My Church Gig

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.

It was still my birthday a couple hours ago.  This post has nothing to do with my church gig or audio in general.  Just wanted to share some thoughts as I’ve reflected on my life today.

For whatever reason, the Lost Dogs’ song Breathe Deep the Breath of God has been the underlying movie theme for the motion of the day.

I believe the same thing that offers me a knack for running sound also contributes to what often feels like an oblique perspective on the Christian life:  a personal sense of the connectedness and balance of things.  For me, forty-some-odd years of life has been every inch a bittersweet symphony with soothing melodies against beds of dissonance as well as disturbing motifs juxtaposed to elegant, shimmering glissandos.  I see the whole thing as beautifully and tragically inseparable.

I’m drawn to shows like Six Feet Under in which completely believable characters face turmoil so magnified that we can’t help but see traces of it within ourselves.  I love movies like Magnolia where troubled characters find ironic redemption in a moment of random, unexpected natural phenomenon.  The world is not as you would reason it to be if you were the inventor.  Strange things actually happen – even raining frogs.

I don’t buy the asceticism veiled as good Christian living that’s been peddled to my generation, era, and culture.  Neither do I buy the Gnosticism veiled as righteous efforts to become more spiritually connected to God as if it were an elevated state one must work to maintain.  These attempts to separate a spiritual world of righteousness from a physical world of sin and suffering are as empty as trite childhood songs; one-dimensional melodies manufactured to make us smile and nothing more.  For me, the spiritual and physical worlds are inseparable.  Keep in mind, friend, that when Christ rose from the dead, he did so in his body, no matter how transformed it was.  The scars in his resurrected hands testify to this connectedness – the spirit of Christ now infused with the stuff of this earth working a powerful redemption ever since.

Most of us spend our lives as slaves to a primal urge for safety and comfort, and it poisons our perception of our relationship with and to God.  In fact, we generally envision heaven as the fulfillment of our desires with ideas of mansions and eternal rest.  When we actually achieve safety and comfort on this planet we drown in our entitlement issues and grow tragically weak.  It’s not what one expects; we were meant for adversity, suffering and death every bit as much as we were meant for love, peace and joy.  It’s part of the deal in this thin layer of air between earth and space.

Few people with social skills talk openly about the 3:00AM staring sessions in pitch black and the thoughts that keep them awake.  The unspoken understanding that each of us carry a burden or two is part of maturity.  Trusted confidants are a gift from God.  As Solomon points out, life is mostly full of empty meaning, and it’s even emptier to whine about all that emptiness.  Just get on with it and contribute your piece of the human progression through history.  That’s his final advice.  Rightly so.  Hope that is seen is no hope at all, Paul says.  So we live hoping, never fully seeing.  We live in the absence of fulfillment until death kindly bridges the gap.

Today, for some odd reason, I remember an uneducated, homeless man in Chicago whom I shrugged off.  Turned out he knew more about the Bible than I did.  You find traces of God hidden in unexpected places.  He does that on purpose by the way, using the weak things of the earth (not necessarily weak in heaven’s eye) to confound the earthly wise.  

I also think of people I know who don’t consider Jesus at all, yet in their recovery from addictions they have more spiritual maturity and a deeper connection with God than most Christians I know.  God specifically answers their prayers too.

This spirit of Christ now infused into the soil and air we live on and in is truly powerful, bringing redemption, belonging, freedom, and strength in ways you wouldn’t expect.  But the end goal is not our safety and comfort; it is our nearness to God.  We get some of it now and all the rest later.  In the meantime we would do well to search for God in the unlikely and unexpected.

So here’s to the mundane, the base, and the beautiful for being so:

politicians, morticians, philistines homophobes
skinheads, dead heads, tax evaders, street kids
alcoholics, workaholics, wise guys, dim wits
blue collars, white collars, war mongers, peace nicks

Breathe deep -
breathe deep the breath of God…

-The Lost Dogs

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.

 I’m mourning the end of Battlestar Galactica.  We used to hang out Friday nights so tonight feels especially empty.

So who’s the guy in the tub?  That’s Anders in a scene that was especially meaningful to me.  For the monologue, not the tub.  Anders has a flashback to an interview when he was a sports star.  Lady asks if he’d consider his career incomplete if his team never won a championship.  Dude replies in stunning clarity why he’s not in it for the win.

Here’s a clip.

