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?