Hi, I'm Jeff. This is my personal blog – random thoughts on Media, the church, the arts, popular culture, being a husband and father and about any other thought that comes to mind.
At the Verge 10 conference we were introduced to each main session by a very creative video featuring Alan Hirsch introducing the topic. Besides incredible content in the videos, I was impressed by how easy we can be trained to read from right to left, bottom to top, randomly, etc while watching the videos. And even more, how easy it is to catch pieces of words, fast moving word and silly phrases while we are exposed to the content in multiple media (video, text, sound, lighting) at the same time. How often do we limit ourselves based on what is normal for us when we could be more creative, produce pieces that would inspire, hold the audience attention and get the message across in a memorable way? How can you make your next video better? [Sorry, the original video has been removed - I will update this when it becomes available again, but here is somebody's cell phone version.]
Sometimes we get so caught up in the latest gadget or what tool we need to accomplish whatever it is we are trying to do that we miss seeing other ways of accomplishing the task. You have a screw to remove and no screw-driver? What about those vise-grips in you hand?
Other times we have a problem and we go diving in looking for the solution in deep inside the equipment when we should have checked the power cord first. Twice this weekend I was guilty of looking too hard for the solution. Full Story
When discussing Media Ministry, we often get hung up on how to use technology and media better in our worship services, which is a very limited part of our life as a Christian. Each media / tech ministry has slightly different missions & goals, but in general we seek to help others minister through the use of technology and media, to spread the gospel beyond our abilities to do so in person and to lift up Christ in the arts and creativity. So let’s step outside the box of the worship center and look at, how a church can use technology outside the worship services and how our media ministries can support those endeavors. Full Story
As part of our ongoing upgrade, we have completed another set of changes in some of the websites related to this blog (mediaartsdad.com), the High Pointe media ministry and where you can expect what information to show up. Full Story
We have worked hours on producing graphics for a particular moment in a service: an outline, a Scripture, the perfect illustration for a main sermon point. The time comes to put up the graphic, and the computer just won’t cooperate, the wrong button is hit, a popup freezes the screen… there is a fumble and a recovery, and the image is up in all its glory— but the speaker has moved on, and the image is no longer relevant. It distracts. Full Story
This is a slick video using motion graphics to tell a “story”. How well does it hold your attention? How long before you start getting the feel / mood of the “story” How far into the video before you start to “understand”?
I get questions about our broadcast and recording mixes, and thought I would try to answer some here. Some of these apply to our live mix as well.
“I know we are just hearing the mic’d voices, but even in that a particular voice will stand out strongly above the others, which sometimes is not good.”
There are really a couple issues here.
1) The first problem is when the vocals just aren’t mixed right. This is very evident early during rehearsal where we are slowly dialing everything in a piece at a time, adjusting and re-adjusting. But by the end of rehearsal, or the end of the first song, this should not be a problem – unless
the sound tech can’t hear the problem (due to room acoustics, monitor system, other noise or issues distracting them such as training or a larger “problem”)
Someone who was not at rehearsal is singing during the service – this happens often and often takes a while to figure out what is going on and get them dialed in.
Sometimes the vocals standing out aren’t on a mic. We have had orchestra members singing, very strong choir members caught up in worship, audience members close to audience mics singing out, etc.
2) If the vocals are well mixed, often the person slipping out of key will stand out like a sore thumb. If the vocals have been blended well and they are all singing together, if one person is challenged by the song, they will stick out when they can’t quite get to that note, sounding louder than the rest of the group, even though they have been (and still are) blended in.
3) Sometimes people are just a challenge to keep mixed. We are dealing with 56+ channels of audio, trying to keep up with an ever changing landscape of sound. Theoretically, once everything is mixed, they should stay mixed, but in reality that doesn’t happen at all. Each song, each section of the songs require minor changes in the mix, not to mention changing styles, order of service etc. Throw on top of this challenging people, and they are going to stand out. This includes several who blend well, until we sing a song that totally gets them into worship, and they just start singing out. This includes a couple people who sing very softly if they don’t know the song, very strongly if they do… and that can even change within the song. This includes the person on the praise team who has a lot on his mind, and finds it hard to concentrate and is starring off into space, then snaps back and really sings out. Then add in musicians who can experience similar issues, and the mix can get out of hand. We do our best to ride the mix, but only have so many fingers….
