My Church Gig

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.