I stopped fighting my sound guy when I learned THIS

Summary

In this insightful podcast episode by MxU, the conversation revolves around the often overlooked relationship between worship pastors and front-of-house engineers in church settings. Emphasizing the importance of having clear, defined expectations for sound, the hosts—both experienced in their respective fields—discuss practical ways to build a productive dialogue. Through real-life examples, they suggest creating a collaborative environment where sound targets are mutually agreed upon, and continuous feedback is openly shared. This collaboration aligns the technical and artistic elements, ensuring a service that resonates well both on stage and in the congregation.

Highlights

• Clear expectations between sound teams and worship leaders enhance audio experiences. 🎧
• Engage in regular conversations to align on sound objectives and mix quality. 🎙️
• Workshops and team nights foster better understanding and skill improvement. 📊
• Feedback should be a two-way street, encouraging open communication. 🔄
• Trust your sound engineer's expertise, and treat them as part of the band. 🎶

Key Takeaways

• Building a bridge between worship pastors and sound engineers fosters an impactful church service. 🎵
• Clear communication and shared goals are essential for aligning expectations on sound quality. 🗣️
• Establishing specific sound targets prevents misunderstandings and enhances collaboration. 🎯
• Training and continuous feedback are vital to improving the volunteer-run sound setup. 📈
• Embrace the sound engineer as a critical member of the team to elevate the overall worship experience. 🤝

Overview

In a spirited discussion, the MxU team dives into the dynamics between worship pastors and front-of-house engineers, pointing out the common gaps that often go unnoticed in a church setting. By focusing on the essence of open communication and predefined expectations, they bring to light the significance of mutual understanding in creating an immersive worship experience.

The conversation offers practical solutions, such as conducting team nights and using resources for training and sound check processes. These strategies not only enhance the volunteers' capabilities but also ensure consistency across different services, ultimately synchronizing the efforts of the worship and technical teams.

Through the lens of both a sound engineer and a worship pastor, the podcast emphasizes the value of treating sound engineers as integral members of the team. This approach fosters a respectful and collaborative environment where artistic and technical aspects converge, enriching the worship atmosphere and elevating the congregational experience.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Defining Clear Expectations In the chapter titled 'Defining Clear Expectations,' the focus is on the importance of establishing clear targets to foster productive conversations and feedback sessions. The discussion highlights the necessity for leaders, such as pastors in a worship setting, to set specific expectations with their teams. For example, an engineer or team member needs to understand precise requirements, like how loud the drums or vocals should be, to align their work with desired outcomes. Without these expectations, there cannot be meaningful feedback or conversations, as team members lack the direction needed to meet the intended goals.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Understanding Sound Goals In this chapter, the podcast hosts introduce a discussion about the relationship between a front of house engineer and a worship pastor in a church setting. They stress the importance of having both parties aligned and on the same page to improve the overall sound and worship experience. Jeff S is introduced as the guest speaker who will provide insights into this topic, promising an engaging conversation about the dynamics and potential challenges within church audio and worship teams.
• 06:00 - 12:00: Training and Volunteers The chapter titled 'Training and Volunteers' delves into the complexities involved in creating an impactful experience in church settings, focusing on the role of sound. It identifies several disconnects that may occur between the technical crew in the booth and the performers on stage. These issues range from communication gaps, unclear visions, technical challenges, and sometimes a lack of skill. The chapter highlights how various factors can lead to problems in sound quality and suggests that blame can be assigned to multiple areas when these issues arise.
• 12:00 - 18:00: Constructive Feedback and Communication The chapter focuses on improving communication within a church setting, specifically between the front house engineer and the worship pastor. It suggests the need for clarification of roles and ideas to enhance communication. The speaker shares their background as a worship pastor, which informs their perspective. The chapter emphasizes finding solutions to improve interactions among the team, whether on stage or in the booth.
• 18:00 - 24:00: Building a Unified Team The chapter discusses the roles of a worship pastor and a front-of-house engineer within a church setting. It explores the common disconnect that can occur between the stage and the front-of-house during worship services. The focus is on providing practical tips to bridge this gap, improve communication, and ultimately achieve a better sound mix, which enhances the overall worship experience.
• 24:00 - 28:30: Preparation and Improvements In the chapter titled 'Preparation and Improvements', the discussion centers around optimizing platform outputs. The speakers emphasize the importance of establishing clear, practical steps and defined goals for the desired sound of a service. They highlight a common oversight where audio engineers may have an internal vision of the expected sound, stressing the need for explicit goal-setting to ensure clarity and precision in audio production.
• 28:30 - 31:00: Resources and Wrapping Up The chapter discusses challenges in achieving a desired sound for a church. Often, there is a gap between the team's training and their ability to produce the intended sound. Sometimes, the team does not even have a clear idea of the target sound. Furthermore, the church's leadership, such as the senior leader or various pastors, should collaboratively establish the church's sound. The responsibility for deciding what the church's sound should be is suggested to rest with the most senior leader.

