Anyone who has or is part of a worship team knows how much joy it can be, yet in the same breath they can know what a pain in the rear end it can be. What am I talking about?
Well let’s face it, You might be able to play good, You might be able to write songs well, You might be able to lead people in the presence of God with your eyes closed and standing on your head.. but If the sound sucks, or if you dont even have sound.. you might as well go back to playing the spoons and singing acappella.
Next too having a right heart, good equipment and a tight team, it is having good, organized and timely sound checks.
Recently I was reading a fantastic article in worshipleader magazine by Andy Chamberlain, the whole article addressed this dilemma from the standpoint of a well organized sound check.
I want to bring out some of the tips he gave from that article along with adding my own experience of what its like, maybe it will give some sound guys some insight into tackling the challenge.
The Challenge - Ask any worship team in any church gathering and your bound to have one person say, sound is a major issue, some of the problems that can occur are
- No Sound at All
- Too Much Sound
- Too Much from One Instrument
- Great when setup, half way through set, sound guy nukes it
- Good levels individually, Bad Levels when Playing Together
Now even the best sound man will have his rough days, so we need to bear that in mind and give them some slack as he or she is dealing with not only the technical end of things but they are dealing with a multitude of characters who all want to hear what they are playing and have others hear it.
TIPS from ANDY
1. Have one person liasing the sound from the Stage with the Sound guy from the Desk
2. Line Check Instruments in this order : Vocals, then Instruments and then drums last
3. Once Drum levels are set, get drummer to play a groove as if he was playing a loud song
4. Get the one person liasing to stand at the monitors and ask each members what parts of the kit do they want in their monitors one member at a time, dont let the drummer stop playing.
5. Once each members has a drum mix, get the Bass person to ADD a one note groove on top of the Drumming, again ask each person how much they want in their monitor
6. After this move on to Rhythm instruments starting with the Acoustic, again keep the bass and the drums going all the time.. add in the acoustic.. ask each person how much they want…
7. Then move on to keyboard.. All the while keeping the drummer, bass and acoustic going, ask each member how much of the keyboard they want in the mix.
8. Next move on to the Electric Guitar have chords played.. same again on top of what everyone else is still playing
9. Move on to things like Flutes and Trumpet.
10. Keeping thinking.. ADDING LAYERS to the same One Chord Groove - Dont change the groove!
11. Lastly bring in Lead vocals and after that Backup vocals.. again On top of the one chord groove.Do not do the Back ground vocals first as they need to know the level of the lead so they can know where they sit..
This method of sound checking ( layering in this order ) has proven to save time and yield a better detailed mix
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