The Praise and Worship Band Bassists Club part 22

[SoVeryTired]

Originally Posted by MissingHighs

I should have added that the exchange was witnessed, amongst others, by the guy who's function is liaison between the music and sound teams. I've tried the "walk" approach before without success. I'm hanging tight this time and see what comes out - God is in ultimate control. If He wants the bass heard, He'll get the bass heard. Full stop.

M. <><

You know your situation best and it's good that it was witnessed. Have you had a chance to talk about it with the liaison guy to find out how he saw it?

[theLimeyBrit]

We're in a bit of a tough situation at the moment due to the church getting broken into over Thanksgiving and being relieved of all of its sound gear (including my rig )

I was busy in the classifieds yesterday and I have a newer, better (and much more easily portable!) rig on the way, but today I was playing through a borrowed Eden Nemesis 15. The rest of the temporary set up consists of a keyboard and lead vocals going to FOH via a little Peavy portable sound system (using its speakers as monitors), two unamplified acoustic guitars, unamplified djembe and unamplified backup vox. Finding levels that didn't drown the vocals was challenging, but we managed and had a good service.

I'll be glad when my new rig gets here (Christmas is coming early this year!) but even more so when the church gets the rest of its gear sorted out. Unfortunately, it seems this could take much longer than it really needs to as everyone is going to have their own opinions on what is needed.

[bassman314]

Originally Posted by MissingHighs

I should have added that the exchange was witnessed, amongst others, by the guy who's function is liaison between the music and sound teams. I've tried the "walk" approach before without success. I'm hanging tight this time and see what comes out - God is in ultimate control. If He wants the bass heard, He'll get the bass heard. Full stop.

M. <><

The Walk approach is less about trying to solve the long-term issue, and more about getting out of a current situation.

Sometimes, it does work in the long term. If leadership sees that they are consistently short of volunteers, and most of it is due to a specific issue, that issue will get handled.

If there are political issues at hand, then it may not work.

The other thing that amazes me is that churches routinely do not want to "fire" volunteers. I get that we do church with the army we have, not the army we want, however an unskilled, angry, possessive person is not what the Kingdom of God is like. It's a painful process, but when it is obvious that a person's gift is not there, then why leave them in a place that they are not serving to their potential?

[SoVeryTired]

Originally Posted by Bassist-92821

WOW! I think the last time I logged in we were in part 16 or 18.
This has been a rough year for me and my playing. My wife and I decided to change churches (from the Lutheran church she grew up in to a local Baptist chuch (my up bringing was Baptist). I had basically stopped playing @ the Lutheran church, and didn't have another "gig". Around April, I was asked to fill in for the normal bassist @ the Baptist church, and it went very well... then my world fell apart.
After church on June 3rd, I got dizzy, went stiff as a board and fell back... whacked my head on the concrete, was sent to the hospital for a week, and I don't remember the first 3 or 4 days... Nobody is sure what actually happened. After 2 1/2 months, I went back to work. Then on October 22nd, I started noticing some double vision, and on the 24th pulled myself from work. After much testing etc, I have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). I have filled in once since the diagnosis, and am slated to play in the Christmas program (2 songs... Revelation by Third Day and Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath... both great songs). With the double vision, I have to keep my music fairly close, but I STILL SOUND GOOD.

Wow, rough stuff. Praying for you. And without making light of what you're going through, it sounds like a good time to work on playing from memory.

