It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything. I wanted to wait till the dust settled but this particular dust seems to like to hang in the air a long time.
My church gig is taking on a different nature. I’ll be going from full time lead audio guy at Cornerstone to joining the ranks of our awesome audio volunteer crew. We have some great guys here. Turns out that my side programming gig has been God’s leading in a new direction. I won’t bore you with the deets but I’d like to be a little see-through for a breath or two about the process. Maybe you’ll find some encouragement in my recent experience.
I’m moving from my church gig into freelance development, primarily with Adobe Flex and AIR. That’s a pretty sharp left turn from church tech stuff. I’m discovering all over again that God has plans for us and his plans include not-so-trivial things like pruning for growth. Good growth rarely happens without a little snip-snip now and then, right? There’s a saying that God loves you just like you are and he loves you too much to leave you that way. Realists (or pessimists) like me get to learn that’s not just about the bad stuff. It’s a little more optimistic sometimes. He’s got to get rid of some good stuff too once in a while. You just have to trust that the new growth is worth it. I don’t doubt it is worth it because that’s been my experience this many years. I don’t see little nugget of truth changing much.
I’ve lived my whole life just doing the next thing in front of me. I recommend it as a lifestyle because my journey has been a great ride. It might not be a cool ride for two though. It might just keep you single. Okay, it probably will keep you single. :) I’ve been reinvented many times and in many places into things like a machine shop foreman, a fiberglass mold builder, a missionary, a live-in caregiver, a rock star (ok, would you believe a bass player in a touring band with radio play?), a touring FOH and monitor engineer, a computer repair guy, a web developer, and full-time church audio guy… there’s more.
Well, I sat in one of our church services with my sister a few months back when she was visiting. I hadn’t been to church in a long time – I mean really been to church. It was enlightening. It wasn’t until I started to make a real transition (cleaning my cube, tell everyone I’m outtie, buying health insurance…) that I realized I might not have been all that much of a Christian either because I worked as one. (Yes, that’s an overstatement, but still.) Now, that’s not true for everyone who works at a church. I work with some genuine people who don’t lose touch. I’m different. I lose touch. Recently I’ve been able to discern God’s leading, have been given Godly advice, have seen “coincidences” happen for me, have prayed, have been in the Word… all more than I have in maybe the last 15 years. I need this.
By the way, another of my “laws of the universe” (things I’ve learned to be generally true for people) is that when it comes to your spiritual health it’s ok to be selfish. You have to be. If you don’t do what’s right for yourself and stay healthy you’ll be of no good use to anyone. Keep in mind, though, that doing what’s right for yourself involves plenty of selflessness in helping others. Don’t owe anyone anything but brotherly love. Take care of yourself and give.
Well that’s about it with the philosophical stuff. I’m really digging this new direction. Adobe AIR and Flex development is as fun as it is frustrating. I’ll hope to get back into some familiar PHP/Javascript/DOM/CSS stuff too at some point.
I owe a lot to the www.planningcenteronline.com team. I’m working with Jeff Berg to develop an AIR app that’s going to rock. That dude is seriously a rock star. (Not saying that because he might read this – it’s just the truth.) He’s got a great eye for UI and intuitive user experience. I’m learning a lot from the guy.
I’d also like to put in a shameless plug for Planning Center. We use them at Cornerstone to manage all of our worship teams and schedules. They saved our sanity by streamlining scheduling, communication, service order, rehearsal resources… the whole bit. If you haven’t checked them out then do yourself a favor.
In working with them I can tell you this: they are really good at what they do, they are kind, integrous, inclusive, generous, and really patient with bad golf partners. :) I sit in a work chat room with their whole crew during the day and they are some cool people.
I’ll keep this blog here and keep posting occasionally. I still have plenty of thoughts about church tech and audio and I’m not going anywhere. I’m still serving at the church I love.
Excited about tonight’s rehearsal a little more than usual. We’ve replaced our Beta 58s, Beta 87, and E865s with Opus 89s from Beyerdynamic. In my view, they have the predictability of a dynamic mic with all the charm of a condenser mic. (It’s a dynamic.) Bright and warm without the rip-your-face-off metal of a Sennheiser or the sharp edge of a Beta 58 – or the buckle-under-loud-vowels of our wireless KSM9s. Oh… those KSM9s are staying but tonight? 89s all around!
A couple wired KSM9s will round out the vocal mic selection in a couple of months.
… we have a fully enclosed, big, ugly “drum condo.” Hooray for function over fashion. This weekend will sound great with the drums 4 feet from the choir, 25 feet from the front row, and not peaking much over 91dB-A anywhere in the house. (The stage volume rides at 85 without the choir.)
Oh, yeah, and great because Pedro is mixing this weekend. :)
My posts have been sparse lately. Been too busy working to write. If you work in church arts, media and production then you know what most others don’t. A big part of the church gig is the side gig. I’ve been strip-mining a seven-year mountain of rolled-over, unused PTO hours and trading them for some supplementary goodness. I can see over the crest of the hill now.