I stopped fighting my sound guy when I learned THIS Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 it's not just giving like hear this worship Pastor it's not just going in giving feedback the word Jeff just said 15 times is conversation you can't have that conversation if you haven't established a Target in the first place me as the engineer I'd be like yeah but you never told me that you wanted it to sound this way or you never said that the drums should not be this loud or that the vocals shouldn't be this loud or whatever it's like without that expectation I don't know what I'm aiming for for there to be a healthy feedback a healthy conversation there needs to be a clear expect to begin
• 00:30 - 01:00 with hey welcome to the mxu podcast today it's going to be an exciting time because we're actually going to talk about maybe a soft spot happening in your church right now the relationships between your front of house engineer and a worship Pastor why it's important for YouTube to be on the same page and we thought no better person to talk through that than the man the myth of Legend Jeff s oh thanks Dylan you're welcome it's going to be a fun conversation you know there are a lot of front of house operators front housee engineers and
• 01:00 - 01:30 churches who are really trying to make a a mix that's pleasing create an impactful experience for people um and there's sometimes a disconnect between what's happening in the booth and what's happening on stage sometimes that's because of lack of communications sometimes it's because of a lack of Clear Vision sometimes it's um actual technical problems sometimes it's a lack of skill so there's a lot of things that we can sort of blame when there's a problem problem with how things sound
• 01:30 - 02:00 and I think what we need to do is maybe just clarify what some of those things are and then provide some solutions for how we can get better in the way that the front housee engineer and the worship Pastor who whoever's leading the overall team can do to communicate better and to make things better for everybody whether they're on stage or in the booth yeah no that's good my background is worship a lot of people know that but I used to be a worship pastor and I'm back in a very uh similar role helping a church
• 02:00 - 02:30 locally and um and you are obviously the front of house engineer so I think it'd be cool through this podcast that we act in those positions sure I'll be the worship Pastor you be the front of house engineer and we have questions that I think if I'm on stage leading worship and you're at front of house doing audio and I as the worship Pastor feel like there's a disconnect between stage and front of house like you just mentioned I think giving our listeners very practical ways to build that relationship yep have a better mix or
• 02:30 - 03:00 have a better output from the platform um I think I think we will dial into that in the next few minutes I think it'll really help a listener um more practical steps so like even right right of the gate how do we set clear um goals that are defined for how the service should even sound yeah this is this is a a step in the process that a lot of people Miss because I think sometimes as an audio engineer we have a picture in our head of the way things should sound
• 03:00 - 03:30 but we don't know how to get there so there might be a gap in our just training and ability to accomplish a sound that we have in our head sometimes we don't even have a Target sound in our head but more importantly than that the team itself whether it's senior leadership whether it's an executive Pastor whether it's a worship Pastor nobody has sat down as a team to say this is what we think the sound of our church should be this is what we think the sound of our church could be who do you think that should come from well I think the most senior leader I mean I
• 03:30 - 04:00 think the senior pastor has to care about worship and the worship Pastor has to care about teaching and they all need to care about how it's executed through production I think it's a it's a multi-level conversation but I think for our purposes if it's just between the worship leader and the front of house person whether it's a staff paid volunteer whatever there has to be Clarity you know you have to be able to sit across from each other and go this is what I think our sound should be
• 04:00 - 04:30 and maybe use specific examples whether it's a song whether it's a style whether it's a volume SPL level you know it's like we want to be you know as energetic and as powerful as Xyz song is it safe to say from a question standpoint of learning as a worship Pastor yeah maybe I don't know what it should sound like but I'm not I don't think the right thing to do which is probably what a lot of us do is go listen to the next biggest church and say we need to sound like that exactly in my mind I wouldn't I don't think that's the mature thing to
