In early November one of my earlier articles (one that I had forgotten about) was republished here on ProSoundWeb.
It seemed to generate some buzz so I started wondering what else was laying back there in the cobwebs that was still relevant today.
I found this post that originated over three and a half years ago. It’s pretty good and with a few tweaks, suitable for remixing.
Enjoy…
It’s a phrase we hear all the time, right? Practice makes perfect. Actually, it doesn’t.
Perfect practice makes perfect. Regular old practice just in grains the same mistakes into your mind. But I digress. It’s commonly understood that if you want to get better at something, you need to practice.
But now it’s time for one of Mike’s #1 pet peeves —people serving in the technical arts at church who are not committed to getting better at what they do. This boggles my mind.
We expect that the worship team will practice their music individually, and completely prior to the service (and if they don’t shame on them—but that’s another article). This practice not only familiarizes them with the music, but also hones their skills as a musician.
The same holds true for drama people. We would expect the preaching pastor to continue to improve not only their hermeneutics, but also their presentation skills, so as to engage their audience more completely.
As for the tech team, we expect…{insert crickets sound effects here}. Well, what do we expect? Too often, we expect too little, even of ourselves. If you’re a tech person reading this, what have you done in the last month to improve your ability to perform your task?
Some might argue that it’s difficult to “practice” the technical arts. To some extent I agree, you can’t practice mixing if there’s no one on stage. But how about coming out for rehearsal time and work up a mix, then play with some outboard gear? Or consider investing in virtual soundcheck so you have more opportunities to improve your chops.
Lighting people can spend hours playing with different combinations of lights to see what effects they can come up with (I know, I’ve seen them do it at our church…).
How about continuing education? I’ll talk on sound (because it’s my passion) but what I’m about to say carries over to every discipline.
I’ve been doing sound and live production for over 20 years, yet almost every week (sometimes every day), I learn something new, or pick up on a new technique.
