You’ve read all the stories about losing your valuable data on your computer. Maybe you’ve experienced a loss of data. Whatever the reason you’ve been convinced that backing up your data is the best possible protection against data loss. You’ve set up a scheduled backup either locally on an external drive/CD/DVD or you’re using one of the many online backup services. You keep multiple versions of the most important files and you check that the backup is running regularly.
But before you start congratulating yourself that your data is truly protected and recoverable I want to ask you this question. How do you know for sure?
I spent over 25 years in large-scale corporate IT environments working with distaster recovery and the one thing that I’ve learned is that a backup isn’t just about backing up your data. You’ve got to know without a shadow of doubt that your backup is backing up the correct data on an appropriate schedule and that you can recover the data at the level that you need it. In the corporate environment that meant on a daily/weekly/monthly basis we verified the backup process, and for our critical files we recovered them to test out the system.
How does that apply to your home or church computers? Let’s set up a typical computer scenario. Your church has some kind of tracking software or you’re using Quickbooks or other financial system. The data that is stored is crucial to the continued operation of the church. Or if you’re looking at this from your home computer viewpoint, you’ve got a ton of family pictures that aren’t stored anywhere else. Lose these and you’ve lost irreplaceable memories. Either way you’ve started running automated backup software (say Time Machine on Macs and Windows Backup on PCs) and you’ve determined that you only need to back up the files once a week. You determine that you need to keep 4 versions of the backup file (1 for each week). This gives you a month’s worth of backups that lets you guard against accidental deletion or file corruption. So far so good.
Backing up the data is only half of the data protection cycle. The other portion that isn’t talked about much is being able to verify that what you think you’re backing up is really what you want to back up and being able to recover the data properly. How do you do that? It depends on the software or backup service you use so I’ll discuss the general principles and you’ll need to check with your software or backup service on their particular way to do it. First thing is that when you set up the backup you’ll usually have an option to verify the data. What that does is that the software runs a self-check on the data integrity of the backup. It doesn’t mean that it checks the actual data (that’s your job). It checks to see that the backup file isn’t corrupt. That’s the first step. The second step is to manually verify that the data that’s backed up is correct. That’s done by looking at the backup file on the backup drive or service. Look up the file name that corresponds to the file name on your computer. The file size should be identical (unless you’re compressing data). If it’s not then you need to ask yourself what’s changed, especially if it’s just been backed up and nothing has changed.
The next step is to physically verify that the backup file has all the right data and that the restore procedure works. What good is backing up the data if you can’t restore it? If you’re using local software make sure that you have a copy of the software stored offsite in case something happens to your computer. Nothing’s worse than having a backup but don’t have the software to restore the data because you no longer have access to the computer you backed up. To verify the restore procedure you want to copy your local file to a different location or to rename it temporarily. Then run the restore portion of the backup software. Usually the restore process will ask you if you want to restore the entire backup (you don’t) or a specific file (you do). Check the specific file that matches the one you’ve moved or renamed. Then the software may ask you which version of the backup do you want to restore. G0 f0r the latest version since if you’re verifying your files on as regular a basis as your backup that will be all you need to check. The software will probably ask you to be sure you want to restore the file and it may ask you if you want it to be restored to the original location/computer or a different location/computer. Once you decide where you want it the restore procedure takes over and run the restore process. After that completes (if all goes properly) you should have your backed up file on your computer. Go ahead and open it up with the software that you normally use with it. If it opens and everything looks good you know that your backup is truly a backup and you can rest comfortably knowing that you really do have a good backup. If not review what you’re backing up and how you’re doing it.
There are a lot of horror stories about companies, both large and small, that thought they were backing up their data only to find out that either their backups weren’t running or the data was wrong or corrupt. They couldn’t recover. Don’t let this happen to you. While it does take some time and effort to verify your backups think of it as an additional insurance policy. And, in the event you ever need access to the backup, you’ll look like a hero instead of a zero.
While there is no truly defined industry standard in laying out the channel assignments for live sound, there are general layouts that a lot of live audio veteran engineers utilize with minor modifications. Typically when you layout channels you start from Drums then Keyboard, then Acoustic Guitar, then Electric Guitar, then any other instrument not covered, then vocals. Throw recorded stuff like CD/DVD players, iPods and computers at the end. Within that general set here’s a more specific layout that I use. If you have a mic or more than the number of instruments coming in you’d add them into the corresponding sequence and shift the remainder of the channels down. For example: With 2 kick drums you’d use channel 1 and 2. Mic’ing a snare with a top and bottom mic would mean putting the snare in channel 3 and 4, etc. The following layouts are ones that I’ve standardized on and I find works well for me.
