If you’re a sports fan, one scenario that can be fun to discuss is, “If you were starting a new [insert sport] team, who would be the first player on your roster?”

In other words, what would be the most critical piece of the team or system that you would build the rest around? In audio, this happens sometimes even without knowing it. You might be starting a building project, or be getting ready for some upgrades or remodeling, etc. Soon you start surfing the net, looking at catalogs, reading reviews, putting together the new dream sound system. Then, the reality of the budget sets in, and you start making cuts. What’s the one thing that you determine you are set on and will build the rest of the audio system around?

It’s a great thing that technology has become more and more affordable. A console 3-feet wide can now do more than all the gear you could cram in a 20′ x 10′ FOH area! Digital boards, smaller circuitry, computer-assisted all means many more sophisticated tools right at your fingertips, for the church audio guy to either masterfully shape your worship band mix… or destroy it by trying to use every tool available! This topic alone could be a book, but I’m going to focus in on one specific tool that I think gets waaaaay overused: Mute Groups, or Scenes (depending on your board).

You might think this post is secretly sponsored by some pharmaceutical company. It’s not. Keeping the stage clean looking and the cables organized has much less to do with obsessive compulsive disorder, and much more to do with professionalism.

Does you stage stay set up week to week? Is it a pain if your church has a wedding and you need to strike the stage and set it back up before Sunday? Perhaps you meet in a gym or another site that requires you bring in and set up your entire system each week.

Have you ever experienced this? As soon as the band starts playing on some random Sunday morning, a concerned member of the congregation makes a bee-line for the sound booth, and you can tell by the look in their eyes, they are not happy. You quickly critique your mix trying to figure out what they are probably going to say. You think to yourself, “Can I hear the vocals?” and “Are the drums overpowering?” As soon as you start trying to zero in what your mix sounds like, the person arrives and demands your attention be pulled away from the audio! You don’t want to be rude, but you are doing a job and need to devote your attention to the band. 9 times out of 10, the complaint is always the same thing…

Not long ago I wrote a post about EQ and what the numbers mean. It’s one thing to be told that humans can hear 20Hz to 20kHz and that we consider 1,000Hz (1k) the mid-way point, but it’s another thing to  know what a kick drum actually sounds like with a bump at 2k and some low mids cut out at 400Hz. In this post, I’m going to talk a little about some of the basic concepts I use when applying EQ. I’m also going to give you some tools to help you along the way… if you haven’t found them already. The first concept I’m going to mention though, has nothing to do with EQ!