The three main church tech guys I follow in blogs and on Twitter all talk about taking on side contract work specing systems or training. (Check out Tim, Mike, and Dave.) I don’t know many graphic artists, web designers/programmers, video editors/directors, who don’t do side work. All the good ones do and I’ve done a lot of wondering why lately. Is it that we’re broke? Most of us aren’t. Is it that we’re high profile and easy to find? Maybe, but we actually try to hide from the general public. The person who exclaims, “Hey! I’ll just ask that video guy at church if he can make a video for my kid’s birthday party!” or “I need a website for my business and I bet that church webmaster could use a little cash,” have no idea how much work goes into it and what the real market value is. They are enemies, not friends. Thankfully, people don’t ask me to DJ weddings any more. Finally. By the way, any decent audio engineer would rather peel off his or her fingernails than DJ anything. Don’t ask us. Get a DJ.
Here’s why I think good church-working artists take on side work.
Our type of work has Freelance in its DNA. A lot of great programmers, graphic artists, FOH engineers, and video directors primarily do freelance work. We do one-off shows, single tours, web projects, or media projects that start and end. Starting new things is like breathing clean autumn air.
The best artists I know thrive on learning as a lifestyle and die without it. Once we get into a groove the comfort wears through to boredom and burnout.
Our work at a church is often limited by boundaries we dislike, and that’s fine. That’s standard production. A good side job or personal project allows you to push yourself to do something great as you define it. I’d rather mix a concert than a church service any day. That doesn’t mean I dislike church services. That means I find more opportunity to do great work mixing a concert than mixing for a 1500-person group sing.
Sometimes the side gig is different than our day job. Cross-train the brain. That’s what I say. Some church gig folks take on other interests, or offer training in their field. Teaching is different than doing and becoming a good teacher is a challenge. We thrive on growing in new areas.
What gets you out of bed in the morning? Here’s where the pastoral staff and the art/tech staff part ways. Sure, we want people to come to Christ too but let’s be honest. You pastor people are out there with people (that’s your thing) while we dream up creative ways to reach and communicate. Most of us hate getting up early for anything except the idea that we’re going to create something great today. My coffee pot will fire up early any morning for that.
If you take the side gig away from the church arts employee, you risk burning them out. You might even want to give them some extra space. I’ve seen positions in our field reveal themselves to be simple stepping stones more often than satisfying roles and that’s kind of a shame.
Ironically, my side gig has become programming, not audio, and I’ve found that I love it as much if not more than the other. I’m excited about my current project and if you are a church musician you might be too when it’s released. For now, mums the word. The coffee pot is going off early tomorrow.
I think one of the worst events in the history of mic’ing acoustic instruments was the moment someone first slapped a microphone inside an acoustic guitar. There. I said it. Hey, I’m no expert. Heck, I’m only a decent guitar player. I know this. And you’re right, Mr. Acoustic Guy, there are quite a few phenomenal acoustic guitar players with proven tone, studio and live, with internal mic systems. Let me just point out that I’m one of thousands of church engineers across the country who get to mix everyone else. Weekly.
Now, I’m not against microphones inside guitars but honestly, things are a little out of control. Ever since it turned into a mainstream trend, the sound of an over-blended internal mic has become the Lawry’s Seasoned Salt of the guitar world. All food at my grandparents’ house tasted the same thanks to that stuff. Every time I hear the inside of an acoustic guitar I try to get away with just a little sprinkle on top of the mix because it makes me throw up in my mouth a little. I fear this unnatural sound has become so common that the general public accepts it as a great guitar sound. Please friends, I beg of you… choose the red pill.
Well, I hope you’ll forgive the hyperbolous intro but I do want to make this a memorable post about acoustic guitar tones. I think it’s important.
After the jump: the best tones I’ve gotten to mix and why I think they’re good.
I’ve had a change of heart this year. It’s been a long road but I finally hit my bottom. I admitted that I am powerless over mic cable knots and that setup had become unmanageable. I came to believe that a method greater than my own could restore me to sanity during setup times. I made a decision to turn my cables over to the care of this method as I understood it. And man, is my life better!
I used to hate seeing mic cables wrapped with the ends plugged into each other. The loops looked unnecessarily large and sloppy. The loop was never as circular as with not plugging the ends into each other. Well, this summer I reached the end of sanity untangling perfectly wrapped cables.
Watch this video. If you already know how to wrap over-under then just watch the first 20 seconds to see the magic.
He says, “You’ll notice as I uncoil this that the cable is connected on the outside of all the loops therefore the entire thing comes loose when I undo it.”
Knots happen when when a loose end finds its way through some spaghetti. The odds of that NOT happening with loose ends are slim when you have many hands handling cables. (On my other planet Cornerstone I’m the only one who touches cables at all but they said I have to live here for now.) If the ends are together, creating an infinite loop, the cable has little choice but to come apart neatly.
