I guess I’m lucky. My church has 2 services on Sunday morning, and the band shows up an hour early to do a full blown sound check. This morning I posted a pic and comment on my Twitter about sound checking, and I got a reply that there are churches out there that do NOT sound check. How is this possible? I mean, my church doesn’t even use monitors and we take an hour! Yep. You read that correctly. We go old-school. Southern gospel style! Our main speakers are on the back wall, so everyone on stage uses the house mix as their monitors. Do I recommend this? No way!

The difference between rehearsal and sound check seems obvious to me, yet a lot of people consider them the same thing. Having a sound check to ‘check’ that everything is working correctly and sounds the way it should will set up a great rehearsal.

A lot of churches it seems think that since the sound was fine last week, and that nothing has changed this week, that it’ll be ok until next week or later. The problem is that guitar strings get dull. Drum heads wear out. Humidity and temperatures change. Singers get colds. Guitar players add (20) new pedals.

You need to sound check! As the audio guy (or girl), you are probably expected to show up earlier than the band, right? You have turn on the lights, test the batteries, prep the recording device, etc. There isn’t a reason your band shouldn’t give you 30 minutes in the morning to tweak something (IF it needs).

What tends to happen is that 1 week something will go screwy or something special will be added. Without a sound check you just have to deal with it on the fly. The following week, the issue still goes unaddressed, but the settings may or may not still apply. Then, the following week you end up with a fill-in singer, and you have to adjust the gain, EQ, compressor and FX, but those don’t get reverted when your original singer returns the following week. After a month, your mix is going to sound like a pile of band-aids as you’ve addressed weeks of issues.

If you can’t get an extra 30-60 minutes on Sunday mornings, try approaching your worship leader about doing a once-a-month check/ rehearsal. They may bite on the idea of an extended rehearsal to learn new songs, but make sure you lobby for a decent sound check. Zero out your board: gains turned down, monitors all off, EQ’s all flat, and start with channel 1. As you build your mix, you may find it has life again!

Just always remember to keep it simple, and that less is more! Oh, and always have fun!