Some of the script loosely transcribed:

Look, you wanna know the truth?  I don’t really care about the stats or the cup or the trophy or anything like that … in fact the game’s not that important to me, not really.  What matters to me is the perfect throw, okay? Making the perfect catch, the perfect step and block.  It’s perfection. That’s what it’s about.  It’s about those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation, the beauty of physics, the wonder of mathematics, you know?  The, the elation of action and reaction, and that is the kind of perfection that I want to be connected to.

Do you feel this way about anything you do?  I feel it in just about everything I get involved in.  I notice that most people don’t.  That doesn’t make anyone better than anyone else; just differently gifted.  A lot of my friends share the same sentiment and passion in their jobs and artistic endeavors.

There is a certain perfection, beauty, and wonder that can be found in anything we do; sports, visual art, music, programming, design… mixing worship.  People might see your passion, mistake it for perfectionism then get confused when you don’t nit-pick the details.  What you’re looking for are moments of elation; addictive moments when you feel connected to something deeper, greater, and invisible that has nothing and everything to do with you’re doing all at the same time.  I crave those moments of Godly Zen when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

There have been many moments at Cornerstone when the chemistry on stage was perfect, the faders seemed to have moved themselves under my fingers, and the payoff of a chorus or bridge sounded so good I wanted to pee my pants.  Even more stunning are those same kinds of moments when the congregation sings out, the music and voices blend in the air, you swear you hear angels in the overtones, and you feel the presence of God himself.  That’s usually when I want to crap my pants.

Really spiritual types love to point out that those moments have nothing to do with the band, the worship leader, the sound system, the mix… because they are spiritual and transcendent.  On one hand you’re right to think so.  On the other hand you’re really, really wrong too.  The worship leader, the guitar player, the guy behind the console, the visuals on the screens – they can all absolutely ruin those moments or prevent them from ever happening.  If you’re using any sort of technology for worship it [darned] well does have something to do with the spiritual quality of the worship experience no matter how transcendent some moments are.

If you hang around a Cornerstone Thursday evening rehearsal you might think we’re all obsessed with perfection.  Band members practice songs for hours before rehearsals, rehearsals can even get nit-picky, and we spend the whole time dialing in the mix even to the point of asking players to change tones in sections.  After all that we remind everyone what kind of clothes work for video and what doesn’t.  And that’s just the band!  I won’t go into how hard the camera crew trains on Thursdays.  It’s ridiculous.  A fly on the wall might even consider our rehearsals to lack any real spiritual value.  Well, especially when said wall is pulsating with 105dB of 35Hz subsonic love.  Come on a Sunday and you’ll see the spiritual rewards of mundane, hard work.

With all of that said, I love the chemistry I have with the people I work with.  I often get to feel moments like Anders described.

The challenge I’m gonna put out there is this:  what habits, personal preferences, notions, style… what, if anything at all, do you have that prevents synergistic moments of worship happen in your situation?  Remember, great moments of worship want to happen.  If they’re not happening then something is preventing it.  It’s not about what you can add, like a bigger sound system; it’s about what obstacles you can remove.  Be brave enough to ask a brave friend what they think.  If you can think of anything like say, “my guitar tone is so frign awesome, I point my AC60 at the congregation so the sound guy can’t mess it up,” then cut it out.  Get with the Godly Zen and contribute to something greater than yourself.

I just got notice today that I’m into my eighth year at Cornerstone.  That means I get a boatload of PTO days to take off this year.  Actually, it’s a cruel joke.  I can’t take that many days off and they know it.  But thanks anyway.  The thought really does mean a lot.

So, I’ve been in existential wrestling matches lately with this question:  Why do I do what I do?

I work at a cool church.  I know a few who would love to work at a cool church no matter what the pay.  I’m pretty lucky.  (“Blessed” for you spiritual types – still feels lucky to me.)

When I was younger I cared about the mission above all; you could keep the money.  Now in my 40s I care whether or not my job looks anything like a career.  Career and Ministry mix like oil and water in my head.  There’s no escaping that most churches need to employ people to keep things running.  You know… working at a church is a little like swimming in oil and water; treading the paradox of temporal necessity and eternal mission.

I believe current “economic realities” (words I hear every day) are purifying churches as much as they’re hurting.  We just came through a time of relative prosperity.  We started to bulge in unsightly places but just wore some fashion with slimming vertical motion to mask it.  Now many churches in America, just like a lot of companies, are cutting more than fat; they’re cutting to the core.  Ready or not, the necessity of increased volunteerism is here.  This is tricky for a lot of churches because they’re used to a level of quality they hired to achieve.  That quality is some of what attracted a lot of people in the first place.