[bassman314]

Originally Posted by Bassist-92821

WOW! I think the last time I logged in we were in part 16 or 18.
This has been a rough year for me and my playing. My wife and I decided to change churches (from the Lutheran church she grew up in to a local Baptist chuch (my up bringing was Baptist). I had basically stopped playing @ the Lutheran church, and didn't have another "gig". Around April, I was asked to fill in for the normal bassist @ the Baptist church, and it went very well... then my world fell apart.
After church on June 3rd, I got dizzy, went stiff as a board and fell back... whacked my head on the concrete, was sent to the hospital for a week, and I don't remember the first 3 or 4 days... Nobody is sure what actually happened. After 2 1/2 months, I went back to work. Then on October 22nd, I started noticing some double vision, and on the 24th pulled myself from work. After much testing etc, I have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). I have filled in once since the diagnosis, and am slated to play in the Christmas program (2 songs... Revelation by Third Day and Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath... both great songs). With the double vision, I have to keep my music fairly close, but I STILL SOUND GOOD.

Yikes! Raising one up for you now. Have you tried using an eye patch? I know it doesn't help with the other issues, but it can block part of the double vision... maybe?

And you'll look like a Pirate! ARR!

[caeman]

I cannot say that I would have been so silent if someone at church actually yelled at me due to the sound of my bass. I take my music ministry for G-d rather seriously. I am a soldier of G-d. And I tend to react as such.

[khutch]

Originally Posted by MissingHighs

I ran into an interesting issue this morning, and it relates to the inconsistency mentioned a few pages back. But let's start with ludicrous first...

Sorry to hear that. Things like this just don't happen at my church and not because nothing goes wrong, just a different attitude I guess. We had a comical moment in first service today when the synth player was supposed to start the final song while the WL was announcing the benevolent offering but did not. I watched the pianist try to get the synth player's attention and after a short time I turned around to try as well and I see her pounding on the keyboard and shrugging her shoulders. Once the WL finished talking the sound team brought her feed up and we could start. No harm really but just before WT prayer time before the second service the WL comes up to the synth player and politely reminds her to start right away and she explains what happened. I was standing there corroborating her story so I drew the assignment to go "chew out" the sound team while the WL lead the prayer. Only of course my assignment was not to chew them out just to remind them to bring the synth up early which I did and which directive they apologized for missing during the morning run through. Easy as that.

I run my bass full on or full off actually. I like to kill it when I am not playing just to make sure that it is silent in case the sound team forgets to drop the feed. By always running full volume when I play they get a consistent level to deal with and they are perfectly happy with that. It is a simple and effective system, not sure why a sound crew would want you to run any other way.

Ken

[invalidprotocol]

I playing for a night of worship in Granbury TX this Wed night. I'm totally looking forward to it! We just finished another practice this afternoon and its coming together nicely.

The songs we're playing... not in order yet.

Freedom Reigns
You Are Good
Kingdom Come
Our Father
Inside Out
Be Lifted High
Furious
Glorious
You Are Holy
Forever Reign
Great I Am
The Stand
Our God
Happy Day

[mtb777]

Originally Posted by SoVeryTired

Wow, rough stuff. Praying for you. And without making light of what you're going through, it sounds like a good time to work on playing from memory.

You said that much better than I could have. Praying for you Bro!

[invalidprotocol]

Originally Posted by Bassist-92821

WOW! I think the last time I logged in we were in part 16 or 18.
This has been a rough year for me and my playing. My wife and I decided to change churches (from the Lutheran church she grew up in to a local Baptist chuch (my up bringing was Baptist). I had basically stopped playing @ the Lutheran church, and didn't have another "gig". Around April, I was asked to fill in for the normal bassist @ the Baptist church, and it went very well... then my world fell apart.
After church on June 3rd, I got dizzy, went stiff as a board and fell back... whacked my head on the concrete, was sent to the hospital for a week, and I don't remember the first 3 or 4 days... Nobody is sure what actually happened. After 2 1/2 months, I went back to work. Then on October 22nd, I started noticing some double vision, and on the 24th pulled myself from work. After much testing etc, I have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). I have filled in once since the diagnosis, and am slated to play in the Christmas program (2 songs... Revelation by Third Day and Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath... both great songs). With the double vision, I have to keep my music fairly close, but I STILL SOUND GOOD.

I'm sorry to hear about your condition and your accident. My prayers are with you. Praise The Lord you are still able to play.

