Church Sound Best Practices
Contents
Personal Standards
Timeliness
Please try to be on time, if not early. There are always things that need to be setup before anyone can begin playing, and so timeliness is vital.
Attitude
The job of a sound person is to be a conduit for worship for everyone. The goal is to "enhance, not distract". In fact, if no one notices what you did that week, that means you likely did a really good job, as people were so engaged that you were unnoticed.
At the same time, mistakes happen every week to every person. Roll with it, learn from it, and move on.
Setup
Basic Setup
After turning on the sound board, make sure that you remember to turn on the mic receivers.
Next, get the mics ready. Make sure to put new batteries in the mics, and quickly test them to ensure they have signal.
Next, set up any instruments that may need to be moved around, or wired for that service.
Item Specific Setup
Cajon
The low mic should be a condenser mic and gets put just inside the bottom vent. The high mic should be a sm57. Make sure to set it up so the drummer won't hit the high mic with their playing hand.
Sound Check
Process
There are many ways of doing sound check, with "top down" (starting with the higher frequency instruments or vocals) or "bottom up" being the most common. Both have their benefits, the only thing is to try to be consistent.
Order of Operations
It is always best if the performers are warmed up, and initially, to go person by person. If there is not time for this, then just have them play a song and quickly try to dial it in. This also has the benefit of having them focus on playing, so they may play at the level they will likely play at during the event.
Once that is done, have them play together to verify the gains and the levels. Once they have gone through a little, then you can have a conversation about where their monitor levels are, and they can be adjusted. Once monitors are being adjusted, unless absolutely necessary, please don't change any gain levels.
Settings
Mics
A safe starting point for the vocal mics is about 27db of gain, and adjusted from there.
