They, Them & Us

Today I'm going to talk not about church audio-geekery but why we do what we do and how to get to thinking about why to do what we do.

I don't presume to know the situation at your church but at mine the worship pastor doesn't necessarily view me and the audio guys as an ancillary ministry. We collaborate a lot together, he shapes my thinking on worship and allows me to shape his thinking on tech. Before he was hired as the worship pastor the culture meant that guy was one of they, and because they make the big strategic decisions they don't have to tell us what's going on or why they are doing what it is that is going on in leadership. So it was they and us.

To be honest I don't mind being outside they, but we have to know why they are doing what they're going, because how else are we going to reach them? How are we going to provide a place for those people who don't even know that Jesus died for them if we don't know why we do what we do and how do all of us fit into that vision? Even Chris Tomlin poorly paired up with audio guys will sound like just another middle-aged worship leader with the middle name of Duane.

Why do you think Hollywood uses $600,000 cameras to capture their movies? The filmmaking they's know that it's not just the actors that matter, or the makeup, and costumes or the props, or the filming location. You can go back and redo the dialogue recording if you want to, that's called ADR. But if you can't capture the film well on the camera, its all for naught. If we don't know what we are supposed to be reproducing through the loudspeakers, and who it's supposed to reach, why bother with worship? Why bother with putting a microphone on the speaker?

Let me go a step further and say that one could argue in that sense that the great commission could be better carried out by us going out directly to them in the community, and not bothering with the church building, because everything I've studied points to the fact that strangers and non-Christians are more likely to sit down in your living room and have a conversation than sit in church with you. Because if you go and read the original passage, it doesn't say "go, make disciples…" it says something more like "as you go through your life, make disciples…" Jesus didn't mean for us to do this only one day in seven.

If you are a they reading this, please answer three short questions: Why do we do church the way we do it? Who are all of us trying to reach, is it even them? What decisions are we making and going to make to reach them?

Here's a tip: email this to the they's in your church, the pastor, the elders, your worship people, and make a point to ask about them, the people we should be trying to reach. Because if it's all about us, if we're only here to please the incumbency, we aren't a church, we are a country club. And you can't say you want to reach them, but make decisions based on the preferences of us.

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Audio Myths

I saw this youTUBE video on Dave's website Going to 11. It reminded me of a time that I had an argument with a guitar player about how he could tell every time even if blindfolded, whether a guitar amp was tube or transistor. And after telling him that I couldn't tell the difference between most tube and transistor products he exclaimed that I shouldn't work in a recording studio. Give it a watch. It's very educating and I'll put it in my favorite videos tab on the right hand tool bar.

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IEM's Here We Come!

Well it's unofficially official, we're headed for in-ears. To generate the money needed we are selling our grand piano that goes out of tune faster than Brittney Spears on a tour without her lip sync tracks. (Moving the piano and huge temperature and humidity variations are murder to piano intonation.)

We are also selling our Hammond A100 and Leslie that were donated and are obviously never going to be used for being far too big and cumbersome to be moved on and off stage without hiring several well tanned, oily, muscled body-builders named Terri. And considering that we're just going with personal IEMs I'm seriously considering selling our HearBACK system to help ensure we don't run out of cash to finance this operation. That, along with some other minor items should be enough to get 7 Audio Technica M2's and a spare M2 receiver, a buttkicker system to build a shaking platform for the bass player (he must FEEL the bass), and a large piece of clear acrylic to put on the top of the drum shield to kill the 90dB+ cymbal wash we hear coming off the stage. I'm also going to have to completely change how we do monitors. We have a Yamaha M2500 monitor board which has 14 auxes, which are good for 7 stereo mixes: Vocals, Drums, Acoustic GTR, Bass, Electric GTR, Piano, Synth.

"Our piano goes out of tune faster than Brittney Spears without her lip-sync tracks."

We're saying goodbye to the stage wedges, by giving them to the Youth except what we need for choir and guest artists who prefer wedges. So, like Cortez burning his ships when he reached the new world, there's no turning back. At that point the guitar amps will –once again – be the loudest item on stage. Fear not, for I have hatched an ingenious plan. The monitor mix area is located behind the stage-right wall. But behind the stage-left wall is a large 15' x 15' alcove that we currently use to store the piano, organ and other musical schwag. We are going to enclose that area with a collapsable wall and use that area as an iso room to mic guitar cabinets, and for video shoots when the video guys need a good green-screen room. We have lots of spare acoustic tiles to treat the room, and can easily cut a small hole in the wall to mount a wall box containing XLR, XLR COMM, TRS, BNC, VGA, and 1/4" speaker cable connectors to link the stage area to the iso room.

The next step is audience mics. And the best way to go about that for us is to mount our shotgun mics to the back of the ceiling support poles in the middle of the room facing the audience blocks. We have a pair of AT897's but I'm considering buying shotgun mics that are even more directional. On the short list is the Shure SM89, Audio Technica BP4071, Beijing 797 CR1-78, and the Adzen SGM-2X.

I'm always open to input, so any recommendations on the shotgun mic areas or general IEM stuff you think I missed or need to consider, please leave a comment. If you have long, detailed questions or comments please go to the main page and email me by clicking on the envelope icon in the upper right hand corner.

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The Tiny Tim of dB Meters

Most times I don't go looking for pieces of equipment unless there's a specific application. I gear-drool way too much. And that much drooling would either short myself, out or my mac. This afternoon I got an email from a man who said, "I need a db meter that I can install on my notebook," but I found something just as good. A dB meter from Extech that is a USB thumb-drive. It has almost as many features as my Phonic PAA3 and at half the price I seriously suggest sound guys take a look at this as a their "it-needs-to-be-better-than-RadioShack" metering option.

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NAMM Recap

I spent all of Thursday and Friday at the NAMM Show and thought I'd share what I saw, learned, and things I recommend you go try out:


•The above picture is a shirt we had to buy for our volunteer audio guys. You can get yours here.

• Go to Earthworks Audio and have them send you your free audio demo CD I listened to it, and it's amazing!!

• If you are in the market for bespoke high quality ribbon microphones check out Cloud Microphones. After RCA closed their mic division the guys from Cloud bought all their tooling, so the actual guts of the mic are essentially RCA stuff. The demo I heard in their booth sounded really good. Most ribbon mics are woofy in the low mids, these are smooth.

• Teenage Engineering makes probably the most futuristic looking synth Rich & I saw, it even runs on USB power.

• Not sure if they have a lot of worship stuff for churches but the itab looked like a good song teaching tool for musicians.

• Word on the NAMM floor was that Ultimate Ears make about the best bang for buck in in-ears. Mind you, the base system starts at $399.

• Drummer? Like Shakers? check the HiShaker out, it's only $120.

• If you're a podcaster and love the bling, MXL mics introduced their new USB-77 mic. No word on pricing yet, but I figure around the $250 area.

• I need to try out the $180 Shure SM86!

• Sennheiser was handing out some of their mic skins to personalize your mic. We picked up the blue skull & crossbones for the worship pastors daughter. Hee hee!

•SKB cases look bulletproof.

• Rich & I thought the Nord Stage Piano was the best sounding digital piano at the show. The Roland RG-3, came in second.

• Yamaha made something I don't understand, the Tenori-on.

• You can turn any instrument mic into a kick mic with the KickPad. It's only $109.

• Yamaha didn't bring any of their digital OR analog consoles. BOO!

• Shure has brought back their classic 60s & 70s mics. Check it out.

• And of course there's gotta be a great iPhone app in the list. Here's a jamming app from Jammit.

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