[Redleg101ABN]

So this morning we're halfway through our set, playing Remedy, when I heard a loud crash right next to me. I glanced over to our djembe player and discovered that his djembe stand had collapsed and the djembe was rolling around the stage. One of the funnier things I've ever seen. While the entire audience was cracking up, we were able to keep playing and finish the song.

[MissingHighs]

Originally Posted by caeman

I cannot say that I would have been so silent if someone at church actually yelled at me due to the sound of my bass. I take my music ministry for G-d rather seriously. I am a soldier of G-d. And I tend to react as such.

Did I give the impression I was quiet!? Oh, no, Chad, like you I too take God's ministry seriously. All I said was I was calm. When talking to my wife about this (have I said in our relationship I view her as the smart one?), she said by sticking around and doing nothing more than "plug in and play" the deficiencies in the sound guys will be shown up; "do you mean to say the £7000 Roland M-300 mixer we bought 2 years ago can not cater for varying signal levels from different instruments?" (yes, 2 years on they are still stuffing about trying to get things sorted!).

Steve R, a few pages back, hit the nail on the head - training the sound guys is a lot cheaper than throwing money at new gear to 'cure' a problem. Just in our case, they despise training.

Hey, I've burned up enough bandwidth!!

Marc. <><

[jmclearnon]

In regards to sound gear, i practiced on really bad equipment for a few years and read A LOT of documentation to learn how to get reasonably good results.

The end result is i can now get a reasonably good mix out of very bad equipment. IMO you need to be a musician to properly do sound as EQ'ing things requires a very sensitive ear. The biggest problem is that church "sound" guys push the gain up way too high all the time and that is the statr of many problems.

All people who do sound should know how everything in the system is put together, the amount of times i have been lifted from the congregation to fix something that wasn't actually broken because they don't have a clue what a compression rack does etc.

IMO sound mixing is an art. You just need to learn what everything on the desk does and thats not actually that hard even though it looks daunting lol.

[SoVeryTired]

The PA desk is an instrument but it tends to attract technicians rather than musicians. The best mixers are the ones who, even if they don't play an instrument, have a deep love and understanding of music. Too often I've come across people who know what all the controls do but don't really know what should come out of the speakers. Like the one guy who said "I don't really hear the individual instruments, I can't tell the difference between them" - fortunately we managed to move him away from the desk.

If there isn't a person who exhibits both the logical, technical side and the creative, artisitic side, there's a good argument for well-balanced pairs or teams running PA.

[jmclearnon]

Originally Posted by SoVeryTired

Like the one guy who said "I don't really hear the individual instruments, I can't tell the difference between him" - fortunately we managed to move him away from the desk.

If there isn't a person who exhibits both the logical, technical side and the creative, artisitic side, there's a good argument for well-balanced pairs or teams running PA.

100% lol, just had a great image in my head there lol.

I think if you can't hear the different instruments lol

[SoVeryTired]

Originally Posted by jmclearnon

100% lol, just had a great image in my head there lol.

I think if you can't hear the different instruments lol

I don't know what image you had, so I read the quote back. I got a great image of a small fork lift truck lifting his chair up and driving away from the desk.

(It didn't happen - at the time the desk was in a small booth at the top of a ladder, which didn't help much.)

[jmclearnon]

hahahah! "Sorry sir can you please step this way......."

Trap door much?

[SoVeryTired]

Originally Posted by jmclearnon

hahahah! "Sorry sir can you please step this way......."

Trap door much?

Now that WOULD have worked!

[MissingHighs]

You know what I love about all of you here? I can come with a serious 'aaaaaaaaarrrrrgggghh' feeling, vent, feel better for getting it off my chest, and then land up laughing at the great humour you guys display. I feel blessed.

M. <><

[jmclearnon]

TB also helps me to get through those days at work......

Another solution is to unplug the sound desk and mix from another desk.... I have done that before LOL