52 Tweaks to a Stronger Team: #18

#18. Create a true Sunday morning sound check.

I would venture to guess that the average Sunday morning “sound check” is just a re-rehearsal with the sound guys dialing in all the more-me requests in the monitor.

Here are a few suggestions to start steering in a new direction:

• Work with your team (techs and musicians) to have a true sound-check. That means your band needs to have a “ready to play” time and stick with it.
• Stagger the sound check. Bring your instrumentalists in at 7:45 and your singers in at 8:00. By 8:10, you’re ready to roll with less stopping for monitor adjustments.
• When you sound check the band, go without monitors for a song (see #36). This lets the tech get a great FOH mix. Then add into the monitors only what you need to keep the band on time and on pitch.

Is this easy?
No.

Will it frustrate your band?
Oh yeah.

But it will force them to listen to each other in a brand new way?
Yep.

And they just might realize they need less of themselves.

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52 Tweaks to a Stronger Team is a upcoming ebook releasing on the new WorshipTeamCoach site, which will be launching this Fall. And did I mention the ebook is free? It is. So be watching for the launch of the new site and release of this 52 Tweaks.

Reverse Sound Check

Kent Morris is a rock star. Actually, he's the AV genius behind rock stars. And he was in my neighborhood a month or so ago doing a seminar for Peavey's Sanctuary Series line of sound systems. (Ended up having lunch with him, which was fun. But that's for another blog.)

During the seminar, he suggested we do our sound check backwards. At least - it seemed backwards to me. So that meant it was probably right.

Here's what Kent proposed:

Turn off the wedges. Play through your first song as best as you can, which allows the sound tech to dial in a solid mix. After that, the tech asks, "What's missing? What do you need to keep you on-time and on-pitch?" At that point, we add to the monitors only what's necessary to meet the true need: the basic stuff to keep us on-time and on-pitch.

So we tried it. (My sound guy made me tell the band what we were doing. I didn't blame him...) We played our first song sans monitors and few things happened:
1. We listened to each other. For the first time, ever, I think people in the band were really listening for what the other person was doing.
2. We got a great house mix and a lower stage volume. There was less "more me" - which meant less overall monitor volume.
3. We spent far less time "tweaking" monitors than our usual method.

If this scares you, let me throw a few things at you:
If we're trying to approximate the house mix in our wedges, we're asking too much. Strip it down to what's absolutely necessary to keep us together rhythmically and sonically.

When you take more for yourself on stage - more "me," more piano, more whatever - the more your monitor becomes part of the main mix. Ever heard the backside of a wedge? (Just saying backside of a wedge brings up an unpleasant picture for the sound.)

If our role really is to serve the congregation, we need to put that into practice when it comes to our monitors. And didn't Jesus say something about this backwards sound check?