Committing to a style of wrapping isn’t a solution unless you commit to the complimentary style of unwrapping. The way to unwrap this one is to grab the ends like a handle and toss out the whole cable. I can toss out a cable, run it, and dress it (even with a nice excess wrap) in under 30 seconds. God knows I’ve spent up to 2 minutes per cable some days and that eats up a lot of time. And the cost is more than time. It’s easy to underestimate the effects of personal frustration on your ability to concentrate, subconscious personal interaction, and the vibe you spread when the band arrives. (Don’t mix angry; people get hurt.) The best thing you can do for your band is to be ready and sitting around when they arrive so you can help out without them feeling like they’re interrupting you.
Cable wrapping techniques sound like nit-picking to anyone on the outside but, believe you me, a $10 cable can bring down a $200k sound system. An old, abused cable will have you chasing your tail trying to solve audio bugs even to the point of replacing perfectly fine gear. You can judge the quality of an engineer from the way they care for cables.
This one is for geeks like me. Yesterday I modded a new Furman PS-8R II sequential switcher so it would play nice with our old Atlas sequential switcher. For years our techs have had to turn on FOH then run back stage to turn on the amp rack which, ironically, has a sequential switcher.
Our Event Center has been the punk-rock club room of the building (and looks nearly as neglected) since we built and moved in. The amp rack uses a big rack with an Atlas sequential switcher that we inherited from the building when in was a sports center. (Our building is a giant remodel.) I’m finally getting around to installing what I call the “One Switch to Rule Them All.” Thing is, I bought a relatively inexpensive Furman for the FOH booth figuring that, since it has a momentary switch on the front panel, that it would have poles on the back tied to that switch for remote purposes. I’m getting used to being wrong. So, for a punk rock room here’s my punk rock solution.
So after hosting the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, Pedro says to me, “You should write a post about talking to the sound guy during a service.” Great idea. Apparently some guy wanted to talk shop while the event was running.
There are a few types of people we meet by the sound booth.
One type is the clueless, socially oblivious carbon unit. I really believe this person feels like they’re watching a life-long TV show; taking it all in and providing a running commentary. You hear them walk into the auditorium talking out loud and loudly twenty minutes into a sermon. I half expect to see them to pull out a Brawndo (it’s got electrolytes!) and a bag of chips after grabbing a comfortable seat. Beyond training your ushers to shush people there’s not much you can do about that. These are the guys who will come up behind you during a service and ask questions about the console. It happens rarely but one time is one too many.
Another type is just as dangerous. This is the person who waves cars through intersections out of turn because they’re so polite and nice. By the way, people get hurt, cars get broken, and it takes a lot of folks to help you be that nice so please, don’t. Ironically, this person has something critical to say like “there’s no sound in the parents’ room” but they don’t want to interrupt you. They’ll stand behind you, make you wonder who and why, and wait till a transition to speak up. I’ve missed announcement mic cues over these folks – my back to the stage, the announcement lady yelling so the room can hear her…
After the jump – a few tips on how to talk to your sound engineer when they’re working. Read the rest of this entry »
This week I want to mention the beauty of Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) and Flex. I started wading in it a couple of years ago and now I’m all deep-sea on it. I used to be a Flash and Actionscript hater but that was before AIR, Flex, and Actionscript 3. It’s legit.
AIR offers common folk like you and me the ability to create desktop applications that run on Mac, PC, and Linux. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “All I need is a simple app that will just do [something only you would need]” and you can wrap your head around Actionscript (which is somewhat like Javascript) and a little MXML then you can create your own solutions.
After the jump: how we solved our switcher limitations and alphanumeric pager problem including pics and a download. Read the rest of this entry »
In the ongoing effort to balance intensity with volume levels I made a change to our system processing this week.
Last weekend we got the usual complaints but this time I was told that people said “it sounds great, it’s just too loud.” I’ve never heard “sounds great” as part of a volume complaint so I perked up. It might be because people who complain generally like choirs and we had one last week. Just a guess.
It was interesting to me because I featured the choir and lead vocal prominently and let the band take a little of the back seat. Ironic after all my talk about vocal placement but it just felt right for the morning. To give an idea, measured in dB-A Slow the band even with guitar solo ranged from 85 to 89 at most. At the 9am service I let the choir run up to peaks of 93 with no complaints. At the 11am service I only ran the choir up to 91 and 92 with complaints. In each case I just gave the room what felt right at any moment.
On Monday I gave a critical listen to the raw CD over the system. Truthfully, it’s a little in-your-face in the high-mids especially when it breaks 89dB-A. I can see how it would be uncomfortable for some.
After the jump: Smaart screen shots and audio clips of adjustments made to the system if you’re interested. If you don’t feel like wandering off into the technical weeds, just jump down to the audio clips.
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