32-Channel Mixer Layout
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Hi-Tom
5 -Mid-Tom
6 – Lo-Tom
7 – Stage Right Overhead ( *Stage Right means looking at the rleft side of the stage from the audience/sound booth perspective)
8 – Stage Left Overhead
9 – Percussion 1
10 – Percussion 2
11 – Keyboard L
12 – Keyboard R
13 – Synthesizer L
14- Synthesizer R
15 – Acoustic Guitar
16 – Electric Guitar 1
17 – Electric Guitar 2
18 – Vocal 1
19 – Vocal 2
20 – Vocal 3
21 – Vocal 4
22 – Vocal 5
23 – Choir Stage Right
24 – Choir Stage Left
25 – Pastor mic
26 – Handheld 1
27 – Handheld 2
28 – iPod L
29 – iPod R
30 – Computer L
31 – Computer R
Group Assignments
1 – Kick/Bass
2- Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 -Keys/Synths
4- Rest of Instruments
5- Vocals except for pastor and handhelds
For a 24-Channel Mixer Layout I to reduce things from L and R configurations down to mono to cut down the channels:
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Hi-Tom
5 -Mid-Tom
6 – Lo-Tom
7 – Stage Right Overhead ( *Stage Right means looking at the rleft side of the stage from the audience/sound booth perspective)
8 – Stage Left Overhead
9 – Percussion
10 – Keyboard
11 – Synthesizer
12 – Acoustic Guitar
13 – Electric Guitar 1
14 – Electric Guitar 2
15 – Vocal 1
16 – Vocal 2
17 – Vocal 3
18 – Vocal 4 or Choir Stage Right
19 – Vocal 5 or Choir Stage Left
20 – Pastor mic
21 – Handheld
22 – iPod
23 – Computer
Groups
1 – Kick/Bass
2 – Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 – Instruments
4 – Vocals
For a 16-Channel Mixer Layout I to reduce things even more to cut down the channels:
1 – Kick Drum
2 – Snare
3 – Hi-Hat
4 – Overhead
5 – Percussion
6 – Keyboard/Synthesizer
7 – Acoustic Guitar or Electric Guitar 1
8 – Electric Guitar 2
9 – Vocal 1
10 – Vocal 2
11 – Vocal 3
12 – Vocal 4 or Choir Stage Right
13 – Vocal 5 or Choir Stage Left
14 – Pastor mic
15 – Handheld
16 – Computer
Groups
1 – Kick/Bass
2 – Rest of Drums/Percussion
3 – Instruments
4 – Vocals
Depending on the size and liveliness of the room I don’t have a problem with going down to 2 mics on the drums. A kick mic and a good quality overhead condenser mic placed in the right position will pick up the majority of the drum kit. Now if you’ve got a drum cage for your drums you’ll get better sound by mic’ing all the drums individually but it does eat up channels.
I’ve used this setup for years after seeing it on some of the touring productions. I’m not suggesting that this is the perfect layout as there are variations and if your board layout is different and works for you stay with it. Don’t change just for the sake of change.
Now for digital boards that operate in layers you may want to arrange things depending on the number of active fader channels that are in use at any one time. So if your mixer layers faders by 8 make sure that you keep like items together without spanning layers if possible. On a digital mixer you definitely want to use the groups/DCAs/VCAs as your major controls with the individual channel faders as your fine tuners. This way you’re not driving yourself nuts hitting the active layer button just to get to a specific channel during the performance.
I hope this helps. Don’t really know the origins of this setup or why it became popular. To me it feels like a logical and natural layout. As usual, your mileage may vary!
I’ve been in the live technical field for enough years to know that if anything can go wrong it will. Usually at the worst possible moment, when things that are critical need to go without a problem. So what do you do when things do go belly-up? Panic? Run around like a chicken without its head? Not if you always have a Plan B!
At our District Conference we had a critical and important video that was going to be shown at our public event. Knowing the importance of the video to the people involved I had run the entire video earlier in the day to ensure that it worked properly. At this point it’s worth pointing out that the video was ripped to a .mpg file on the computer’s hard drive (I know better than to trust running a video from a DVD). This computer was an up-to-date Windows 7 PC that was a strong machine. The video ran through smoothly with no errors. With the computer left alone until it was time for the video we started the video and, lo and behold, no sound. We were watching a silent movie. As soon as that happened I motioned to the pastor that we had a problem and went into troubleshooting mode. Retried the video again (this computer had EasyWorship 2009). Same thing. We rebooted the PC and tried again. Still the same thing. Since I’ve had more than my fair share of embarrassing moments playing video files on a Windows PC I had taken the precaution of keeping my USB drive that I had transferred the video file to the computer with me. So while the congregation was doing a meet-and-greet we transferred the file from the USB to the computer and brought it back into EasyWorship. Then we fired it up and this time it worked. Crisis over!
