local churches since 1986. A nationally recognized vocal coach and consultant, she writes for Worship Musician Magazine and has taught at numerous conferences including Christian Musician Summit, Seminars4Worship, International Worship Institute, Karitos Conference, Worship Institute Northeast and many more.
The most important thing any musician can do is to learn his instrument. This includes learning how to properly care for the instrument as well as how to use the instrument correctly. The more you know about how to use your instrument the easier it becomes to do the right things with less effort. It is a scientific fact that we ‘blaze new trails’ so to speak in our brains when we first learn how to do something. After we’ve traveled down those new trails they become nicely paved roads. Eventually, with enough use, they function more like superhighways that we can just cruise on at high speeds. This makes things easier on a Sunday morning.
The most important thing you can do if you feel more accomplished on your instrument (than your voice) is to practice to the point of not needing to concentrate much at all on your technique or the music. If you can change chords without looking and you know which chord is coming next, you can free your brain up to think more about singing.
While technique with all instruments is important, proper vocal technique can mean the difference between you being able to speak afterward or not! It can also mean the difference between you being able to sing next year or not. A lot of physical damage to the vocal folds can be done with improper technique (some of it permanent). While damage to your body can result from improper technique with other instruments, it doesn’t usually happen as quickly and there are generally signs that are more difficult to ignore. We tend to overlook hoarseness as an annoying necessity when in fact it’s a screaming sign to STOP doing what you’re doing to your voice.
One of the keys to avoiding vocal strain is to stay relaxed and use proper breath support. This can seem almost impossible at times while playing an instrument. In order to breathe correctly, it’s imperative to have correct posture.
If you are in a sitting position when you play and there’s no way around it, make sure you “sit from the waist up”. Pull up hard from the chest until you can feel that the rib cage is off the diaphragm. Relax your shoulders though or you’ll get too much tension. This is a tricky balance to try to maintain when you’re playing either drums or keys because of the involvement of the arms and shoulders in your playing. Check frequently to make sure you are staying relaxed.
“Prepare your music well, leaving yourself plenty of ‘mind space’ to focus on your singing technique.”
Make sure that you have at least a rudimentary understanding of proper vocal technique. Prepare your music well, leaving yourself plenty of ‘mind space’ to focus on your singing technique. The last step is to do a self-check: Look in the mirror to make sure that you are employing proper singing technique. If are sitting, check your posture. Even if you are standing with your instrument, check to be sure you are relaxed and have good posture. The mirror is great immediate feedback. |