“What are somethings we can do about the mix? ”
Honestly the practice practice practice is the best cure. And that goes for the source (musicians and vocalist) as much as it goes for the actual mixing. The best mixes we get are often things like musicals where the rehearse (and record it) go listen, come back and do it again, re-evaluate, go and listen again and make even more adjustments. This is one huge difference between an album and a live stream. An album they have gone in tweaked, tweaked, and tweaked over and over again till they are happy with it. With a live stream you have one shot. Broadcast is definitely trickier than live because of the encoding, compression, different listening environments, etc. A lot less forgiving than live.
Another problem we face is the mix environment – the better listening / mix environment you can work the mix in, the better it is going to sound in the various sound systems it will be played back on. Currently our audio room is REALLY BAD at this. What sounds good in there can sound terrible in the computer speakers in the other room. Our audio guys typically check the sound in their monitors, in the headphones, in the halls, and at the computer – all four sound a lot different (even though they are all the same mix) and the goal is to make them all sound good – very difficult. Thing about all the different ways people will be listening – everything from mp3 headphones to home stereos, to little computer speakers – all have very different responses and different listening environments, all have to be addressed separately. [we have tried and tried to fix our mix environment, but unfortunately the biggest limiting factor is space, then background noise.]
Then there is the room acoustics in the sanctuary. All the sound bouncing around the room and being picked up by the mics tends to either make it sound airy / hollow or muddy. This is why we try to put the mics as close to the source (instrument or mouth) as possible to minimize the background noise, but our room is really bad when it comes to acoustical environment for the PA and recording. Fixing the acoustics of the room involves tuning the room so it has an even reverberation field across all frequencies (low, mid and high frequency reverberation is consistent), reduce reflections back to stage (cleans up the sound in the mics and would help the musicians and vocalist feel like they could hear themselves better), even out the hot spots / dead spots and provide an environment that is controllable and varies less between full and empty, hot and cold, humid and dry… this is a process that is going to take some time and money.
The garbage in = garbage out principle applies also. Sometimes the problem is what is coming into the system. Recently we were dealing with really bad drum sounds, trying to adjust console eq and mix, when one of the audio techs suggested the drummer try a different kit setup on the electronic drums and that fixed the problem. Maybe some of the instrumentalist need to tune again or a vocalist is just having a bad day. Then occasionally there are those who really need to find a different ministry to serve with, one that matches their God given gifts and talents because singing, playing in the band or mixing sound is not for them.
How often have you heard a live broadcast mix that sounds really good? I would say that we hear bad ones and mediocre ones much more often. Most of what we see on TV or hear on the radio (or online) have been recorded, produced, edited, perfected then broadcast (think Austin City Limits)… what other live music mixes are there out there: Think about half-time concerts at the SuperBowl (and that mix is usually pretty bad). New Years eve? Really can’t think of many other than churches.
“can we put microphones over the congregation to try to capture the congregational singing on the broadcast and recording?”
We have a pair of mics over the congregation. We mix these into the broadcast mix to provide a little more of a live feel for those listening. But sometimes we have to turn them off because they are just making the mix muddy or we have a lot of extra noise close to the mics. There is also the fundamental problem of how slow sound travels, and by the time the sound gets from the speakers / stage to where the audience mics are, it is picked up as a distinct delay. Remember microphones are just the EARS of the sound system, what ever your ears hear when they are at the microphone location, that is pretty much what the mic picks up.
Anywhere in the sanctuary is going to have sound from the PA system, room noise, etc that will become part of the mix when audience mics are used. So typically the audience mics are used to avoid dead air (say while we are waiting for someone to walk up to the pulpit and all the other mics are off), pick up audience reaction (clapping, laughter, a-cappella singing, etc). Once again, better room acoustics would help make audience mics more usable.
But I also like to remind people that there are some laws of physics we are working within, and there is only so much we can do to bend those rules (okay, not bend the rules, just work within the finer points of the rules). There are also principles of psycho-acoustics, audiology, and emotion all at play making a very convoluted, complicated web that is not always easy to decode and implement.
There is a chasm forming between “old timers” and the young folk in this Christianity business, and it happens – of all places- during worship. It’s not just generational lines, musical preference lines, or denominational lines.
Recently written in: We have decided we need to attend church closer to home, instead of driving 45 minutes each way. Today, we go to a nearby one that seems very nice, is multi-ethnic, and is 3 minutes away from home. Perfect.Everything was fine before these two ladies got up to sing. Oh MY….the sound level was up SO HIGH that it nearly blew us out of the building. WHY do they do this? Of course the sound guy is like, 20. I’d like to have some hearing left in my old age, and for my children to still be able to hear when they grow up. I carry earplugs because of my last church in which they thought it was necessary to shake the walls or we weren’t “having church”. Thank God. I sure used them today. To make it all the more frustrating, the Pastor was GREAT! Wonderful, dead-on, preaching/teaching that really encouraged focusing on the Lord and not ourselves.