So what’s the takeaway? One, when things go south in a hurry, don’t panic. I know this is tough when everyone’s doing the gopher neck thing and looking back at you. Know that you can fix it. Don’t react without thinking first. Two, have a Plan B. While I’ve never had a video issue using a Mac, I have had a ton of problems with Windows and videos. Regardless I always have a backup of the video file in at least 2 formats in some other location than the target computer. So from a troubleshooting angle always suspect that a file could have been corrupted. It goes without saying that you’ve verified that the files on your backup media works. Third, make sure the pastor knows what’s going on. I spent a few trips going up to the podium during opportune moments to keep the pastor updated so he knew what was happening and could plan what to do we couldn’t get the video working. Fourth, and this is probably the most important. Keep a sense of humor about things. Keep the mood in the booth light but professional. Know that acting stressed out and grumpy won’t solve a thing and make the other folks that you are working with uncomfortable.
The best comment I heard after this hiccup was from one of the pastors at one of our churches who said to his assistant pastor, “See, it’s not just us who have problems!”. And maybe this was a way that showed that even the technical consultant for the district can experience technical issues. I had a good laugh with everyone when it was over. But being calm and working through the problem while having a sense of humor showed that it wasn’t that big a deal and gave the churches that have issues realize that even the pros have problems. It’s how you deal with the problem and how you prepare for the possibility of a problem that sets the level of professionalism. If I hadn’t had a backup of the video file we wouldn’t have been able to show the video. We did so what could have been a major deal turned out to be a minor hiccup and a good icebreaker for the congregation.
Always have a Plan B. It applies to audio, video, and to some extent lighting. For some churches, especially those that are broadcasting video live, having the mic go out on the pastor is unacceptable. I’ve seen a lapel mic inconspicuously positioned as a backup to a headset mic. The mics are fed into 2 channels so in the event the primary mic goes out there’s still a backup that can be transitioned without interrupting service. For vocalists always have a replacement mic on-hand as well as a plan with the worship leader in case a mic/cable/instrument/amp goes out .
For video, if you’re running Windows, plan that you’re going to have something hangup. Know how to troubleshoot it quickly and have a plan in place if a video hangs, including when to reboot. If your church isn’t huge (your pastor or worship leader can see the booth clearly without binoculars!) keep a white board in the booth along with high-contrast erasable markers. This way you can write a warning comment to the stage in the event o f a problem.
Had an exciting moment where a Plan B helped make it less exciting than it could have been? Post a comment.
A lot of church websites, especially those that are built from a template site, utilize Adobe’s Flash product to create polished, immersive pages that are rich in visual content. Over the last few years these website templates have proliferated and have proved an inexpensive way for a church to have a contemporary look and feel for not a whole lot of money.
But, and this is a big BUT, there are some hidden dangers with continuing to utilize Flash in your church’s website. The first is assuming that everyone in the congregation, or more importantly, first-time visitors to the site, use either a DSL, cable, or other high-speed connection to get to your site. Flash sites take time to load. While there are ways to pre-load pages and optimize Flash sites, they are still slower than regular HTML pages. Especially in rural areas there are a lot of people that are still on 56k dial-up connections. If your initial page doesn’t completely load within 5-10 seconds you’re going to lose people.
Here’s the second and more important danger. Over the last year to year-and-a-half there has been a dramatic shift from desktop and laptop computers to handheld devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers. The majority percentage of the smartphones and tablets sold in America are Apple products. The iPhone has over 65% of the smartphone market. The iPad is so ubiquitous that it is becoming the generic term for a tablet.
A significant portion of the population now use their iPhones and/or iPads as their main way to communicate and view the web. People between the ages of 18 – 30 view these devices as their primary web device. They connect either through a WI-FI connection or through a 3G cellular network. While WI-FI connections are relatively speedy, the cellular 3G networks aren’t as fast. And data limits come into play when the cellular network is used. The iPhone and iPad also do not use Flash. There’s no way to get around that. Apple is adamant that their devices will not incorporate or allow Flash to be installed.
Re-read the last two paragraphs and take a moment to let it sink in. If 65% of the population uses an Apple product to connect to the web and your church’s website uses Flash, then you are losing 65% of the potential population that might visit your church if they could view it. That means out of every 100 people that visit your site, 65 people won’t be able to view the content because they can’t install Flash on their device. Think people looking for a church will go through the effort of calling the church to find out information or just move on to another church that has an accessible site on their device?
