5 Mixing Mistakes I Keep Making

For those of us who serve with sound at church on top of a day-job throughout the week, it can be a struggle to take a moment to review our approach. Here’s some mistakes I make when I’m tired, distracted or have the wrong approach to my role serving the church family. I wonder if they’re common ones?

1. Neglecting the room

When I’m feeling the pressure of my role, I can forget to take a moment to realise where I am, to pray and approach the service differently to the rest of my week. It’s crucial that I make time to recognise the central church gathering as a unique part of my week. I’m not mixing for a group of anonymous consumers, I’m mixing for my church family. I know the people in the room and what’s going on in their lives – this must translate into how I mix today. As I mix, it’s important to consider how my church family may be feeling as they walk into the building. Are they tired, stressed or spiritually drained? Are they excited to be at church today or has it been a struggle getting there? Should my mix be driving and energetic, or warm, gentle and inviting? Read more about Setting the Mood here

2. Mixing before Listening

With the pressure of time ever present on a Sunday, I can easily fall into the trap of starting processing and EQing before actually listening to today’s content. If I haven’t taken a moment to listen to today’s band to hear how the arrangements are fitting together, how can I expect to build a mix that supports this? My most valuable piece of equipment is my ears and I should always deploy these on a channel first before any plug-ins.

3. Spending more time on my drums than the vocal

We all agree that a great mix is built from a killer drum sound. The drums drive the track and can help translate the worship leader’s arrangement dynamically for most effective support of the congregation’s singing. BUT the congregation have no chance of picking up the melody or hitting the cues if they can’t hear the vocal! I’ve recently changed my mix process so that I start with the vocal and acoustic guitar. Once I land an intelligible vocal and full sounding acoustic guitar (or keys) I can be sure the congregation will have the lead they need. I can then build up the drums and other inputs around that vocal rather than trying to slot a vocal on top in the last 90 seconds of sound check.

4. EQing my guitars and keys in solo (rather than contextual awareness)

Have you ever got a great guitar or keyboard sound in solo then lost the definition once the rest of the inputs are live? The key to getting the right balance and a rich overall tone is to work with processing in context. It’s much easier to make a channel sing when it’s on its own than to achieve definition alongside instruments in a similar frequency band. Listening in isolation can be a great tool for highlighting trouble frequencies, but by doing most of the EQ with similar sounding inputs live helps to define particular mid range build up. A-Bing with EQ on and off can help to find what your processing is actually doing and how it’s working to separate similar sounding sources operating in the same space.

5. Taking 10 minutes to be happy with the pastor’s mic

Time is of the essence when your speaker stands on stage and you’re working on the processing. Be pragmatic during the introduction and work quickly to deal with trouble frequencies and get that EQ sorted in the first few sentences. As you fiddle with the EQ, the tonality of the pastor’s voice is changing drastically which can be hugely distracting for your congregation. Work accurately and quickly not letting yourself fiddle with parameters for too long.

What do you think of these 5 mistakes? What traps do you fall into on a Sunday that negatively affect your service?