Flip tha’ scrip

I recently had the privilege to sit on panel for Yamaha Commercial Audio’s Audioversity. This kind of event attracts a similar crowd as the Trek’ conventions, except it’s for sound people – oh, and there aren’t costumes. But, for the most part these are some severely technical dudes (think the A/V club kids from high school).

I’m a fan of stirring the pot, so when the dialogue came around to sound mixing philosophies I waited for my turn, smirked, and said I would rather have a musician sitting behind a mixing console instead of a technician. There was an instant tension in the room.

Before anything else live sound should be musical. Each instrument and voice should have it’s place in the mix.

If you play an instrument you really should find time to hang by the sound board. You need to watch a mix develop and hear the sounds and parts that are needed to make a mix dynamic and musical. Ask questions and find out what it takes to succeed on any given mix project. Even better, find an opportunity to actually mix a song or two maybe even a whole show. It will change how you play.

If you primarily run sound, pick up an instrument, learn it and go play with a band. Find out how musicians prepare parts and sounds. Experience the anticipation of putting your creative efforts and talents on display. You’ll better learn how to interact with the band and get what you need from them to make your job more enjoyable.

Whatever work you do, find an opportunity to see it from someone else’s angle.

Make a Joyful Noise?

How do you build a worship team? I suppose there are plenty of ways to do it.

-Run an announcement in the church bulletin. “We need musicians. Come as you are. Any willing heart can serve. Come make a joyful noise with us.” (In Dana Carvey’s church lady voice, of course.)

-Find a handful of washed up Christian band kids and point them to the stage. (They’re easy to come by and are readily identified by their hairdos.) That’s how I got my job.

-Start a Chris Tomlin cover band.

-Buy one. Put an ad on Craigslist or at your local music store, and just pay the dudes to show up.

-Or, you can grow one. That’s what we’re attempting at Cross Point. It’s a slow and meticulous process, but for us it’s worth the effort. We’re seeking worshipers who are willing to make the investment with us. It takes an army of volunteers to staff worship teams at all our campuses every Sunday. The demand is high, so we need a team that can serve with everything they’ve got.
Building our team starts with a simple music team application. This is the start of the relationship. We want to know the individual’s story and hear about their musical experience. We follow up with a music team interest meeting. This is our chance to gather ten or so people and tell our team’s story and explain why we do what we do and how we do it. We lay out our expectations as clearly as possible. If those stories and expectations don’t scare them off, we schedule an audition. That’s right, an audition. We audition anyone who wants to join the team – musicians and singers.

It’s not meant to be scary. It’s about trust, and trust has to start somewhere. We only have one shot on Sundays to lead Cross Point in worship. We place a high value on authentic corporate worship. We don’t take that lightly and we don’t hand off that responsibility to just anyone. The audition lets us know where the player/singer stands. It lets us know how they prepare, how they hear parts, and how they execute. If they’re not ready, we’ll have that conversation and work with them to get ready for the next audition if they’re willing to give it another shot.

If the audition went well, we start the next phase of the relationship: starting to serve. But it’s service under a watchful eye. We want them to succeed, so we make tweaks along the way. At this point they’ve gone to the trouble of applying, attending meetings, learning and practicing material, and executing the material at a high level in the audition. It speaks to someone’s character to go through all of that just to serve. We gradually start adding them into serving rotations, and continue making adjustments as they develop.

We’re still fine tuning the process, and it’s not a perfect system, but were developing a killer team of amazing musicians, singers, and most importantly–real worshipers.

We love our volunteers and are incredibly fortunate to serve alongside such an amazing team.