Silk Purses

  Ok, so maybe you've heard the idiom "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

 Isn't that what sound crews are expected to do sometimes?  Take the hodgepodge produced by the worship team and make it sound like a professional recording?

 Often the vocals are a tremendous challenge because many volunteer teams consist of varying levels of talent.  Yes we have options like pitch correction, reverb, eq, compression that can do a decent job of hiding weaknesses and showcasing strengths.  That's all well and good but we can only do so much with the sound presented to us.  We may spice it up a little but it is only as good as the musicians making it.  The better the sound, the better the mix we can present.  Being a guitarist I have learned that hyper-processing signals can kill tone anyway.  Don't get me wrong, I like me some effects but I shoot for more of an organic sound.  The more skilled the band is, the less challenges there are.

  And vise-versa.  I have caught myself thinking "Whoa, there is nothing I have here that can help that sound."  It's true.  There is no button, dial, fader or effect on the planet that can help a musician who lacks the talent to actually play the song.  Hence the sow's ear.  If the bass player is playing the wrong notes, it will throw people off.  If the singer can't actually hit the notes, the rest of the team loses confidence in the sound they are producing.  So what do we do?

   I was on a worship team where the tech director clearly stated that he would simply mix whatever was given to him.  His job was to project and amplify what was coming from the stage.  In other words, if there was a back up singer who was terribly flat, he would sit them right in the middle of the mix for all to hear.  It was the worship leader's responsibility to prevent sub-par musicians from participating, not his.  If the leader didn't have the fortitude to weed out the "weaker" musicians, than it was his problem.  I can see the point he was trying to make but I don't agree with the us-against-them mentality behind it.  And since we are usually dealing with volunteers, who happen to be our church family, and have only so much time to rehearse, there has to be some grace given.  Grace is, after all, kind of an underlining theme in the church - hopefully.  

  We have the responsibility to present the best possible offering to God, to serve each other and minister to the congregation through this ministry.  We should give God our all and get the best mix possible with whatever is given.  If a person can't sing and is jacking up the mix, we may have to turn them way down or even off in the house.  I hate that but sometimes it needs to be done.  "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."  My opinion is that the tech crew is a part of the worship team.  What they are doing, we are doing.  What they present, we present.  We need to be united in our efforts.  I am praying that worship leaders will come to see tech crews as valued team members.  See my post "What is worship and who's on the team?" for more on that.  

  And of course politics can also get in the way of musical, worshipful bliss.  What to do if the senior pastor's wife is on the team and she can't sing to save her life?  Or maybe Ethel has been on the team since 1984 and you will have to pry that mic from her cold, dead fingers...?  What if the worship leader's husband plays every weekend even though he is an alternate at best?  That's a subject for another post.  I will poke at that beehive later.

  It boils down to having an open, honest relationship with your worship leader.  You should be able to tell him (or her) in a loving, calm, appropriate way that you have noticed something consistently impairing the overall sound.  Use nice words like impairing, blemishing the other-wise beautiful rather than awful, hack, jacking it all up, nails on a chalkboard, screeching dying cat kind-of words.  (Although typing that was a little therapeutic.)

  If we get to a point where musicality is not an issue, the mix is not an issue, bonds will form and trust will follow.  The tech crew knows they aren't going to have to turn water into wine and the worship leader knows everyone is on board.  No one is thinking or stressing, they are simply worshiping.  This is when atmospheres are changed, lives are ruined (for the better), people experience God rather than simply learn about Him.  He is glorified.