A Surprising Weekend

Every weekend I usually work on Saturday evenings before the service and most of the day Sunday. For a while, I've had a normal routine of doing some miscellaneous work on Saturdays and either playing bass or mixing on Sunday nights. On this weekend, however, I was caught off guard by a surprising change of events. Apparently there had been some miscommunication between people in the sound ministry, and the person who was supposed to mix Saturday night and Sunday morning was out of town. As a result, I was put in charge of mixing for these services.

Suddenly having been given to sharpen my mixing skills more, I was both extremely excited and nervous. Instead of doing two Sunday evening services, I was now doing three services over a span of two days. It was definitely a different experience than what I was used to. I also was more independent than I had been before because there were no other mixers looking over my shoulder.

For the most part, the weekend went well. I did run into a few mixing problems, but they were able to be addressed and fixed the further the night/morning went. I learned that my perception of the guitar levels were a little off-mark, mixing them at a lower volume than the other instruments on stage. I also learned more about vocal control. The band I was mixing had two worship leaders: one who sang very "breathy" and soft and another who sang with a glottal tone. It was difficult to set their levels because their vocals shared the same sub-group which controlled volume output for both before sending it to the master fader. This sometimes made it difficult to set their gain levels because one vocalist needed much more gain than the other. If the gain was too high, though, it would cause feedback. So, reaching a place where gain levels were set correctly and did not feed back was tricky.

Needless to say, I was thankful for this surprise experience and for the fact that my mentor had enough faith in me to grant me that kind of control in a last minute decision. I cannot say this enough, but I really appreciate the fact that Rock Harbor actively invests in their volunteers. I have heard of so many other mega-churches that would not even consider letting someone behind an expensive mixing board unless they had professional credentials. Yet, after only six months of training in sound, I was entrusted with carrying the responsibility (even in the midst of a hectic situation). It is in moments like this that I can see where the leadership's hearts for their volunteers really are; and I admire what I see.