The web is constantly changing and adapting to new hardware and software technology. Instead of Flash, HTML5 (which iPhones and iPads prefer to use) provides the new way to generate content-rich sites. But since it is relatively new it’s not that available yet. An option for existing websites is to add a mobile site module to your site. Several template sites have this as an option. Even if your site doesn’t use Flash it would be worth considering adding the mobile site option to your site. This option allows for reformatting of your site to a mobile-friendly version. Usually it’s a stripped-down version of the full church website and that’s okay. Just make sure you have pertinent information on the mobile site. You’ll want contact information, church location, church hours as well as your church’s doctrine and staff information. If you can shoehorn some fun facts about the church so much the better.
Websites need to stay organic and constantly change to keep up with advances in the way people access information. Churches need to keep a budget for maintenance and updates that need to happen to stay current with these changes. Don’t make the assumption that once your website is created you won’t need to spend any more money on development.
One of the best ways a worship/technical team can lead people into worship is by joyfully worshiping. Sounds pretty basic, right? Yet over the years, I’ve observed a large number of church worship and technical teams looking like they working at a tedious job, or worse, looking like they’re at a funeral! Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe that worship music should be taken very seriously, but it seems that somewhere along the way, we have lost sight of the pure joy it is to serve God in this way.
I’m sure you’ve all experienced a situation similar to this: A very competent worship team is leading and sounding great, but missing something in the exuberance category. Doesn’t that leave you feeling a bit “cheated”? Alternatively, consider this scenario: An “okay” worship team is leading, smiling, engaging the congregation and encouraging them to shout for joy that we’re all in the same room worshiping our Savior. I know which one I’d rather be a part of!
It’s the same thing for the tech team. So many times I’ve come into practice and watched the tech team just sit there like a bump on a log, not providing any type of visual or audio feedback for the worship team. Again, tech teams have a serious role, one that should not be taken lightly, but what happened to expressing the the joy of serving God or the fun you’re having? During practice sessions the worship team has no one to look to other than the tech team to help determine whether the music is having an effect on people. The tech team becomes the congregation and should help the worship team to become energized. Likewise the worship team needs to reflect the energy and excitement of being able to perform the music. If you’ve gone to a Hillsong United concert you know what I’m talking about. The energy that comes from the stage is palpable and engaging.
My advice to both technical and worship teams is this: Don’t forget to have fun serving the Lord! He gave us the gifts that we use to help lead people in worship. That by itself should be enough reason to be more than willing to show our enthusiasm for what we do. But we also need to remember that, for better or worse, the congregation is watching all of us. And they take cues, both verbal and visual, from the way we interact with other members of our team during the service.
No matter what happens in the booth, I always try to keep the mood light, especially if things are going wrong and the devil has gotten in the electronics. I find that humour tends to lower the stress level and allows my team to function at their peak, no matter what’s happening. It also allows the congregation to see that we’re having fun doing what we’re doing. It also happens to be a great way for prospective volunteers to see that the tech team is a fun ministry!
Likewise our enthusiasm tends to rub off on the worship team. They get positive visual and auditory feedback from my tech team because the tech team is getting into the worship. This helps everyone to relax a bit more than if everyone in the booth had a serious, head’s-down approach. I tell my team it’s okay to let people see you sing, cry, raise your hands (within reason) if the music affects you. My team also lets the worship team know that they’ve done a good job, and vice-versa.
Respect for both sides of the equation is important as well. When the worship team is having a bad session I don’t have a problem suggesting that we stop for prayer. It’s amazing how much that one thing will do to reset the session and allow God to take control again. I also don’t criticize either the worship team or the tech team during the service. If there are issues I deal with it some other time other than service day. There’s nothing worse than removing the service high from someone just to tell them they didn’t hit a mic cue on time. Unless it’s something that requires immediate attention, it can wait. I also always end with praise, no matter what the situation. People feel bad enough when they screw up; and the good ones often know what they did wrong and are already beating themselves up over it . Helping them realize what they did well will serve to dampen the blow of their errors.
So be enthusiastic in what you do. Don’t be afraid to let the fun you’re having shine through and fall on others around you. You’ll be surprised at what happens when you do!
When I’m training technical teams at my churches one of the first questions I ask is “Do any of you play a musical instrument?”. I usually will get one or two people who say that they play some type of instrument. It’s a trick question because the next question I ask usually results in stunned silence while they take it in. The next question I ask is “Do you realize that the sound board is every bit an instrument as any of the ones on the stage?”. No one ever thinks it does. And that’s a shame.
Every tech who runs the sound board is a musician, whether they realize it or not. Which is also why they are every bit a part of the worship team as any of the other musicians. The difference between the musicians on stage and the tech folks are unique. Most of the musicians on stage will have played their instrument for a substantial number of years. They also have at least one of their preferred instruments at home. Sound techs probably got recruited and have never worked on a mixer until they got to church. They also probably don’t have a mixer at home.
