Engage is our quarterly night of worship. It’s happening this Sunday evening. It’s Palm Sunday by the way. With Good Friday and Easter around the corner that makes these two weeks the busiest of the year for us.
I’m writing this while fine tuning a few things on the Innovason mixing console before the band gets here for rehearsal tonight. Here are some points of interest for this event.
Sound
We’re taking the breaks off the system a little bit, like we’ve done in the past for Engage worship events. We don’t run it as loud as Tomlin or Brewster when they were here. We run between a church service and a concert with no complaints because people are coming for a music event. Sundays are different. I think many Sunday church goers actually just don’t like music but that’s another topic. If it starts to get too edgy for our guests then I can lower the threshold on the system’s overall multiband compressor (TC Electronic Finalizer) to soften things a little (as much as I hate to) while maintaining the punch we want.
Expect to feel a little more subs and more saturated drums. This time we’re using some upward compression on the drums and on the background vocalists.
There are many elements to mix. Most songs will include: 1 lead voc, 2 background vocals, 2 electric guitars, 2 of 3 keyboards at once, 2 acoustic guitars, and Rocky’s DW drum kit with my beloved 24″ kick. With this many elements you have to pick instruments to feature at appropriate times in each song and let the rest blend like oil paints underneath.
I was a little skeptical about two acoustic guitars in every song but panning them left and right is just the right spice for many songs. In any mix your ear is looking for a little sugar, like a shaker, tambourine, or other percussion. It’s a counterintuitive concept for most but strummed acoustic guitars are actually percussive instruments more than melodic. With Derek and Justin playing off each other in syncopation, it’s just the right shimmer.
For best sound you’ll want to sit 8 to 12 rows back in the middle. If you hate subs… well, you’ll have to come to church Sunday morning when we dial it back. :-)~
Lighting Director
A seasoned lighting designer/operator is the one artist we don’t have on staff or in our volunteer lineup. We have several people willing to learn though. For Engage we hired an LD from down south – one of Greg’s contacts. I’m really looking forward to this artistic visual element incorporated to a greater degree in our worship experience.
Stage Design
We have a new look with some cool banners thanks to our media department. We’re also sporting a few new cyc lights for an even wash. This has always been difficult for us using our Nexera washes. When you look at the auditorium and the stage for the first time you’d think that we had all kinds of cool stuff but, remember, when we built the building funds were tight. We only spent $1 mil on the auditorium technology. That sounds like a lot of money. For what we’re doing, it’s not. We had to cut many corners. Lighting got cut the most.
That’s it for now. I’ll be back at some point for a recap.
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