• 04:30 - 05:00 do I would think defining what your sound is with your senior leadership like you mentioned could be as simple as hey we're a vocal heavy Church we're I mean I'm just asking questions we're a drum heavy church we we like a good band mix with a tucked vocal or we like our vocals very heavy help me as a front of house engineer as a worship Pastor even Define what her sound should be like cuz our pastor who sits in the front row you know house left well our drums are stage
• 05:00 - 05:30 right and so his feedback is always well it's just too loud just too loud cuz the drums are right in his face all the time yeah so that could be his only acknowledgement of what it sounds like and it's like practically speaking if that's you just switch those around um but it works I it does um but so help me Define because as the worship Pastor I might have a senior leader or a pastor that I go to and they're like I don't know I don't know what it should sound like I just know it shouldn't sound like this yeah so I think there's a couple things one getting everybody
• 05:30 - 06:00 out in the house actually listening to the PA so that they can hear how it could sound in other words play a reference track that you all agree hey this is a really good example of the kind of music we would like to do here so it could be a recording of one of your favorite worship songs it could be uh playback from the tracks that your band is able to record in Virtual soundcheck you know just record your band in a rehearsal and play back the tracks through the PA and a make some agreements hey this is what we think the
• 06:00 - 06:30 low end should feel like this is what we think the the presence of the vocal should be in terms of just uh mix priority you know I want the vocals this far out front in the mix or this is how I want the snare the snare drum to sound in the room in terms of mixed priority or the guitars or the keys or the tracks whatever the case may be it's like let's let's work together to create a well balanced mix and then agree okay this is at least a Target this is sort of a bullseye of where we would like
• 06:30 - 07:00 everybody to head and you know sometimes there's a difference week to week as well because you might have the the staff paid engineer who's mixing one week and then you have a volunteer the next week and everybody complains because it's inconsistent right so I think even Among The Operators for for you all to agree hey this is a target that we're all going to try to move toward so that when you do a training or you do you you give feedback there's at least something to point to that says hey remember when we had this conversation and we said that we wanted
• 07:00 - 07:30 the vocals to have this kind of priority in the mix let's listen back and now do you hear that that's drifted a little bit okay so how can we get back to what we all agreed on was the target okay recently you and I did a podcast together uh how to have an effective team night and we actually provided a free resource a guide that you can actually go back and you can download it in in this podcast or that podcast yeah um it's a great little resource you should look into it if you're listening to this um so that that's a a that's a
• 07:30 - 08:00 team night layout but practically speaking because we've already set and defined what we should sound like now how do we get that sound it's one thing from going okay we hear and see what it should be and now we have to execute it and get it to what it needs to be yeah what are some suggestions on how to maybe train uh lot of churches most churches use volunteers um even in the front of house position and so it's like how do we um how do we get that volunteer from A to B for a better mix
• 08:00 - 08:30 overall sound y but also keep in mind their volunteers you know loving them through the process developing them through the process to get them from A to B what what would you suggest for for that yeah so this is a massive thing we you know we talked about a team night so at my church we have a team night just for the audio team about once a quarter where we'll get all of the folks who mix front of house and we'll just kind of gather around the console and have some
• 08:30 - 09:00 prepared things to talk about but then we'll also play back tracks of our band and just take turns mixing for each other so um our one of our production staff has done a great job of using the mxu platform to assemble a few videos for everybody to watch in advance so it's like hey let's let's watch this video series or this course around snare drum and so everybody watches that before we show up and then we talk for a few minutes minutes when we start about
• 09:00 - 09:30 those videos and how we can apply that to our context and then we'll basically take last Sunday's multitrack recording and just play it back through the console and okay Spencer it's your turn you take a stab at mixing this song and he'll mix the song for everybody and we'll give feedback again it's all based around what we've all agreed that we want our sound to be and then we can say to him hey it felt like the vocals were