The other main difference is that while a musician on stage could probably flub a note or miss a cue and no one, unless it was really horrendous or there’s a musician in the audience, won’t really notice. If the sound tech flubs something or misses a cue EVERYONE notices and invariably will do the mongoose thing and look directly at you from their seats. So while the sound techs are every bit as important as the musicians on stage, their role, because they affect everything sound-related, is more critical to get it right.
So now that the sound techs have it in their noggin that they are actually musicians they need to understand what that means. Musicians practice on their instrument until it becomes a part of them. Muscle memory builds with practice and after a while their instrument becomes an extension of themselves. Sound techs need to do the same thing. The biggest problem for most techs is that their instrument is only at church. So how do you practice? If you can get into church you can always plug music into the system through a computer. Yes you’re only playing around with one or two channels but you can still see how adjustments in EQ or FX make a difference in the way the songs sounds, and more importantly, in how it feels.
You can also download software such as Reaper which is shareware that will allow you to bring in a multitrack recording and play back the different instruments one at a time or all at once so you can see how different instruments and vocals sound. If you don’t have access to a multitrack recording see if a big church in your area will give you a copy of one of theirs. If they’ve got a digital board they’ll be able to do it.
The other things that you as a musician needs to do is to rehears the music. If you don’t know the music and know how the worship leader wants the dynamics of the song to go, you can’t do the song justice. While you can leave the fader levels all at the same setting for every song and let the worship team handle the dynamics, part of your job as a musician is to enhance what the team on stage is doing with the song. For every song that has quiet and loud parts, you Mr. Sound Tech/Musician, can drastically enhance and fortify the dynamics, making the song that much more powerful for the congregation. Quieting the song during the quiet passages allows the intimacy of the song to come out and envelope the congregation. It also allows the congregation to hear themselves sing and draws them into the song. Bringing the dynamics up during louder passages allows the celebration of the song to ring out and also gets the congregation to sing louder and feel less self-conscious. Don’t believe me? Try it with Mercy Me’s Emmanuel(God With Us). Practice it with the recorded version. Leave the faders alone, close your eyes and listen to how the song makes you feel. Then do it again but this time bringing the faders down in the soft passages and bring them up in the louder passages. Now compare how that version made you feel.
Once you and the worship leaders build up the trust needed so that you become integral to the success of the worship team then you’ll be amazed and how well worship will sound.
I’m in the process of helping one of my churches transition from an analog mixer to a digital mixer. They were in need of more channels than their A&H 16-channel MixWiz with some outboard gear (FOH EQ, couple of compressors, FX unit) could provide. Based on the maximum number of channels that they anticipated needing over the next 5 years I recommended the PreSonus StudioLive 24.4, one of the least expensive 24-channel digital mixers on the market.
The church has 2 audio volunteers that are pretty much average in their knowledge of sound and sound systems so this would be a typical transition for a lot of churches in the 100-400 person attendance range. Volunteers selected more for their willingness to serve than their knowledge of audio. I know that nothing has been touched with the FOH EQ, compressors and FX since I helped them set it up about a year ago.
Some things that you need to consider in this transition is how uncomfortable the volunteers are going to be until they make the paradigm switch from the analog WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) to the digital layers. Depending on the digital board layers control everything from different grouping of faders (1-8, 9-16, etc) to control over the aux sends, FX, etc. Outboard gear usually goes away and everything is now handled with the digital mixer. It’s a big transition and you shouldn’t minimize it but treat it with care and planning and the transition will go smoothly.
What I recommend is that the digital mixer not be put into service immediately but be brought into a 2-4 week training duty cycle. It requires some mics and cables as well as a couple of speakers for monitors and FOH stand-ins. If you have instruments that you can plug in that helps as well. Keep the existing analog system going as the production system until everyone has been trained and is comfortable with the digital board.
Before you start with the digital mixer make sure everyone has reviewed the user manual. A digital board is a computer with knobs and faders and is significantly more complex than an analog mixer. While they are pretty robust you can still mess them up and repairs can be costly. One thing to invest in if you haven’t is a top-line power conditioner like a Furman. Along with that I’d recommend a computer UPS (battery backup) from a company like APC or TrippLite. Get a decent capacity one. The reason is that because a digital mixer is a computer, when power is interrupted you can’t just switch it back on like an analog mixer. You need to boot it up and, depending on the mixer, that could take anywhere from a minute to several minutes. Having a UPS unit the mixer will stay powered on, so even if the rest of the system is knocked offline by the power interruption, when the power comes back on, the mixer will still be up.
