Things the sound team wish the worship team knew:

A while back Chris asked me to give some suggestions for Worship Teams and Sound Teams. As a sound person and guitar player I have been on both sides of the board. My wife, who also takes part in both, and I talked about some of the things that each team would benefit from knowing about the other.

There are lots of stories out there of the battles between the A/V team and the worship team. At OBC the tech ministry falls under the whole worship ministry which has really helped develop a team atmosphere. This is by no means a top list, but just a few of items that we have learned over the past number of years and I hope that those of you reading can take some of these ideas for your own church.

Chris posted this previously on his blog and I wanted to share it here.

I have set it up under two posts and you can see that the items are specific to each team but the underlying big team is still there. Second post to follow.

Things the sound team wish the worship team knew

1. We are a team, we process every sound that comes off the stage and send it to the speakers. We are all working together to produce the best audio mix that we can. Invite us to join you during your pre service/ practice prayer times etc. If you need something just ask, we will do what we can to help, but remember we don't like last minute surprises. Think of it like being handed a new song that you have not practiced two minutes before the service.


2. Know what you "Need" not "Want' in your monitor. If you have to many instruments or vocals you will have a hard time hearing yourself. Less is more. As a guide, pick 3 things that you must have and a couple more that would be nice but not necessary.
Until we get levels set don't keep stopping and asking for adjustments, once you have gone through a song and we have set our levels we can then make any adjustments you need.

3. Trust your sound person to do the mixing, Things sound different for you on stage especially if you are using in-ear monitors. We are in the congregation ( or we should be, but that is a whole other topic for sound booth position) and will be mixing for what sounds best out there.

4. Please be aware of your monitor or amp level. You may like to "feel" the music and want your monitor loud but that noise bleeds out into the room and diminishes the quality of the mix for the congregation.

5 Please be on time. We will do our best to have everything ready for you to start the sound check so we ask you show up on time especially if you need time to set up your own gear.

6 Please use proper mic technique and hold your mic close, where we tell you to and not keep dropping it lower. You might be nervous but you need to trust your Sound person. Also sing out during rehearsal and sound check so that we have something to work with for the service.

These are just a few helpful ideas that have worked for us, feel free to add any that have helped you.