The third fader in this picture is fader #32, our money fader. It’s the pastor’s mic. The little LED label at the top reads $$$$. (It’s in the picture at the top of this blog too.) When our pastor first saw this he chuckled and said something witty about jaded sound guys. True, at one point I was about as jaded as they come but I’m recovering. I know how it looks to someone unfamiliar with the audio industry but there’s a much deeper meaning.
If you’re mixing the Rolling Stones the money fader is Mick Jagger’s channel. Sure, people came to see the Rolling Stones but if Mick’s voice is not clear and present, your fired! The bottom line is they all paid to hear Mick sing those songs. It’s your job to deliver the goods no matter how great you made everything else sound or how much of a pain in the neck the guy was during sound check. His is the money fader so you put a big fat dollar sign on it to remind you when you look down.
You’d be surprised (or not so much) at how easy it is to forget this when caught up in the moment. Sound guys aren’t always the target audience. I like music for different reasons than most folks. Heck, I couldn’t tell you the words to my top 5 favorite songs but I could sing you the melodies and love how they weave in and out of guitar lines. It’s in my nature to work hard on the instruments then just throw the vocal on top because they have to be there. I’m not alone. How many concerts have you been to where the lead singer was buried in the mix? A wise FOH engineer told me, “you do not represent the band to the people; you represent the people to the band.”
This is true for most of us, maybe especially we who serve in churches. It’s human nature to favor our own preferences even when our job is to serve the needs and even preferences of the multitudes. We do not always reflect our target audience.
Well, people come to weekend services with various expectations but the common denominator is that they all came to hear the pastor teach. It’s the most important mic of our day – more so than the awesome worship band or the thundering audio track from a bumper video that we prefer to mix. It needs to sound as natural as possible without fatiguing the listeners by being either too loud or too soft and that takes real work. You’d be surprised. The pastor’s fader is what people are paying for, not with cash but with their time and attention. It’s what they value most. So will I.
What’s your money fader?
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