Once you get the mixer unboxed, check for any damage. If everything looks good bring all faders down to minimum and turn on the mixer. I like to let the mixer “burn in” for about 4 hours with nothing going on or plugged in just to let all the electronics warm up to full operating temperature. This will check to ensure that nothing is shorting out. Be aware of any burning electrical smell or smoke. If you detect either one shut the mixer down immediately and unplug it. Contact the vendor.
The StudioLive is close to an analog board in that all the channel faders are on one surface as opposed to layers. This makes the transition somewhat easier. All effects, aux send levels are controlled through the center “Fat Channel”. That will be where most of the confusion is going to come in so be prepared to spend a lot of time going through this area. The StudioLive is set up pretty easy so I was able to figure 85% of the board out without looking at the manual. There are also a ton of video tutorials on the PreSonus site and YouTube that can help with anything to do with the board. But for volunteer sound techs it will be a bit of a challenge.
Hook up a mic to channel 1 on the mixer and hook up a speaker to aux send 1 and to FOH. This will be the basic training setup. Once you get is hooked up bring up the gain to an appropriate level. A digital board is less forgiving about exceeding the 0 level than an analog board before going into clipping so run the level less than needed for training until you get comfortable with the way the board handles signals. Don’t worry about EQ settings or FX yet. All you want to do is to learn the signal flow from the channel to the aux send and FOH. Once you’ve figured out how to adjust the aux send levels for the channel and you can adjust FOH level you’ve gotten over the initial hump.
The next thing you’ll want to learn is how to adjust EQ’s for each channel. Depending on the digital mixer you’ll either have a screen that will have a parametric equalizer, or in the case of the StudioLive, you’ll have the adjustments for high,high mid, low mid and low bands. As with all digital mixers you are able to set the frequency points for all these bands as well as the Q, which is the width of the frequency adjustment. This is a lot more adjustability than what an analog mixer has and is worth spending some time practicing.
After the channel EQ’s get figured out you’ll want to adjust the FOH EQ. On the StudioLive it’s set the same way that the individual channel EQ’s are set. One nice advantage about digital mixers is that most of them have a library of preset EQ’s that you can start with. On the StudioLive Presonus has built-in a nice set of professional quality EQ presets that are good enough to leave alone and assign to each channel. The other nice feature of digital boards is the ability to save all your settings to a scene. So you are able to set up multiple scenes for different worship teams or different instruments and recall them just by dialing up the scene and pressing the load button. So no more needing to reserve channels based on who’s playing that day.
The power of digital mixers means that you can assign FX to each and every channel, both to auxes and to FOH, so you’ve got a lot of flexibility. Just remember that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Less is more, at least in the beginning. Some boards give you more FX capabilities than others. The StudioLive gives you 2 channels of FX, others more.
Another advantage that digital mixers have is that they usually provide some form of multi-track recording capability. In the case of the StudioLive it’s provided by a Firewire port into the provided Studio One software. This means you can record each channel separately into your computer, as long as it has a Firewire port. One very cool reason for doing this for the worship team is the ability to do what’s called a Virtual Sound Check. What that means is that you don’t need the worship team there to set up the board. You can play back the individual tracks back into their respective board channels and use those tracks as the sound check. Then once the band gets in, sound check is very minimal. It’s also a great way for the sound team to train on the board and allows them to massage settings without needing the musicians.
Once you get everything set the way you want it remember to save your settings to a scene. I usually recommend naming the scene with the church name and 1. That way you can always recover your baseline settings. Every sound tech should create their own “sandbox” scene which allows them to manipulate settings and save it to their own scene without affecting the master scene. Make sure that no one other than the lead sound tech saves to the master scene. Once you’ve got the master scene saved it won’t matter what changes people make to the board during the week. Bringing back the master scene will only require a quick push of a button, and in the case of the StudioLive, resetting the gain and adjusting the faders. In other digital boards, gain settings and fader positions are saved within the scene.
Once the the sound techs are comfortable with the digital board then it’s time to switch out the old analog board with the new digital one. Check all your settings. Any settings you change be sure to save them to the master scene once you’re happy with how everything sounds. Finally when you shut things down do NOT shut things down by just turning off the power conditioner. This WILL damage the digital mixer. Follow the shutdown procedure in the manual. It can be anything from just powering off the mixer with the mixer’s power switch to a shut-down procedure on the screen.
A digital mixer is a whole new way of doing the same old things. It’s exciting as well as terrifying for volunteers so go slow. Take it one step at a time and ensure that they are comfortable with the system before putting it into production. You’ll achieve a seamless transition and have fun doing it!
In the last post I talked about the positive qualities you should look for when bringing people into your technical ministry. This time I’m going to talk about the opposite. These are the personality types that will kill any motivation or passion among other members of the tech ministry, not to mention making no one want to work with the tech team. If you recognize people with these characteristics be aware. Depending on how severe the mannerisms are your choices are either to counsel them about their behavior, reprimand them, or get rid of them. I know that it sounds severe but in as prominent a ministry as the technical one is and as crucial as it is to the overall success of your church you need to take a firm stand.
