But this summer, he delivered the goods to over 1 million fans during the 23-city Kenny Chesney/Tim McGraw “Brothers of the Sun” tour where he was Audio Systems Crew Chief.  The tour ended with two sold-out shows at Massachusetts’s Gillette Stadium where over 110,000 fans broke all records for the most concert tickets sold in New England history.

We’d heard that there were over 69 tractor-trailers needed to move the extravaganza from city to city, so we asked John about that.  The truth was even more jaw-dropping: 22 tour busses, 39 trucks for staging, 40 gear trucks and 10 trucks of terraplast flooring to cover the grass in sports arenas.  That’s a total of 111 vehicles.

A sound crew of 11, including John’s crew of seven and Chesney’s team of FOH and monitor engineers, kept the audio worthy of the thousands of dollars some ticket scalpers were getting for front row seats.

John Mills

A lot of trucks, a lot of dates, a lot of crewmembers and a lot of sound checks. Since most of our readers aren’t traveling with that kind of entourage, we asked John to share his thinking on sound checks for non-globetrotting musicians and their sound people.  Sure, the scale is a little different, but the steps are the same whether the gig is at a local club or Mile High Stadium.

Now back in his Nashville office as Vice President of Morris Light and Sound, he broke it down for us into perfect thirds:

Line Check is when the engineer and a friend verify that everything is plugged in correctly and each wireless mic, personal monitor, monitor wedge, main speaker, subwoofer, etc. is working.  Engineers, we should do this before every performance, and it should be done BEFORE the band arrives.

(Editors’ Note: You can find a preflight checklist in an article titled “Check/Re-Check” on www.TechTraining101.com)

Sound Check is all about the engineer.  Band, we need you to play a small sample of what you are playing or singing that day… no 50% volume here or timid “check 1, 2, check 1, 2”. We really need a decent version of what you’ll be doing.

This is where we set things like gain and EQ, the two most important considerations to a musician.  If you check too quietly, we’re likely to turn you up, but when you give it your all in the show, we will have to turn you down. Therein lies the problem with most monitor mixes.  If you give me quality input level checks at this time, it’s likely that your mix will not change in the live performance.

There are other pitfalls here, too.  For instance, a lot of times I’ll ask the drummer to just play all his drums for a minute.  Most drummers will unconsciously play softer if you just ask for a kick, then a snare, etc.  When it comes to vocalists, I will already have checked the acoustic or keyboard and will have them start the chorus of an easy song so they don’t feel so silly singing all alone.

Once we’ve made it through most of the inputs, I’ll have the band play a short chorus of a song where everyone is playing and singing.  This is often the exact same song every day. When you find one that has everyone playing and harmonizing, it’s a good idea to use it all the time because everyone gets used to it. Keep in mind we have not really adjusted monitors yet. At this stage, I get a chance to see all inputs and make any quick final adjustments to gain levels.

Then I ask who needs what in their monitors and I make those adjustments. If your band is on personal mixers, now is the time to make any adjustments.  Musicians, if you make adjustments to your mix before I’ve had a chance to settle in on gain structure, your mix will change.

The FOH engineer needs to be clear about being finished with this step, letting them know that you’re ready for them to work on their mixes.

Also, when you’re setting gain and rough EQ during this sound check, take no more than 10-15 seconds per input.  Have this discussion, and expect that they’ll give you a reasonable level, then set the gain quickly, grab a quick listen to the EQ and the MOVE ON.

The band loves it when we move fast.  You can always come back during the next section and make more tweaks.  If you spend 10 minutes getting the “perfect” kick drum sound, no one will be interested in helping with the rest of this process. 

Rehearsal. Tell the band “I’m finished adjusting the major components, so does anyone need any adjustments to their mix?”  If the answer is yes, make the adjustments and have the band do another short chorus, ask again, and if everyone’s satisfied, say “Thanks for taking the time, I’m now in tune and can confidently respond to the house mix and any needs you may have.”

What we just did by taking a few minutes (FOH folks, I mean a few minutes — less than 10) is that we have tuned our instrument and can confidently hit the first chord. There may still be a bunch of little adjustments to the mix, but for the most part, you should be in the ballpark.

