My Church Gig

Donnie Darko is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time.  In a very memorable scene a teacher asks students to read a paragraph describing a potentially complex moral dilemma (something like someone found a wallet with money in it but kept the dough then turned the wallet in to lost and found) then asks them to place an X on the life line between fear and love.  Donnie argues that life isn’t that simple; you can’t evaluate every life situation on a one-dimensional line.  Then he gets sent to the principles office for… well, you’ll have to rent the movie.

So it is with intensity in music.  You can’t just place an X on the volume line between quiet and loud.  It’s not that simple.

I say this all the time: Greater volume does not necessarily equal greater intensity.

The inverse is as true:  Less volume does not necessarily equal less intensity.

Intensity is borne more out of complex concepts like motion, tone, balance and tension than by the one-dimensional concept of volume level.  There’s a certain level of maturity a musician gains the moment he or she realizes that song sections don’t necessarily need to be louder or softer – they just need to vary in intensity.  Here’s why this is important to me.  Every time I’m behind the console and I hear a band just play softer, not only does the detail of their parts vanish, they typically get sloppy.  I know because I bring up the faders to get them back in the game only to discover the game’s been momentarily suspended.

I say this as a bass player to other bass players and the drummers to whom we are married to for moments at a time:  Play what you mean.  Mean what you play.  Always. “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a well placed, well chosen note.” –Proverbs 25:11 for musicians.  It applies to all musicians, but especially the rhythm section.  Don’t succumb to the path of fear!

That doesn’t mean you need to be always aggressive.  It means don’t futz around playing ambiguously as if it adds anything to a tender moment and as if few people will hear what you’re playing anyway.  It’s usually just a tender cacophony of background noise.  Instead, play well chosen and well placed notes, like apples of gold in silver settings.

Well, I have the perfect audio clip as an example for you.  We have several great drummers but I’m going to brag on James who played last weekend.  He has every bit of this maturity in understanding intensity.  He drops in the perfect snare hit every time.  He chooses every note and places them well.

Here’s a section of “Jesus Lord of Heaven” which was an awesome moment of worship at our 11:00 service last Sunday.  During this 2nd verse, chorus and bridge the congregation went from standing to hands raised to singing loudly in gratitude to God. It was a moving experience.

As you listen note that the volume level is pretty much the same throughout.  The snare on two and four is the same throughout.  Things that add to the increase in intensity include the organ going from a sweet transparent tone to a rock tone and moving up only one or two inversions; not way crazy up the keyboard.  Also, the electric guitar goes from sparse slides with echoes to eighth note arpeggios adding more and more motion.  All in all every note by every player was intentional.  All of this allowed the vocals to breathe and go where they wanted to go.  If you notice anything else please leave a comment.

Disclaimer: this is a straight board mix with no post-production except for the normalization that Garage Band put on it when I exported the clip.

Jesus Lord of Heaven (example mp3)

Tim Corder is lead audio engineer at Kensington Community Church in Troy, Michigan.  His blog is at the top of my RSS reader and I always get something out of it.  I’m posting a link to his most recent article (as of today) which is a link and a re-post of another article.  This is a MUST READ for anyone in a creative role of any kind.

I don’t obsess over the perfect tones for each individual mix element.  That bothers me some times.  I’m not really an audiophile.  Most people I work with assume I have a killer stereo at home and that I am always in pursuit of perfect sound.  I mean, that’s what you sound guys do, right?  They ask me for advice on what stereo or surround sound system to buy.  I have no idea.  I listen to music on my iPhone or iPod through the standard ear buds.  Sometimes I’ll pump it through some really old, crappy computer speakers with a boxy sounding sub.  I don’t love music for the way it sounds as much as I do for the way it makes me feel.

This translates over into the way I mix as well.  I leave a few rough edges on things and let stuff roll.  I’ll let the guitars bite a little and let the bass wash around down low a touch.  It’s possible to polish the living soul out of anything; anything at all.

Balance is a language and in the creative world it’s about what you say with your sense of balance.  Every so often you witness a balance that moves you; a balance you wouldn’t have thought of and it inspires you.  Every art form from web design, graphic arts, web usability, painting, song arranging, mixing… is about balance, not perfection.

Here’s the link:

What Is Greatness

You’d think that personal mixers and in-ear monitors would effectively eliminate your vocal feedback woes. Ironically no. Not always.

This is one major drawback to in-ears that I had completely forgotten about till last weekend. Working with our guest artist, the imitable Sara Groves, I was reminded of it. Now, Sara did great on Sunday, but I’m going to tell on her a little. I doubt she’d mind.

Saturday night we did a late sound check so they wouldn’t have to in the morning. During a song she stopped and said, “hey, I think I hear a little ringing in my mic.” On the talkback mic, “yeah, I’m sorry Sara. I’m having trouble getting your voice loud enough so I’m riding the edge till I find where my limit is.” “Oh, I can sing louder and eat the mic; I just get lazy sometimes.” Well, I wouldn’t say lazy. Jet lag and a long couple of days at a church conference left her and her band a little exhausted. On Sunday morning she sounded phenomenal.