Cornerstone has already made cuts and we’re not immune to more.  Who knows how bad this economy thing is going to get?  It’s unwise to think my job is any more secure than any other job in the country.  I’m ok with that.

I’d like to offer this thought to all who love their church jobs.  It’s where I’ve arrived personally at the end of my existential wrestling matches.

Our greatest American freedoms are often our greatest burdens.  Possibility and opportunity bring with them a certain Kierkegaardian despair for most humans.  We are naturally convinced our inner joy hinges upon working a job we love and feel we are destined by God to do so.  We despair that we won’t find work we love then, once we do, we despair that we might lose it.  I visited garbage dumps in Thailand once where men emerge every morning from cardboard structures in freshly pressed white shirts to work any job to provide anything for their families.  I have to believe that even in situations like that, joy can abound.  May God free us from temporal despair and rebuild within us the joy of a greater sense of eternal mission.  If a world-wide economic crisis is what it takes, let it be so.

 Math teachers and English teachers are completely different.  Ever notice?  Math geeks are driven to discover preeminent facts about the universe.  English geeks love subjectivity, human convention, art, culture, and fashion.  ”2 + 2″ is what it is (and is what it was) but the spelling and pronunciation of the word Colonel is just really odd.  It’s “pocket protectors save me money spent on shirts” vs. “dude, shirt pockets aren’t for putting stuff in – there are way more stylin ways to carry tools.”

In the audio world the difference between Technician and Engineer is pretty much the same.

Technicians are left-brained geniuses who picture signal flow in their sleep, understand electronics and physics, and can troubleshoot a 60 cycle hum in no time flat.  Right-brained engineers are artists who might not be able to troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag but can turn knobs to make bands sound larger than life.  On the perfect tour the technicians set up the gear while the engineer hangs out with the band on the bus.  The engineer mixes the show then drives away with the band while the techs tear down.  Most pro bands bring their own engineers with them for fly-dates and festivals.  It’s that important.

I’m much more an engineer than a technician.  When I say “One Two, Hey Who” into a microphone to tune a monitor wedge I’ll say something like “hey Chris, bring 160 hertz down 5 dB in here.”  It sounds really technical and everyone acts really impressed.  I wish there was a less nerdy way to say “160 hertz down 5dB” because it’s a subjective, artistic call; not a technical correction.  What I’m saying is I think it sounds muddy around a low E and that needs to come down a touch for things to sound balanced.  Everything that can be described as boxy, thuddy, muddy, nasally, hollow, piercing, essy or shimmering has a number; a frequency that sounds to an engineer like art, not science.

Most churches don’t have a mega-pool of talent to go fish in or the budget to hire a good engineer.  Ironically, the wires, knobs, blinking lights, and the really-really-important-but-not-in-front-of-people position attract all sorts of technical types – and a few who lack important people skills.  This can be frustrating for band members and worship leaders because they, on the other hand, are artists.  This disappointment, tension, and conflict are far too common in churches.

I want to throw two things out there today:

If you’re a good musician with a gift for hearing the whole band at once, consider becoming an audio engineer.

I’m not talking about musicians who aren’t cutting it on stage and need something to do.  I mean good musicians who love music as a whole, not just their instrument.  You might just be the best candidate for sound engineer at your church or in your ministry.  It’s a less glamorous job but more important than any other when the band starts playing.  At the end of the day the quality of bass or guitar playing means squat if the mix is off.  Pray about it and be humble enough to give it a shot.  I fell in love with it.  You might too.

If you’re a worship leader and you don’t trust your engineer, step up your game.

I’ve seen a few jazz and blues acts at small clubs where the sound was phenomenal without a sound system or with a small portable system and no engineer.  Seasoned players balance with each other and play with great style.  I know from experience that when a band sounds great the mix mixes itself.  Don’t blame your engineer or technician for your band’s poor performance or lack of ability to blend clearly on stage.  In rooms that seat less than a few hundred it’s entirely possible to achieve great sound with little more than vocals in the mains.  Strive to be that good.

And please, be nice to the pocket protector behind the console.

If you go to Cornerstone you might be interested in our recent adventure with Steve’s podium mic.  Last Saturday and on the previous weekend he wasn’t as easy to hear as usual.  We moved his mic to the back side of his notes stand which left the mic a few inches further away.  (Top pic … it used to live there before.)  His level dropped into the 50s and low 60s in decibels.  Two things happened: 

1. People noticed the difference.
2. The congregation was not as responsive as usual.

It was a somber message in a subdued tone but our congregation is typically more responsive any day of the year.  On Sunday we moved it back to its optimal place (like the bottom pic … thanks Steve!) and bam, we were back in our target range; somber message heard and understood.  Doesn’t look like much of a change in those pictures.  This either shows the delicate nature of our business or my completely OCD approach to audio.

