This should be fun.
I subbed at a medium sized church for most of 2009 and they asked me to come on full time for 2010. I took a lower saleary than I normally would because I was playing with another musician I work with on a regular basis. Throughout my time subbing I frequently got comments that I showed up more consistently on time and prepared than the regular members. people in the congregation seemed very happy with what I was doing.
By November 09 they had driven the then music minister out and the assistant MM took over. They decided to do away with all amps onstage and have the musicians only use monitors. I was told their equipment setup ran in excess of $200k. They decided to have myself and the guitarist share a monitor, which as the main source of sound seemed like a bad idea. It was in practice.
To go along with the $200k+ system they had a volunteer soundperson who knew nothing about digital boards... and yes, that worked out about as well as could be expected. For some reason the sound in the shared monitor was always distorted to the point where it was not only difficult to hear onesself, it was also extremely difficult to hear the keyboards. A bonus was having a keyboardist who would regularly play chord changes differently from one verse to the next and it was trying to say the least.
I offered many times to help them troubleshoot the sound problem and for some reason they never got around to doing it, repeatedly saying it must be a bad chord. I told them that while that might be a part of the problem, the instruments volume going up and down independent of each other, the complete dropouts and just generally bad quality of sound only when someone was sitting at the board were likely not coincidental.
On a fairly regular basis the MM would wait until Saturday, sometimes even very early Sunday before giving me the names of the music we'd be doing Sunday morning. Later on he found a hosting site for some of the music but even then he'd often tell me to just youtube the songs, not giving me an artist name nor version more often than not. This was in spite of me asking for music during the week so I could listen to it. In any event, even though I often worked Saturday nights I'd get on the music, chart it out and be prepared to play it each week.
There's a lot more that went on and I can get into that if needed. Because of the jacked up sound onstage at a full rehearsal we once again talked about how to fix it. I told them that for me the best thing would be to have a small amp that actually sounded like a bass guitar so I could hear what I was doing. The MM asked me if I'd use one of mine and I suggested they sell the big rig they were no longer using and get something smaller. The MM asked that I look into it and made it clear that we would try it with an amp.
I brought a small combo amp (smaller than the monitor we had) in the following Sunday and sounded 100% better. The guitarist still sounded distorted, so did the rest of the mix that we had in our monitor, I was just relieved that my sound for once didn't suck. I didn't play loudly, it was simply more clear.
Out of the blue a couple of days later the MM texted me and asked if I had left with my hat on Sunday. He also said the pastor asked what was up with me, I never speak to him. He also asked why there was an amp onstage.
I called the MM and asked what was going on. He told me what the pastor had supposedly said and I was pretty surprised, considering how I had spoken to him every time I was around him and we even talked about cars on one occassion. I asked how he answered the question about the amp, which he had told me to bring in and he didn't tell the pastor that he had okayed it. Typically when BS pops up it's for a reason. I talked to my friend, told him what happened and told him what I thought was going on: they're either trying to get me to quit or barring that, they're going to fire me. Never mind the fact that they had no reason to fire me, I was easily the most consistent performer there, I didn't create any problems and I dealt with the hand they gave me like a professional.
A couple of days later I got another text from the MM. He said he knew I was frustrated (even though I'd stopped saying anything about the sound) and that he and the new music director under him and the pastor were frustrated with me. I was not the fit they were looking for even though I was a great bassist so I was fired effective the end of the month.
Call me Kreskin. More to come...
So on Sunday morning we go through what they're going to play before the service begins, I chart out the changes and then work the magic.
