Great Church Sound

Adding an ambient pad to your worship team’s sound is becoming more and more common. Many worship leaders celebrate using pads because it’s an easy, turn-key way to add a depth of sound to your worship team’s instrumentation without adding a team member or learning complex new technology.

Pads create a “musical safety net” that affords worship leaders the freedom to focus less on the details and more on leading well. Pads are an amazingly effective, low-cost, easy-to-use resource!

Those who are inexperienced with pads, however, tend to have a common question:

“Won't a continual pad-drone clash with the worship team, especially when they change chords? And if it’s always playing, won’t the pad make everything sound muddy?”

Part of the answer has to do with the quality of the pad sound you’re using, but the majority of the answer has to do with where your pads sit in your worship mix.

Running the sound system and serving your congregation is an important job full of technical and personal responsibilities.

Regardless of the size of your church, sound system, or reinforcement requirements, it can be advantageous to have some help from time to time.

That’s why a dedicated tech or sound team can be such a great asset – even if it’s only you and one other person.

Here is some encouragement for new volunteers and tech team veterans alike.

Few things are more frustrating for a listener than preventable and unnecessary distractions coming from the sound system.

One of the worst offenders in church is that high-pitched, tinny noise that feels like a microphone is just on the verge of feedback.

While feedback and poorly mixed sound can be frustrating for the listener, the thoughtful sound tech should be tuned in to more subtle nuances that can have an even greater impact on the listening congregation.

Bad sound can make a congregation and audience distracted, fidgety, nervous, anxious, on-edge, fatigued, and even angry.

Feedback is just one of many distractions that can upset the aural experience for a listener.

As a live sound engineer, you have the capability of shaping and reshaping the entire mix that is delivered to the listening audience.

You are constantly faced with making crucial decisions about volume levels, EQ, monitor mixes, and channel muting cues.

This can be used to great or terrible effect!

It’s a big responsibility, which is why it is so important to practice and refine your craft.

Make the right decision, and everyone is happy. Make the wrong decision, and you might end up hearing about it, or worse.