3) Feedback. Surprise! This is an area for being proactive and reactive. Being proactive means you are watching the stage and listening for the beginning of feedback.
If a singer is standing close to a monitor and starts to drop the microphone to their side, then immediately mute the channel. If you hear a bit of ringing as the start of a full-on feedback attack, EQ out the feedback by cutting back on the frequency that’s getting excited. While the feedback did occur, as you caught it early and dealt with it, I’m calling this being proactive.
There is a time to be reactive. When you get a sudden full-on feedback attack, pull your house main back immediately until it goes away. You now have a few extra moments to look at the location of instruments and monitors on the stage and to review your mixer settings.
Once you’ve done that, you should be able to identify the source of the problem and take appropriate action, such as turning down the gain on a channel or pulling a volume back. Preferably the latter so you don’t mess up your monitor mixes…but there is a time and place for everything.
You can plan for feedback issues by training the musicians in proper microphone usage, as a means of proactively preventing feedback. You can also plan for it by knowing what you’ll do when it happens, as I explained earlier.
4) Whoops, you forgot to… I’ve been guilty of this one. It’s usually a small mistake on the board but it has a severe impact.
For example, you have all of the band’s channels on and faders up but you forgot to bring them up in the subgroups, which is why you don’t hear them in the mains when they start singing. Most of the “I forgot” problems are related to being heard.
In rectifying this type of situation, also bring that channel’s fader down, make the correction, and then fade their volume back up. You don’t want a sudden jolt of sound. Yes, the congregation will likely know a mistake was made, but fading in the correction is less distracting then the sudden jolt of a full-on sound.
5) Grabbing the wrong microphone. Surprises happen when people on stage do something unpredictable. A perfect example is when a person grabs the wrong microphone. Don’t waste your time worrying about that fact that it’s the wrong microphone, just turn on that channel and make whatever EQ/effects adjustments are necessary.
For example, if a person walks up to read scripture and grabs a singer’s mic (the mic you set up with heavy reverb) instead of the speaking mic, then turn on the mic and turn off the effects. You can make EQ changes if needed but first get them that clear/non-distracting sound.
6) Snap, crack, POW! I’m ending the list here because you should remember you can’t control everything. I’ve had a guitarist unplug his rig at the end of the worship set when a song was still in the last a ccapella chorus…POW! Why he opted to unplug at that time is beyond me—he had never unplugged early before. And while I can watch the stage for some things, there are some things I (you) can’t catch because it’s completely unexpected.
The Take Away
You can’t plan for everything. You can’t control everything. That’s OK. But, there are surprises that aren’t really surprises at all because you know they are bound to happen. Plan for those. Prevent them proactively.
When they do happen, confidently and calmly deal with them according to your plan. And if you don’t have a plan…relax, think, and proceed. Anxiety doesn’t help anyone. Welcome to the world of live audio.
As a follow-up to the fish story, the bass finally won. Eventually, the fish made a fast run for deep water and snapped my line.
Another day,
another time,
another fish,
upon my line.
Ready to learn and laugh? Chris Huff writes about the world of church audio at Behind The Mixer. He covers everything from audio fundamentals to dealing with musicians, and can even tell you the signs the sound guy is having a mental breakdown. To view the original article and to make comments, go here.