Years ago I toured as FOH engineer with another singer/songwriter and a full band for one of the most challenging audio experiences of my life. Oh, and one of the best sounding consoles I’ve ever touched; an Amek Recall. He and his band were all on in-ears and he was a whisperer, even in powerful sections of songs. When tuning a room for a show I’d have to make sure I had enough headroom by throwing the main fader full up, and work the feedback out of his channel till it that fader was full up and still get it to reasonably sound musical. At a Nashville show, with the vocal and main faders full up, an industry type came up to the console and shouted, “I need more vocal!” Me shouting, “Who are you?” “I need more vocal!!!” “I said, who are you?!” I was just trying to make sure I wasn’t about to tell the artist’s publisher to [bug off]. Those were younger days.

Here’s the rub. With in-ears you can turn your voice up in your head till you sound great to yourself at any intensity, from a whisper to full out rock and roll. In the studio it works fine. In a live room you’re competing with the dynamics of natural physics. You can only turn up a mic so much till it rings in the mains. If you’d like your words to sound like, well… words, then you really can’t sing as softly as you’d often like.

If you sing with in-ears here’s a tip:

This is counter-intuitive so read carefully. When a mic rings with feedback the normal reaction is to back off. Don’t do it! It’s backwards. What your FOH engineer needs at that moment is a reason to turn your fader down, not up. Get on that mic and sing up so he or she has to turn you down. Otherwise you put them in a lose-lose situation: leave you where nobody can hear you or risk feedback by turning you up to see if they can get you back in the game.

One more thought about critical listening skills as a vocalist:

I’ve notice over the years that good vocalists care deeply about what their voice sounds like but great vocalists care as much or more about what their mic sounds like. In fact, they’ll comment on the microphone before their voice. They’re aware that, no matter what comes out of their mouth, everyone hears only what comes out of the mic.  Their aim is to make the mic sing, and in-ear monitors help them do that better.

Scott Dente was here last week accompanying our men’s conference speaker, Nate Larkin.  Scott was kind enough to play with the worship band for the sessions.

You might remember Scott from Out of the Grey.  God knows I do.  Back in the day I sat plenty with acoustic guitar in hand learning his riffs note for note.  He’s a well-respected musician in the Nashville scene and he’s earned it for his playing ability (think Phil Keaggy) and his integrity.

Chris, my other staff engineer, mixed the conference.  After the conference Scott told us he came into the building late for morning practice and thought to himself, “I’m not late, they’re just playing a CD,” as he heard it from the courtyard.  He was surprised to see the band playing.  He said, “you guys really have this system dialed in … it sounds great … and I’ve been to a LOT of churches …”  

I am bragging on Chris and his skill as an engineer.  (Some other time I’ll talk about how invaluable it is to work with someone you respect and to hone your mixing skills off each other.)  But, it’s not the first time we’ve gotten a compliment from an industry type.  Marcus and Colby from AV Interiors (church AVL consulting) once told me we had the best church sound they’ve heard.

Chris and I are decent engineers; not the industry’s best but still pretty good.  What I attribute our “great sound” (in Dente’s own words) to is the style and direction we’ve chosen to go in.  We intentionally mix as if for tape rather than a standard old-school live mix.  In other words we try to achieve the sound of a produced worship CD.  This doesn’t always meet with the approval of other engineers.  I’ve had plenty of (sometimes constructive) criticism from other engineers and musicians with opinions.  They’re usually right on their end of the philosophy spectrum.

There seem to be two camps for live and recorded sound.  The old school camp values big full vocals, lots of dynamic range, and everything that goes along with it; drums without a shield, amps on stage, and loud stage wedges. Modern digital consoles with internal processing (often exactly the same processing used in the studio) it’s now possible to achieve a studio sound in a live situation; that is if you can achieve a fair amount of isolation on stage.  Engineers in both camps achieve stunning results so it’s not a matter of one being right and the other wrong – or better, or worse.

Here’s why I consider the studio sound approach to mixing to be the best option for church.

1. We’re mixing modern pop-rock.  Two words.  Chris.  Tomlin.  It’s polished, inoffensive, palatable, tasteful, and fairly benign as far as rock goes.  That’s what the people love.
    
2. A Foo Fighters (or even a Tomlin) song sounds intense at any volume in your car.  That’s one of the goals of the mastering process.  Studio engineers use multiband compression and peak limiting to achieve the same intensity, and pretty much the same volume, across the board.  What sounds louder usually isn’t actually louder.  It’s all smoke and mirrors.
     
3. We’re mixing with a volume cap for what the congregation will handle.  In our case that’s 91dBA-slow and we average 88dBA-slow.  That’s not enough to achieve the same intensity you can get with wider dynamics peaking at 98dBA – concert levels.  And that’s the point.  Concert style simply does not work for most of our congregation.

If you spent as much time as I have behind the console for worship, watching the congregation and seeing the effects of your mix on their reaction, you’d know how important the intensity of the music is to a worship experience.  We humans respond deeply to music based on its intensity.  Remember, our response to sound is not necessarily separate from a spiritual experience.  They are as interwoven as our own spirit and skin.

My advice to any engineer is this: pick your style and go all the way with it.  Accept nothing half-baked.  If an old-school live mix is your gig, then do it the best you can.  If you’re in a situation where you can’t isolate amps and drums then you pretty much have to.  At the end of the day the congregation are whom you serve.  If the volume is an interruption to their worship experience then maybe it’s time to switch gears.  

Works for us.