Performers: during rehearsal, the sound engineer reserves the right to really mess with the house sound.  Sound people, please take the time to mute the mains and see how loud the stage sound is, turn up the harmonies a little too loud so you can get the right blend and then set them back down in the mix.  Turn the drums on and off, turn the subwoofers on and off.  Take some time to see how your instrument is responding.  But do this as quickly as possible, since we also we want them to be able to rehearse.  Finish rehearsals with the house sound on.  Many of their monitor mix adjustments will be very different if musicians don’t hear the house sound blending with their wedge or ear monitor sound.

Once you get gain structure set, don’t change it, especially after sound check and especially, especially (did you hear that?) not after rehearsal.  Unless something is about to explode, do not mix with the gain knobs; doing so will adjust everything downstream, including the bands monitors.  Let me say it again: Unless a signal is about to pop the top off the little red clip LED, leave it alone.  This is why it’s so important that we got the gain right during sound check, and that the band gave us real world rehearsal signals.  If you constantly adjust the gain during the show you’re changing performers’ mixes, especially if they’re on “ears”.  There are these little slider things closer to your hands that we should be using now to balance the mix. That may sound a little sarcastic, but some of us need to be reminded.

What else can change a musician’s mix?  The room and the audience.  Sound check is always different than the show.  I recommend running sound check a little louder than you will run the show. It will honestly seem just a little louder without bodies in the room even with no changes to any faders or gain knobs.  This is because the human body is made up mostly of water (and one of the best sound absorbing materials is big bags of water). It’s normal for sound check/rehearsal to sound louder than the live performance. Making it a little bit louder will also help you establish any feedback issues that may flare up in the show.  When the audience comes in, they absorb some of the sound, so if you have audience mics that the ear monitor folks are relying on or if your band is mostly on wedges, the change in sound when an audience fills the room will change the performers perspective on their mix.

Now that you have run sound check/rehearsal a bit loud, back that main fader back where it belongs.  You have established a max volume as well as knowing you are stable feedback-wise.  Do not “gain up” any inputs, or push the main fader above this point.  You run the risk of not only feedback, but also splash back on the stage that will overtake the bands monitors.  You know you hit this mark if the band is on wedges and they all start asking for monitor changes.

And last but not least: If you’ve had (and especially if you have not had) a good rehearsal, never make any changes based on what you remember you wanted to change.  Meaning —  if the band has left the stage, don’t think “Oh, I needed some gain on the acoustic guitar and I didn’t want to mess him up in rehearsal…. I’ll add it now.”  Stop right there… go back to Line Check in this post and read it again.

About John Mills:  John is a 20-year veteran of live sound. In addition to his work with touring acts, John is Vice President at Nashville’s Morris Light & Sound www.MorrisLightAndSound.com, writes regularly for Worship Musician and is a great resource for church tech teams with helpful advice on his TechTraining101.com website.   He’s also a featured speaker at many pro audio seminars across the country.

We tend to think of him as “friend of Shure Notes John” but to the larger audio world, he is FOH engineer extraordinaire, audio tech advisor in his popular TechTraining101 site, frequent contributor to Worship Musician plus pro on the bus and at the board with this summer’s Brothers of the Sun tour featuring Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. 

We’ve been turning to John for practical advice on everything from critical listening to mixing tips for many years now, so when we decided to tackle the topic of tape ministry recording, we didn’t have to look very far.  We tracked him down in cyberspace ‑ somewhere between Paradise Island and Tampa ‑ at crunch time: the start of a 25-city tour.

Before we get to actual recording, let’s touch on a subject that’s rarely mentioned. Recording rights.

“Any time you press record on an audio or video device, you need to make sure you have the rights to record the music. Recording the Pastor’s sermon is perfectly fine because technically he is the copyright owner of his sermon. Music is another story entirely.

If your worship team is singing another worship leader’s song, or a classic hymn for that matter, you can pretty much count on the fact that there are restrictions to pressing that big red record button.  Even if your church isn’t producing CDs to make a profit, the rights aren’t as hard to understand as you might think. For a thorough understanding, you can find detailed information at these websites like these.”

Christian Copyright License International

Music Services Organization

Now that we’ve covered the fact that you really DO need to have the rights to record, let’s talk about actually pressing the RECORD button. 

“Many churches simply hook up the tape recorder to the left/right output of the soundboard. That, as I’m sure your readers are aware, is going to sound pretty bad from a mix perspective.

What is coming straight off the board is often very unbalanced for the recording. It sounds great in the room because you’re hearing the trumpets fine without having a mic on them, but the recording is suffering because it doesn’t ‘hear’ the horn section, or whatever instrument(s) you choose not to mic. “

Many of our Shure Notes readers volunteer or work part-time in churches that don’t have mega-church budgets.  What advice do you have for them?