Over-inflated Ego.
Confidence in what you’re doing is one thing. Thinking that you are either the only one who can do the job, you’re the best there is, or there’s nothing else you can learn is another. In the secular world this is all too common. In the church world there’s no room for it and it’s one of my hot buttons. Here’s the deal. If you’re that good then you better be training people on how to get as good as you and be in such demand that you don’t have room to breathe. Usually though, the people with this characteristic tend to have started with the church, maybe installed the “interesting” sound/video/lighting systems, and claim to know everything there is to know about the subject system. We are given the gift of this ministry from God. As such we are commanded to be humble and realize that, if not for His grace, we wouldn’t be doing this. Period. If you’ve got someone on your team that constantly poo-poos the idea of having someone come in and evaluate what your system is doing or doesn’t think they need any training because they know it all you need to have a sit-down with them and get their ego in check. Usually someone like this is someone who the rest of the team will grudgingly be trained by or will be avoided by other members of the team. Get their input if you see something like this happening. There’s no place in our ministry for an over-inflated sense of self.
The Glory Hog.
This trait somewhat goes along with the Over-inflated Ego type but can be masked. The Glory Hog wants the spotlight job. In sound that means they want to be running the board at front-of-house. They will come up with excuses to not be around when grunt work needs to happen and they tend to not be much of a team player. This type usually gravitates to churches that have bigger sound systems. Something about all the knobs and whistles gets them going. A smaller church doesn’t really have the technical toys that get this type excited but it’s still a possibility. To flush out this type observe how often these folks are willing to do grunt work, stuff like coiling cables, striking and setting up the stage, running the monitor system (if you’re lucky and big enough to have a separate system), or monitoring the service recording. A lot of times this type is just in need of a course correction and may not even be aware that they are exhibiting this trait. But if you combine this with the Over-inflated Ego boy do you have a problem on your hands.
Techno-boy (or gal)
As a pastor or someone who interacts with the members of the tech team do you really want to have to interpret what these types are talking about or would you rather have them explain what they’re doing/need in plain, understandable language? This type has a possible double-edged sword. On the one hand this is pretty benign and is caused because the person doing the techno-babble doesn’t understand that not everyone has the technical disposition and comfort that they do. Usually just course corrections by stopping them when they lapse into techno-talk and asking them to explain it in plain English will eventually get it through to them that not everyone talks in their language. On the other hand, and this is more insidious, are those folks that speak in techno-ese because it makes them feel superior and thus can put down those that don’t speak “their” language. If this type lapses into techno-speak whenever you ask for something to be done and they use their explanation to throw obstacles about why it can’t be done, then these folks are in that second category.
The Lone Wolf
Seriously? There’s no room in this ministry for anyone to think that they don’t need others. If this type says that they can do it all and don’t need anyone else, or make excuses why they aren’t training people up to their level of proficiency, they don’t belong in this ministry. This ministry thrives when every member feels that they are integral to the team and the team succeeds or fails as a team. They support each other when someone’s having an off-day and celebrate when the team does a great job.
Mr/Ms Perfection
Know anyone like this? No matter how good a service you’ve had, it’s never good enough for them. So they let you know it. Some minor detail didn’t happen and that threw off the entire service because of it. Never mind that your service just had 5 people accept Christ and worship was just dripping with the Holy Spirit in residence and everyone was on their hands and knees worshipping their hearts out. Look I’m just as much about constant quality improvement as the next guy but I also realize that stuff happens. Sometimes beyond our control. Sometimes because someone screwed up. I don’t let it get in the way of enjoying what my team is doing. If it’s something that’s avoidable then we’ll talk about it after service. If it’s beyond our control, well, then we’ll laugh about it and see if there’s anything we can do to keep it from happening again. The most important thing is that we’ll learn from it. But Perfection-boy/gal will stew about the issue all through service, letting everyone within earshot know that something went wrong. Meanwhile they miss out on the joy of the service and by their whining make everyone else in the booth miserable. I have a saying that I borrowed from Vince Lombardi. “Aim for perfection, settle for excellence.” My team knows that I give them the permission to make mistakes. We know that it’s okay to screw up as long as we’re striving for excellence.
Only comes to church when I’m on.
If you’ve got someone on your tech team that steps out of service once worship is done or doesn’t come to church reliably when they aren’t on the schedule you need to sit down with them and find out why. If the only reason they come to church is to run the board and they don’t ever plan on changing that and it’s not because of work obligations why are you allowing them to serve?
