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Church Sound: Being Excellent With Less

The best way to ensure a quality production may well be to simplify down to the level of excellence.
This article is provided by ChurchTechArts.

Have you heard the expression, “Stuff expands to fill the space available?”

It used to be true in my life. When we lived in our first, tiny little house, we didn’t have that much stuff.

In fact, it all fit in a single moving van when we bought our next, larger house.

However, after 10 years there we had a lot of stuff. In fact, the once empty basement was full. It took an interstate move to a smaller house to clear out the clutter.

I think the same concept applies in the technical and worship arts. We are always striving to make things a little bigger, a little better, and therein lies the challenge.

Not with getting bigger necessarily, but in outgrowing our capacity. Let me explain.

Some time ago we started a new ministry in our church . The program included weekly meetings that would have a worship component.

As a general rule, we do worship really well, and it’s very much in the contemporary style – full band, great vocals, lighting – the complete package.

It also takes a small army of volunteers to make it happen. In fact, there are upwards of 70 people participating in worship in any given month.

For this new ministry, it was supposed to be simple—pre-packaged PowerPoint slide shows, split-track CD for music and a few vocalists.

They would use the youth room, which has a capable but simple lighting rig (30 or so fixtures). At least that was the plan.

The first week there were 5 vocalists on stage, 2 guitars and keys. They wanted lights, 4 monitor mixes and big sound.

To support this “simple” set-up there was one guy who is one of our best lighting guys, but new to Media Shout & sound, and one tech who was completely green. The next week, they added drums and some more vocals. Oh, and that week there was only one tech.

Now, I’m all about doing things right, even big. “Go big or go home,” I often say. Yet in this case, it’s a clear mistake. Without sufficient technical support, the music team must scale back.

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