… or ears in this situation. Some discussions I’ve been in and around over the past few weeks have been dealing with “less than ideal” results in a few of our live environments, including the one I oversee primarily. This is in no way a “shot” at anyone who is working in those environments any more than it is taking one at myself. Disclaimer aside…

How often do you have someone else with trustworthy ears come into your worship service and evaluate how it sounds and is mixed? How well do you take criticism from that person/those people? I know sometimes it isn’t packaged well and you have to sift through the arrows and find the nuggets of truth, but how well do you take it?

Our worship director at SSCC is now trying to schedule himself off stage about once a month. He will mix maybe once every 2-3 months and just be in the room for the services on other weeks. It gives him a fresh perspective of what happens in the room and what it sounds like. I HAVE to listen to him for instance because it is a “production” that he orchestrates normally, but regardless, I WANT to hear his thoughts. There are also two other tech guys on staff with me and I always like to hear what they liked or disliked about a mix. Some times the insight is more preference than right/wrong but much of the time I get great insight. Often times I ask myself “why didn’t I hear that or think of that?” Sometimes they tweak a knob that I’m somewhat embarrassed to have missed. It is part of the gig.

So, get some fresh ears on your mix and in your room. If you don’t have those extra ears in your church, get some from another church or venue for a rehearsal and do the same for them in return. I think the more challenging of a mix situation you engineer in, the more important this might be. Our ears are super-adaptable devices and this is both a blessing and sometimes a hindrance to mixing. Let someone else come in without any preconceived notions about the challenges of your mixing situation. They may hear things that your ears have grown accustomed to. (Be ready for some suggestions that you will take too personally. Think about how opinionated you are about a mix and know that they are too.) Make notes and try the changes.

Constantly find ways to get fresh eyes on your mixing. You will get better and your audience will hear better.

Win – win.

What about you, whether you are on stage or in the booth what things keep your ears fresh? If audio is not your thing, what about video or your designs?

I don’t at all know how regular these might be. My track record so far does not lend itself to regularity on this blog. This, however, will be my second post in a week. So maybe I have turned over a new leaf. I am going to post this as part of the Sunday Setlist post with Fred McKinnon.

We had a good worship service overall. Fred gave a good rundown of it on the main setlist post here. We did have a handful of glitches, all during the first service, that of course distracted me big time but I am always unsure of just how much it takes away from the “average attender’s” worship experience.

First off, the team:

• Producer: Me
• FOH: Dana Mason (he is a contractor who used to have a recording studio, always looking for ways to get better at sound)
• Lights: Rob Furlong (a new guy who is jumping in with both feet, his second time on lights)
• Video Content/ProVideoPlayer: Russ Curry (great servant who has a nack for never being a distraction with his loops)
• Lyrics & Notes/ProPresenter: John Cenicola (a long time volunteer with a passion for “doing it with excellence” every time)

The Rundown:

I won’t take the time to give a song by song detail of worship. Fred did that.

Glitch #1 came when we were transitioning from our first set into announcements. Fred was supposed to pray and transition us into the announcements which were to begin with a video. As “Hosanna” finished I said “ready video for Curt_Peru” but Russ thought I said “go video.” So, about halfway through Fred’s short prayer, our Peru Missionary video began to roll. On the fly I elected to keep the video rolling since everyone started to look up and we let its volume overtake Fred’s prayer. By the end of the 2 minute video I had basically forgotten about it.

Glitch #2 is why I forgot about glitch #1. During the video I noticed that the fresnel lighting our stage center position was fairly “well” lit. Somehow, one stage light was left at 50% in the “video” setting which calls for a dark stage. One of our lead worshipers, Amy, was standing in a dim spotlight during the video. With about 30 seconds left I found the culprit light and rolled it off.

Glitch #3 stands on its own. During the live portion of the announcements I tried to talk to Fred in his ears to let him know we were starting to run long already. He motioned to me telling me that his IEM batteries were low. About 1 minute later I talk to him again and notice him shaking his head and taking his IEM pack off. I realized then that I had less than a minute until the next song started, I was 80 feet from the stage and he had no ears. I was unaware that Fred didn’t know there were batteries right behind the stage wall. Thankfully one of our other musicians realized what was happening and got Fred batteries and replaced them while Fred stalled, explained and then prayed into the next song. Considering there was a click track used in the next worship set, the ears were rather important.

Glitch #4 is a repeat of glitch #2 except it was during our sermon intro video (which is featured in my previous post here). I forgot that we used the same cue for the second video as the first. We saw the light a couple seconds after the start of the video and dimmed it but not before people got to see our pastor sliding his table and chair up to our main spot.

The Good Stuff: That is all for the glitches on the production end. We had a couple featured instruments that we miked up with surprisingly good results. We covered a song by Wynonna Judd called “Rescue Me.” The song featured leads by both a cello and a hammered dulcimer. We have used a cello a few times before and I have never been pleased with the results. We had a lot of ambiance in the mikes and low gain before feedback. We have used a 57, an Audix X-10 and a Senn e609 so far. This weekend we used a Rode NT1a (cardioid) on the cello and it sounded fantastic. We did have to roll some of the low off of it to avoid a boomy feedback but it was picked up beautifully on the live stage. On the dulcimer we used a MXL 992 hanging horizontally over the strings, a little bit off center. The dulcimer was beautiful and it was picked up fantastically. Both instruments were loud enough that we didn’t have to boost gain so high and get a lot of bleed. Gentle gain structure and some careful EQing proved enough. No doubt that the lack of any monitor wedges on stage played into those results. I was nervous about using “studio condensers” live but it panned our great.

Again, it was a GREAT service. We heard a lot of great feedback on the special as well.

How was your tech service?

This video is intended to set up the sermon each week of our 4 week series on fear entitled “Break Free.” We wanted the video to be a little bit more intense than normal for us and create a bit of tension. The idea is to get people thinking about their fears and waiting for the message to follow it with answers. The video starts with a “random” spin through a 3D list of “fears” that I compiled via Twitter and Facebook replies. I just took a wide range of the most common responses that I got. The goal was “to have someone seeing fears no matter where the looked.”

For those video graphics peeps who care, the following is for you. For the rest of you, skip on to the play button. I owe the “concept” of the video to Andrew Kramer of VideoCopilot.net for two fantastic free AE add ons: a SureTarget preset and a “shatter” autotrace script. I was trying to come up with some way to illustrate “breaking free” on the same day that Kramer released the shatter tutorial. The suretarget plugin technically could have been done without but it would have taken WAY longet to build the composition. I used the Suretarget preset on a null and parented a camera and a light to it. This moves between the 17 3D text layers as the video progresses. The camera and spotlight follow the null and have no keyframes. I used the spotlight to give a little dimension/gradient to the text instead of having a slightly more boring solid whitish colored text. The “dust” that floats throughout the fears was created using a single instance of Trapcode’s Particular and some “push buttons until you like it” settings. Again, I used those to add a bit more dimension and hopefully to make the camera moves more dramatic. I rendered the “fears” precomp out and placed it in the final comp where I used the shatter method from Kramer to break it apart and have the “Break Free” logo reveal itself. Chris did the initial series graphic design and I rebuilt it in After Effects so I could animate the layers. Finally, the music in the BG is “It is Natural to be Afraid” by Explosions in the Sky, fitting title I thought. I wish I had more time to find better or even have Fred create a unique background track but I had less than a day to turn this around in the end and time didn’t allow for that.

What do you think?

“Break Free” Series Intro from SSCC on Vimeo.