Participation-phobic
This type can’t seem to find the time to come to worship practice. They usually show up just in time for Sunday service, leaving the worship leader to turn everything on and set things up. The tech team members need to be there whenever the worship team practices. Period. They also need to learn the songs so they know the tempo and the flow of service.
I’m sure there are other types but these are my top irritants. Don’t let them ruin or derail your church service.
A great technical team can make your job as a pastor significantly easier. A well-functioning team can move mountains and make the impossible possible. And they can do it because they work together as one, with good morale and great chemistry. I’ve been at churches that have these types of technical teams and it takes my breath away to watch them in action. It’s like watching the best NASCAR pit crew in the world. I’ve also been at churches where the technical ministry is filled with toxic personality types and they couldn’t function as a team if their lives depended on it. Where does your church technical team rank? I’m going to guess somewhere between the two extremes.
So what makes for a good technical team? Here are some traits that I think are important. They take the acronym of F.A.T.H.E.R.
F-Faithful
When you’re looking for someone to be on the team you want someone who is faithful. That means they come to just about all of your services. Tech team ministry means a lot of hours spent doing something at the church. If someone comes to church once in a while their heart isn’t in the right place. You want someone who loves coming to church and drenching themselves in God’s grace.
A-Available
You need someone who is available and is flexible enough to be able to fill in when someone else can’t. Ask yourself this question. Do you really need someone who tells you they can only serve the 3rd Sunday of every month no matter what? Part of the tech ministry is getting together to fix something, put something new in, or just plain hang around and develop friendships with the rest of the tech team.
T-Teachable
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone into churches to debug their sound systems and ask the tech folks if they know what all the knobs and equipment do and been told that they don’t really know. You want someone that has a curiousity and a thirst for knowledge. I’ve been doing church tech for about 10 years and secular sound for another 5. I STILL have a LOT to learn and that’s one of the things I enjoy about this ministry. As much as I know there’s still more to learn and I learn from anyone. Every church I visit I learn something new. It could be as simple as something I never thought of or something that just looking at doesn’t make sense but it works.
H-Humble
I have a standing rule for my tech teams. I don’t care how good you think you are. I don’t care if you’ve worked in the industry since before there were mixers, or if you’re a Grammy award winning engineer. If you can’t humble yourself to be a servant first and be willing to help out the team even if the grunt jobs I don’t want you on the team. Let me give you an example. At one of the churches that I served at we started out as a portable church. Which means every week we set up and tore down the equipment. Since this was in the desert region of Southern California the heat used to get pretty brutal by the time we tore down and shoved everything back into the trailer. I had 3 volunteers that knew nothing about sound or video when we started. After 3 years we got the opportunity to move into a building. Wouldn’t you know that as soon as we did I get a guy coming up and telling me how great he is and how he owns his own home theater company and that he’d like to mix sound because he’s noticed that the sound isn’t right according to him. Happened to be a Sunday when one of my loyal tech team members was mixing. The blowhard then proceeded to let me know that he would be happy to do the mixing but he felt the other menial tasks should be given to the less experienced members.
Guess how long it took me to tell him thanks but no thanks. When he asked why in a shocked tone I pointedly told him that the other 3 team members spent years humping equipment in and out without any complaints. They pitched in whenever extra help was needed and they didn’t care whether they were in the “glory position” or were coiling cable as long as they were serving with the other team members.
E-Enthusiastic
Enthusiastic people will get you into trouble. But I love them! They’ll get you, or realistically themselves, into trouble because they’ll sometimes leap before they look. These are the types that will be looking at the board during the sermon and see a button that’s out of place and press it without thinking of all the ramifications of pushing it! But you know what? They make life on the tech team lively. These are the types that will soak up all the user manuals and become the subject matter experts. They will constantly challenge your knowledge of equipment and they’ll keep you on your toes.
R-Responsible
This is stewardship at its finest. Responsible people look out for the equipment and treat it as their own. These are the people who put a tarp over equipment coming in and out of a portable church because they don’t want it to get wet. These are the folks that keep an eye on the equipment and put them back where they are supposed to be. These are the people that don’t flake out on a Sunday when they’re scheduled because something more fun came up. The tech ministry gets to play with the most expensive equipment the church owns. Do you really want someone who won’t take care of it?
I often tell people I love what God has allowed me to do. If I won the lottery today I’d do what I do for churches for free. I love it that much. That’s the kind of mentality you want to look for. Don’t be afraid to look outside of a technical person if they have these traits. You can always teach them the technical part of the job.
I find that humour tends to lower the stress level and allows my team to function at their peak, no matter what’s happening. It also allows the congregation to see that we’re having fun doing what we’re doing. It also happens to be a great way for prospective volunteers to see that the tech team is a fun ministry!