• 09:30 - 10:00 a little buried and this this actually happened a few a few trainings ago where somebody said man the vocals didn't sound quite loud enough and he said yeah I just I I don't love vocals that far out front and our leader was able to say yeah but we talked about this because we want our vocals to be out front so that people can engage with the lyric and understand the words and focus on the message of the song can we talk about that real fast because what I hear is
• 10:00 - 10:30 I'm an artist as an engineer M and I have my own flavor MH and so what's the healthy balance and everybody does guitar players get up there he may run a different lick than what we heard on the record but it still sounds good and we allow that to happen so what what's the how do you be a front of house engineer as an artist obviously that's a big thing so maybe it's defining what's your are non-negotiables and what are things you can have fluff with
• 10:30 - 11:00 yeah so there's several things at play I think when we talk about coming to consensus about our sound I don't want that to be perceived as a cage right we're not we're not putting you in a box we're providing guard rails yeah and if you're a worship pastor and you're listening to this and you're like man I first of all I don't do any of this we've never defined what our sound should be like we've never offer training because the last point or question of this podcast is how to give and receive feedback
• 11:00 - 11:30 on as a worship Pastor like it would make me uncomfortable to go up to an audio engineer and say hey man I feel like or we need to do this if I've not put in place one and two setting the clear expectation what it should sound like and then also providing you training and resources to be better to reach the goal that we've decided as a church it should sound like right so if you're a worship Pastor thinking man it makes me nervous to walk up to an audio engineer because
• 11:30 - 12:00 it's probably because you haven't defined what it should sound like and you haven't provided resources or training right for reaching what it should sound like so going to having open and regular feedback on how things should sound yep again you can't have that conversation if you haven't established a Target in the first place so I think it it all goes back to step one you have to have a clearly defined expectation of what you want the sound to be so that then if you miss it
• 12:00 - 12:30 if you if you don't hit the target then you can properly evaluate it yeah but unless you have it in if you unless you have a goal in mind to begin with then you're throwing stuff at a moving Target and nobody is nobody is Satisfied by that because me as the engineer I'd be like yeah but you never told me that you wanted it to sound this way or you never said that the drums should not be this loud or that the vocals shouldn't be this loud or whatever it's like without that expectation I don't know
• 12:30 - 13:00 what I'm aiming for so for there to be a healthy feedback a healthy conversation there needs to be a clear expectation to begin with yeah and I I think too I don't want to let the worship Pastor off the hook here um coming from a worship Pastor background I'm thinking and what ways and and and I don't I use the word like fault you Loosely here we shouldn't have a whose fault is a culture well because that this is the problem assuming that we have relational capital and assuming we have a good Bedrock for
• 13:00 - 13:30 conversation I think healthy feedback has to go both ways you nailed it because you said it earlier it's not just giving like hear this worship Pastor it's not just going and giving feedback the word Jeff just said 15 times is conversation yeah you've got to have a culture where you have a relationship with your audio Engineers to where when you approach them and give them direction that they feel comfortable that they can also give you feedback and
• 13:30 - 14:00 it's received from both ways because as a worship Pastor I may go to the audio engineer and say man like I just feel like I was in the house and I feel like the guitars are just not where they need to be and they're sloppy and I would want my audio engineer to lean in and say um hey man like I get it I also feel the same way but bro I can't the guitar are just not here this weekend yeah
• 14:00 - 14:30 they're not prepared They're Out Of Tune they're not dialed in they look distracted like oh well I didn't I didn't even notice that I just thought naturally sound man's fault right create that culture where it is a conversation of feedback not just a one way we we're all used to this leadership style of like hey I see this is what's wrong now do and what I think you and I are saying is that that day if that's happening at your church probably needs to come to an end and need to start seeing a healthier