With that in mind I wanted to mention a few things about how volume levels affect congregation response and listener fatigue.  I hope this is helpful for pastors and teachers too.  I hope you guys care about this as much or more than your sound guy.

Decibel meters kind of match thermometers here in the Fahrenheit-loving United States.  Imagine standing outside in a t-shirt.  Anything over 90 is pretty hot but, hey, some like it hot.  The 80s is warm; fun summer weather for all ages.  The 70s is pretty comfy and the best part is you can drink coffee outside.  The upper 60s is still ok but if it dips to 60 or below, most of us begin to crave new fall fashion apparel and accessories.  New shoes couldn’t hurt either.

Normal conversation happens from the low 60s to the low 70s, kind of like an early Spring afternoon.  It’s what we’re used to.  When we listen to speech for a long while (like a 50 minute sermon) listener fatigue happens when it’s either too loud for too long or when it’s too quiet for too long.  Being too loud is rarely a problem.  The laws of physics, feedback, a reflective room and the pastor’s general performance make getting his voice in the upper 60s a real feat of engineering some days.

Here’s what happens when the pastor’s voice drops into the chilly regions of 60 and below:

• People are tired after church and they don’t know why.  It took real effort to listen.  Their brains worked long and hard, and now it’s nap time.
    
• The congregation isn’t as responsive as the pastor secretly wishes.  They can’t be.  I’ve sat in churches where people feel trapped, unable to move or flip a page in their Bible because they’ll miss something.  (No exaggeration.)
    
• Some people will check out after 20 minutes and the rest will check out after 40 minutes if the presentation of the message is not compelling.

Our target for sermon levels at Cornerstone is around 63 to 73dB A-weighted, like a friendly conversation outside Starbucks in May.  We don’t have any assisted listening packs but we don’t get asked for any either.  In fact I’ve been told by a few hard-of-hearing friends they never have a problem hearing Steve.

I got this in an email today from a kind lady who has a hearing condition:

“…I wanted to say thank you for putting so much effort into good sound.  I can always hear Steve’s word even when he speaks softly and that is important to me.  It may seem silly, but I struggle hear people’s words in so many other areas of my life that it is really nice when I can hear all the words for a change.”

Thanks Elizabeth.  You are my new favorite person.

 Half of the love I have for managing audio at a church is for the philosophy of it all.  I spend more hours pondering that than I do the nuts and bolts of gear and technique.

Sound (including music) is the most subjective and critical element of what we do during a church service.  Sorry video and lighting guys!  I know it sounds egocentric but let me explain.

Nobody walks out of the room when the screens are too bright (our 6K Panasonics won’t blind anyone) but some do when they think it’s too loud.  Nobody whines when a sermon slide is too red but some might if they don’t hear their favorite instrument on top of the mix.  Nobody scowls at the lighting operator when they don’t like the lighting scene but, sheesh, you should sit in my chair once in a while.  It’s creepy to scowl at strangers by the way.  Don’t do it.

Sound is intimate and personal.  It can be pleasurable like the close whisper of someone you love, a mother’s lullaby, or music on your iPod that stops the clock.  The soothing nature of crashing waves, a babbling brook, and the rush of rain on forest leaves seems to have been woven into our DNA millennia ago.  Sudden loud sounds spark a primal response; an adrenaline rush of panic.  Other sounds are invasive and annoying, like the incessant drip of a faucet, a pesky insect, or the neighbor’s barking dog and they threaten us with a temporary sanity fail.

Sounds (especially in music) draw deeply emotional responses from each of us.  When it’s bad we argue sometimes; and heatedly when we do.  When it’s great it deepens our worship experience and our connection with the teaching.   This makes church sound and music uniquely spiritual and, for my role, ultimately important.

Consider this from Rick Warren’s book, Purpose Driven Church.

I’m often asked what I would do differently if I could start Saddleback over.  My answer is this:  From the first day of the new church I’d put more energy and money into a first-class music ministry that matched our target.  In the first years of Saddleback, I made the mistake of underestimating the power of music so I minimized the use of music in our services.  I regret that now.

Hey, if you’re not happy with sound at your church then hire a qualified audio engineer for crying out loud.  You’ll find a few humble types out there eager to jump in.  It could change your church.