“Here are some No Budget tips:

• Put a mic on anything you’re not satisfied with on the tape. I can hear the folks in the front row now … “We don’t need microphones on the drums, they’re already too loud.” Tip two will answer that complaint.
• Set up your recording device to take a feed from a pre fader auxiliary send. This will allow the FOH engineer to mix what is needed in the house, while having a completely separate mix for the tape. Yes, this does mean a little more work, but it will give you the ability to mix things differently for the tape.  Make sure your aux sends mutes when you engage the mute on the main channel.  If not, you’ll have stuff going to tape that you really don’t want there.

For those folks in the front row concerned with the volume, tell them not to worry; those mics are just for recording. If you put those extra “recording” mics on pre fader aux sends, you don’t even have to push up the fader for that channel. So if they’re really concerned with the volume, take them to the board and show them that the drum mics aren’t even on in the house.”

OK, what if you have some money to spend?

“A really neat trick on the last install I did was to use a separate Aviom system for the recording.  If you’re having trouble with monitors and recording services, this may be the way to go. We installed an Aviom system (www.aviom.com) for the band to run their own monitors. Then we took an extra control surface to a room just behind the stage. We hooked up the output of the Aviom to the input of the tape deck and monitored it through a set of computer speakers. This gave them the ability to have a pseudo-recording room for a pretty reasonable budget.”

Let’s take a flight of fancy and assume that money is no object.

“If you are really serious about recording music the best way possible, you’ll need a separate engineer in an isolated room with a separate console. It’s really the best way to get amazing mixes.”

We know that not every house of worship has a professional staff.  What’s your advice for the church with a semi-pro crew?

 “Any mix is only going to be as good as the sound person behind the board. If you have only one good audio tech, I wouldn’t spend $100K on a separate recording room. I’d spend my money on educating some of the other audio volunteers. I’ve heard mixes from the simplest of setups that blew away the recordings done by multi-thousand dollar remote recording rooms, because they had a better sound person.”

What separates good recordings from great ones?

“The biggest key to a good recording is making it sound like you were there.

Start with a good, clean, balanced mix of all the instruments. It’s not uncommon in a smaller building to have six or more additional mics on instruments that aren’t even going to the house speakers. They’re just for the recording setup that I described before.

Now that you’ve built a good mix with whatever system you’re using, here are some additional suggestions:

1. A mix straight off the board will never sound completely live because it is getting a tight sound directly from the instruments. You need to add back in some ambience with audience and/or ambience mics. Remember, audience mics are a spice: add too much and it sounds unnatural. Get a good mix of the instruments first and then add in just enough audience so that listeners know that they’re there. I usually start my recording with the audience mics considerably back in the mix. I wait until the middle or end of the first song to decide how much I need. That gives me a few minutes to make the mix as clean as possible before adding the spice.
2. Also of note it’s best to EQ out as much of the low frequencies as possible in these mics.  If I have a variable High Pass filter on my soundboard, I may set it as high as 200Hz.  If you only have a button, engage that, and then take your low frequency shelf filter all the way down.  This lets the warmth of your dry mix come through without muddying it up with a bunch of low mush that the ambient/audience mics are picking up.
3. If you have a stereo aux send then definitely do the mix in stereo and feel free to pan stuff around. Your brain loves to hear things with space in between and around it and stereo audience mics are always going to sound more real. They really add a sense of dimension to the mix.  If you have a little more budget available, the Shure VP88 is one of my favorite stereo mics. Either way, when you add more than one audience mic to the mix be sure to pan the hard left and right so that the listener gets that natural sense of space. “

Final thoughts?

“Live worship recording is an art and a science. It begins with a celebration of faith – the goal is capturing that experience in a form that can be share with the world.”

About John Mills:  John is a 20-year veteran of live sound. He’s toured with some of the biggest names in Christian music – Chris Tomlin, Shane and Shane, Lincoln Brewster and Paul Baloche and is currently on a summer tour with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw.  John writes regularly for Worship Musician and is a great resource for church tech teams with helpful advice on his TechTraining101.com website.  We’re also crazy about John because he says things like this: “I don’t want to turn around one day and look to see what I’ve accomplished in my life and realize that it was only running good sound at this or that concert. I remember promising God when I first started that if he allowed me to use my talents at this, I would be faithful to share that knowledge.”