Bob Kauflin at Worship Matters has a recent post on the subject: How Loud the Worship Team where he outlines 5 great points: 1. Cranking up the volume is just a cheap trick to add energy to a room. 2. When your intonation is not very good, turning it up only makes it hurt worse. 3. The speakers in most church PA systems cannot take that much energy. 4. Consider that you might be marginalizing older people. 5. Musicians—every one of them, including the singers—are accompanists to the congregation’s praise.
So what should a worshiper do when he or she believes that the sound is in fact too loud at a church? Feel free to talk to the Sound Guy or the Worship Leader. Most of them appreciate feedback- be sure to tell them when something sounds nice, too. Ask if he has a Sound Level Meter. This little black piece of equipment should be sitting on the sound board, pointing at the stage area. Ask him if you can help him collect data at different points in the room, to see if there really is in fact an actual physical sound problem. After you collect this data, if the sound levels are above 90-95dB (‘C’ weighted, slow response), then share these articles with the Worship Leader and Sound Guy (remember, the Sound Guy tends to be under the Worship Leader who has true control over how loud is the sound).
Keep in mind that sometimes the sound level is not the problem, but it could be a musical problem (see #2 above) or a style issue (some styles of music just sound louder than others). The Sound Guy can’t control if a musician is going to squawk, so please accept those kinds of gaffes for what they are. Forgive and forget. Realize that chances are, the Sound Guy was not anticipating something hurting your ears, his ears hurt too, and he’s probably back there scrambling to fix what he can.
While preparing for this weekend’s Media Training conference, I took a break to check some blogs. My mix of blog-reading includes some for spiritual challenge, some for spiritual refreshing, and some that are just plain fun. One of the spiritually challenging and refreshing blogs is The Resurgence Blog. And this week, Mark Driscoll blogged about Worship– and the message is timely to our message to train to work in Media and serve the church in worship to our Lord.
Mark defines worship as “continuously living our lives individually and corporately as living sacrifices to the glory of a person or thing.” He concludes his blog post by appealing to those of you who say, “I don’t have time to work at church on media- I have to worship, it’s the only church service I get to just sit and worship.”
Jesus’ life destroys any notion that worship is a sacred thing we do at a special time and special place. All of life is to be lived as ceaseless worship; cutting our grass and cleaning our dishes are as sacred and God-glorifying as raising our hands in church. Jesus Himself modeled this: He spent roughly 90 percent of His earthly life doing chores as a boy and working a carpentry job as a man.
We recently cleared and reset the stage at High Pointe and were surprised how long it took us to get everything hooked up and running. We have done a lot to simplify cabling and keep the look cleaner, but there is an incredible amount of connections that need to be made after everything is set in place. Is there a quicker and easier way?
While we don’t clear the stage often, every once in a while we do for an event and use it as an excuse to clean up and re-lay-out our setup. I would like to make a habit of removing everything that isn’t used every service and keep the platform clear of any unnecessary clutter. This would include clearing the stage almost completely once a month for our 1st Sunday pm service. But to do this we need to figure out a way to not spend 4 hours resetting the stage for the following Sunday morning service.
To date we have been simplifying our setup where possible, but there is still so much! We have gone to using sub-snakes for each group of vocalist and instruments to avoid running long cables. We now how baskets full of 25, 35 and 50 foot cables, but run out of the short 6 and 10 foot cables. We have labeled the snakes with the instrument or vocal they are used with to speed up connections and troubleshooting. We use clamps and brackets to minimize the number of stands used on the stage. But there is still a lot to hook up. We have 30 channels of instrument inputs, 18 channels of vocal mics, 6 channels of wireless, all in use almost every Sunday Morning. Add to that the 7 monitor wedge mixes and 7 IEM mixes going back out onto stage (all from a 40 input / 8 output mixer, but that is a different story) the power requirements, music stands and lights (with their dimmers) and there are many many cables to keep straight and connected.
What else can be done to speed up setup / teardown and keep the platform looking neat and organized? We have to keep the flexiblity for easy changes. One thought is to build some power distribution cables with outlets spaced every 3-4 ft down the cable to clean up the extension cords.
What other ideas do you have? Have you seen something work well elsewhere? For those who are not from High Pointe, what do y’all do to keep your setups quick? Those of you who saw the new stage setup this weekend, any thoughts or comments?
