A lot of church sound engineers do not have the luxury of mixing 5+ shows a week, and most church musicians do not have the time to do a full soundcheck before each rehearsal. What this means, is that the average church sound engineer does not get to a chance to experiment with gear, learn EQ, understand gates, or tweak good compression. So, I present UNFINISHED sounding (on purpose) sound check audio files for you to use in your sound system and get more alone time with your gear.

Use these files to play with EQ, FX, delay, compression and gating. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the gear and learn what sounds good and what sounds bad. Apply what you learn to your praise band. These files were recorded directly to a hard drive and were NOT recorded with any outboard gear or processing, meaning that they will sound very unfinished on purpose. It’s your job to shape them into the best possible sound.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Burn these audio tracks onto a CD or import them to your iPod. Route your audio player into 2 channels on your console. Some tracks are mono, others use both the left and right channels.

Use the EQ on your channel strip to shape the sound. Insert compressors or gates and learn how to use those pieces of gear. Add some FX or delay to the audio and play with the settings to hear what each parameter changes.

Enjoy!

Kick Drum Sound Check - A kick drum sound to experiment with EQ, compression and gates.


Snare Drum Sound Check - Snare Drum to experiment with EQ, compression and FX.


Kick Drum (with Snare and Hi Hat) Sound Check - Kick drum mic only, but Kick, Snare, Hi Hat playing. Experiment with gating out the other sounds, while making the kick sound better with EQ, etc.


Rack Tom Sound Check - Rack Tom to experiement with EQ.


Floor Tom Sound Check - Floor Tom to experiment with EQ


Rack & Floor Toms - Rack Tom is on the left channel. Floor Tom is on the right channel. There is also a rack tom that is not miked. Experiment with EQ, gates, to eliminate the 1st tom while making the rack and floor tom sound their best.