5 things the worship team wishes the sound team knew
Yesterday I posted an article “6 things your sound team wishes you knew” that my friend Peter Bruce had written. Peter is one of the guys who heads up our AV teams at our church and he’s also one of our acoustic guitar players so he’s got thoughts on this subject from both sides of the stage.
Check out some of his thoughts about what the worship team wishes the sound team knew -
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Things the worship team wish the sound person knew :
- We are a team. We need, appreciate and value honest and tactful feedback. If you hear something is wrong let us know or pull us down in the mix if it is during the service. We are trusting you so that we will not be a distraction to the worship.
- Get to know us and make a note of what we typically need in our monitors and preset them before soundcheck. We are artists and knowing you have taken time for each of us goes a long way
- If you explain why you want us to do something we will trust you more and follow your direction.
- Please don’t expect us to be warmed up vocally at 7:30-7:45 AM. We know you need to get levels set on the board but we need to warm up for a few songs first.
- If we see you on sound, set up and tear down regularly we get to know you better and trust you more. Be on time, we know that you are usually the first people in and the last to leave and we appreciate you for that but if you are always scrambling at the last minute it makes it hard for us to get comforable.
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More great thoughts from Peter on this. I love how people at our church are dedicated to serving together in team and finding ways to make the experience more valuable for people who come to our church.
Thanks for all your hard work, Peter! (And Rebecca, too – I’m sure your great wife was a part of putting this list together.)
What do you guys think? Any thoughts to add to this?
Thanks Chris and Peter for these two great posts. I’ve passed them on to our tech manager and plan on using them as a growing opportunity for our awesome teams here at Faith. Communication is critical and I know that sometimes, it can easily break down between the platform and the soundboard/lights/etc. It’s so important that we all keep our hearts aligned on why we are there serving … to create a service/environment where people are drawn to worship God and know Him more.
2 great posts!
As a drummer, I would add that I’ve played in churches where the sound techs have told me, “You’re way too loud, USE BRUSHES!”
To the average sound tech: sticks=loud; brushes=soft
To the drummer: we can play loud & soft with anything
After many years of playing and quite a bit of frustration, I understand what they mean, but by no means do they need to tell us HOW to fix the loudness. Just tell us what you need, and trust us to be mature enough to adjust the volume accordingly!
(and we SHOULD learn to play according to the room)
Thanks for these great posts!
I just attended CMS with Worship leader, 2 members of our worship team, our main sound guy, and I am the tech director and run our visual media supports.
Our worship leader and I have been working together and focusing on getting the music/media ministries back to basics, including working closely and well together.
This was a great idea, and something I will share with the teams, and might even encourage us to compile our own ‘lists’ and see what information we receive from it.
Thanks again!