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.

I love electronic gadgets! I have always had pocket pc phones, gps units, and I love my iPhone. My wife, however, always buys these kitchen gadgets. The irony in that is that I’m the one that cooks (and she cleans- it’s a good system).

Too often, the magic slicing and dicing gadget that costs as much as eating dinner out, is a disappointment to me. I’m no master chef. I’m not above being lazy sometimes. The honest truth is though, that most of the time, a good trusty knife does just as good and usually a much better job than the newest gadget. So what if the gadget is quicker if you are not happy with the results? Also, gadgets tend to be a pain to clean up!

So, you’re wondering what this has to do with your Sunday audio set up, aren’t you? Well, read on…

I want to discuss a technique that appears to be fairly simple, yet can lead to frustration. The basic concept is to create a mix that allows you to hear everything you see on stage. The concept is simple enough- Look at each input on your console and ask yourself if you can hear it in the mix. If the answer is ‘yes,’ then move on to the next channel. If the answer is ‘no,’ then the fun begins! Rather than just push the fader up until you can hear that specific input, I’d quickly ask yourself a few questions to help you determine how to best address the issue.

Understanding and using EQ is essential for any audio engineer. Going beyond treble and bass and learning what frequencies sound like when they are too loud or missing from an input will allow you to shape the sounds into full, smooth, natural pieces of your mix. This post is going to focus on how to get some practice listening to different frequencies, shaping the sounds into the best they can be, and some common traps some fall into that you should try to avoid.