Thought I would drop in on the MxU FOH mix training event hosted by Saddleback Church in beautiful sunny Lake Forest, California. What a great event. A few of my takeaways follow:
- There is always something new to learn. I’ve been involved in professional music on both sides of the microphone for over 25 years and found plenty of golden nuggets to try or implement in my day-to-day work.
- Whether intentional or not, I loved that the event was not diluted down to small church expectations, at least at first. Professional standards were set as a “what can be done” example. This event set the bar equal to any professional concert or church venue expectation I know of. In fact, several of the tracks showcased were created for church production events, and were absolutely stunning! Plenty of typical church Sunday Q&A took place so as not to leave anyone out.
- It’s unbelievable how far audio for church production has come in the last 10 years. Consoles with adaptive EQ, auto pitch correction, studio quality reverb and delays, distortion effects at your fingertips, large channel counts that allow for endless stem tracks and parallel track processing, are becoming common place in larger church settings, and now within reach for a typical mid and large sized church budget. Small guys have some pretty amazing console options as well as demonstrated today with impressive results.
I would highly recommend attending quality events such as this, or at least sending key personal. It’s can be an eye-opening “epiphany” for the typical church engineer. And, in my experience, once someone knows what can done, and how good something can be, they generally want it, and go for it. It’s human.
Till next time…
Darren Bowls
BESA-Bowls Engineering Sound & Acoustics 