Despite my best efforts, I haven’t posted in awhile. The worship team has settled into a groove of sorts and things are running OK. The never ending battle between how things look and how they sound is still being waged. To recap this, there is a disagreement between what the musicians want and what the powers that be will allow. Our stage has been stripped of most of the sound making equipment. There are electronic drums, no amps of any kind and we are trying to cover a 30 foot section of the stage that the 8 singers occupy with 2 very old, very poor sounding stage monitors. The reasoning is it looks better. I know it makes the musicians job harder. I have gotten used to using in ears but I miss the feeling of live music. The band has gotten used to it too but the singers are still on wedges and they are suffering.
Has your church made the choice to go for looks over how things sound? What choices did aht force and how are you handling them?
May 10, 2009. audio, Equipment, management, Music, opinion. .
Sit back and let me tell you a story. It’s about how not to be ready for service and how not to handle the issues. We’ll run through the service from the my eyes and then cover the errors and how they could have been handled.
We are required to be ready to do sound check at 9 AM. That means that we need to be onstage, instrument in hand, in tune and ready to play at 9. We are asked to be on stage at 8:45 so we can line check, tune up and chit chat before 9. I was there at 8:45 and ready to go at 9.
At 9, we still had no drummer so we started without. The first song starts with mainly drums and keys, so we jumped ahead. The drummer shows up a few minutes after 9 so we go back to the first song. We have 2 keyboard players most times and this song has a distinctive part that is played by the keyboard player who is not here (she did let everyone know she would be absent weeks ago and reminded everyone this week). Our worship leader plays keys and decides she will cover the part. We start playing. As usual, the levels in the Avioms are a bit off. Most of the players do not send full volume to the board and thus do not send consistent signals week to week. The drummer is complaining that he cannot hear himself and male lead singer is doing the same. After a few minutes of complaining, the sound guy runs a line check on all musicians.
We are now running late and have 12 left minutes to sound check- by now, I have been on stage for over 35 minutes and have played one song. We finally pull our act together and finish sound check 18 minutes late. It has taken over an hour to sound check and the whole team is frazzled. We jump in the music room and pray.
In the prayer room it is announced that the keyboard player from the youth group will cover the keyboard part in the first song.
We head out on the stage and get ready to play. It takes about 30 extra seconds to get the new keyboard player set up. The drummer clicks us off…..
The next few seconds are surreal. The drummer starts, but there is no keys. Since we have two keyboard players, the second starts playing the organ part, but on a piano patch. The guitarist walk over and tells him to stop, but he doesn’t. The song progresses to to the verse, the singers start and we all settle in, or so we thought. The next song begins with only the acoustic guitar, and the rhythm section comes in on the second part of the verse. We start, but after about 2 measures, the drummer stops, waits for the pick up beat and comes in. We finish the song and then struggle through the third.
We finish what has to be the worst worship set in a long time and wait for the offering so we can go lick our wounds.
Pastor walk up to the pulpit and starts talking. I have in ears and I can’t hear him, which is weird because he is assigned a Aviom channel and I could always hear him before. I pop out one ear and realize that his wireless is not working. There is no back up mic so he does his best to be heard. We have announcements at this time and the announcer’s wireless is working. The pastor is supplied an new 9 volt battery for his pack and a handheld wireless mic just in case. The offering goes well and we retreat off backstage.
In the backroom, it is disclosed that the lead singer/acoustic player’s aviom was not working. It also turns out that the keyboard and the aviom the youth keyboard player used was not working either. Some one must have tripped on the power cord and took out the keyboard power strip, which powered the Korg and the Keyboard Aviom. The lead singer/acoustic player’s aviom is piggybacked of that aviom and since they need power to do that, his was dead. He could not hear anything and just did the best he could. The Youth group keyboard player came out to a dead keyboard and no monitor. He did his best, too.
The worship leader sensed that there was a problem with the korg and told the other keyboard player to play the part. The guitarist, not knowinh this, told him to stop. The keyboard player listened to the worship leader.
On the second song, the drummer tried to control the tempo of the acoustic player, but since the acoustic player had no monitors, he never noticed. The drummer had to stop and come in on the pick up to get back in time.
OK, now to point out the many problems and offer solutions.
- replacing a musician at the last minute. This was just a bad idea. It should not have been done. This one move lead to confusion on stage. It is not his fault that he did not know why nothing worked, he never used any of this equipment.
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