• 14:30 - 15:00 culture where feedback is a conversation yeah not a I see I hear I now you go do well because if I miss a queue or if there is feedback or if a transition is clunky because of something I did nobody has to tell me that I missed a queue I'm beating myself up more than you will ever will because most most of us who serve in production are perfectionist and we want it to be right
• 15:00 - 15:30 and we you know I I can I heard the feedback I like Pastor walked up and his mic was ringing you don't have to tell me I was trying to fix it and the other thing about two-way communication and two-way feedback is especially if you have an audio engineer who is experienced who is musical who does a great job being able to receive feedback from the only person in the room who hears the whole mix is crucially important because you as the worship pastor with your in ear you might not have the most pleasing mix
• 15:30 - 16:00 because you need click so loud or you need your guitar panned all the way to the right or you need your vocal with so much verb that nobody would ever want to listen to it i' I've mixed for artists who have those very problems it's like the audio engineer is the only person who has perspective because all the band is listening to their own mix so to be able to go to that trusted person to say hey how did it translate today and for me as the engineer to go man it was
• 16:00 - 16:30 great like I love the way you led through this moment you know to give encouragement but then to also if there is if there is a problem to go hey you guys need to check your tuning on your guitars between every song Because somebody's just banging their guitar Out Of Tune and by the time we hit the second song every service today second song electric guitar was just out of tune so could you guys pay more attention to your tuning because there's nothing I can do as the engineer about an out ofune guitar so can you help me help you yeah so that we can cooperate
• 16:30 - 17:00 collaborate that's so good I I feel you know I've seen Time and Time and Time Again worship leaders worship pastors lead vocals whatever you want to call them on the platform coddle their musicians get around have green room time we're all laughing and having a good time where they a guitar player misses a note and it's like that's okay we'll just hit it better next time yeah but when an audio engineer misses a que it is like World War III in your church I feel like there needs to be a day where we start treating our audio Engineers as if
• 17:00 - 17:30 they're part of the band yeah like these guys are in the band they're on our team this is this is he defines what we output and that's a very highly trusted position yeah and I feel like we need to start treating him that way uh coming from a worship Pastor standpoint to an audio engineer we need to start treating our audio Engineers with that respect that we give everyone else on our stage um and entrusting them to make decisions that aligns with the vision and mission of where we're headed as a sound and and just respecting them in those regards
• 17:30 - 18:00 and allowing him or her to to to do that yeah I think you know one more thing before we sign off I think it's it's it's important for people who are concerned about process I think the way we do our sort of soundcheck and rehearsal process can really inform a lot of this conversation I think we need to be strategic about the way that we prepare and the way that we rehearse and the way that we kind of get ready for the people
• 18:00 - 18:30 who are coming into the room so if if you're on the mxu platform we have a we have a ton of resources on just the rehearsal and soundcheck process I would encourage you to go look at those courses um but there has to be um you know you were telling me a story about a church that you're working with where you know their rehearsal is barely running through a song before the service starts because everybody's late getting there and they just sort of put their instruments on and make sure it works and call it call it good sound
• 18:30 - 19:00 man's fault it's and then it's the soundman's fault for not making the transition it's like yeah how unfair is that and how unfair is it to our attendees because they're not getting our best for the first service if we're treating our first service like a rehearsal for the 11:00 how dare we right because we're supposed to bring our best we're supposed to lead people to take a step in their faith and the only way to do that is to be a unified team that is moving toward a goal together the best way to do that is to be prepared yeah well hey as we wrap
• 19:00 - 19:30 this podcast up two things I want to remind you about real fast as one is the Team notot guide that's listed in the description below make sure you download that and use that at your church and the second thing is a course called Sunday Times Savers also listed in the description below take that it really is um a course on exactly what we just talked about in this podcast use that it will make your team better and we'll see you on the next one [Music] n