Tech Night – Does Your Church Have One?
by Gordon Moore
As the guy in charge of Technical Ministries in our church, I have many “helpers”, some of whom I have trained and some “mystery helpers”. You know them, the magical fingers that access our sound and projections systems and “make them better” in our absence. Our facility is multi-use where the sanctuary can host traditional and contemporary services on Sunday plus events nearly every night. As such, the many hands, both authorized and unauthorized, contribute to “system drift”. Slowly, the system gets put completely out of whack. Gain structure slides, amps get “adjusted”, EQ’s get manhandled etc.
So, we have instituted a bi- annual evening known as Tech Night. On Tech Night, we have every entity involved in the church come in at scheduled times for a complete system review and setup.
We start early in the afternoon. At 3 PM, the entire system gain structure is dialed in to unity gain. All mics are removed, cables checked, resoldered as needed and stacked, mixer cabling double checked and re-connected. Wireless mics are all reviewed for proper gain settings at the transmitter and receivers. Batteries are checked. We use rechargeable iPower 9 volts. Older batteries are recycled and fresh batteries put into the charge schedule. Junk in the sound booth is cleared and the CD’s that have stacked up are cataloged and properly stored or discarded as the case may be. The afternoon is reserved for cleaning house.
The evening is system setup. First in is the praise band. There is no practice this night – just sound check and setup. We have the band play a favorite number. We start with the instruments, dialing in first the monitors, then the house levels. Then we dial in each microphone for maximum gain before feedback, filters, compression and then final mix level. Because microphones can vary by as much as +/- 5 dB within the same model, we assign particular mics to regular users. In the praise band, the mics are numbered to match the floor box input. We instruct each singer to use ONLY the number assigned to them. In this manner, we have much faster Sunday set-ups and the singers get more consistent results.
We don’t stop until the band and the house operators are happy with the monitor mixes and house settings. Don’t forget to double check your settings for the hearing assistance and recording feeds. At this point, we dismiss the band and record the settings (as in write it all down). This is the contemporary service mix.
Next comes the choir. Once again, we set monitor levels first; they have differing requirements from the organ/digital piano than the praise band does. Then we sweeten the house mix. Choir is dismissed and we record the settings for the traditional service.
Next up are all the spoken word participants – pastor, lay speakers, readers etc. Once again, we set up all the input mic levels and assign a particular mic to individuals. In our church, singers get numbered mics, speakers get colors). This way we keep gain structures safely reserved for each application. If we get a last minute guest singer, they are given a numbered mic. If we get a guest speaker, they get a mic with a colored stripe.
We also use this evening for training. We go over proper cable storage (over /under coiling), how to properly store wireless mics – (it is ALMOST a hanging offense at our church to wrap the mic cable around the transmitter). We drive mic and instrument care lessons home HARD, emphasizing costs benefits from proper care. As a result I have not had to replace a lav mic in over 10 years of weekly use. We also go over our hand signals with the worship leadership.
Once a year, the sound and projection crew at Rio Rancho United Methodist gets an evening that gives us the time to properly set up, recalibrate and review with no other distraction. For one night a year, we are in charge. Do yourself a favor – set up Tech night at your church.
Gordon Moore
VP Sales
Lectrosonics
505-892-4501
gordon@lectrosonics.com
