I help run my church sound and lyrics on the screen for 5 years. I work with my mom who took over the position in 2021 when they asked my dad and he went to my mom and said even a monkey could do it. My mom dragged me in as it was a creativity outlet and to help her understand the program. We run easy worship 6 and you put the lyrics up on the screen. In taking over we have expanded the photos used from the same 50 or so many low quality to free to use pictures of nature or animals or whatever so now a collection of 13k photos after 5 years we put in time to set a theme or a color for the week we work on taking songs that were left as a whole chorus or verse to one screen of just black or blue small writing to space it out make the font bigger making sure the saved file of the song has the right words and adjusting each week at practice when they decide to add a chorus or extra tag ending or only do 2 verses. We have tired to do announcements loops for between bible study and morning service but dont always because it took extra effort and people wouldnt tell us announcements or then be upset we didnt get it in but there was no communication. We have some problem clicking through practice still because if the wrong word is in the lyrics they will stop and tell us to change it and thats fine but they dont understand that its not instant we usually have hid the screen but in the last few months our worship leader who plays the piano has asked us to click through the slides faster not just halfway through the last word but even half way through the last line or before they say the last 3 or 4 words on the slide partially so she doesnt get lost and knows where to go we were confused why suddenly she had a problem with our speed after 5 years especially since the comment didnt even originate from her as a suggestion and over a few weeks there were comments to go faster and faster we have tried to settle in a medium space and they havent pressed it further but its still something. We have a youth that helps us every other week since its my mom and i that do the visual and sound. And while helpful he also looks at what we do and goes you put to much effort in the people that take over next wont be able to do this ie him and whoever else. We make sure the words fit on the screen have enough outline and shadow to stand out spaced out we set a theme to the pictures for the week or try sometimes it is more obscure we make slides for welcome and both prayers greeting sermon bible study and the like and for fonts on those slides we pick a fun font and try color matching to just give it something else. He has expressed maybe jokingly maybe not that we have too many photos dont need more the color work on the words is extra we dont need it doesnt matter and to be fair like i understand the no one else will do this much the lack of effort and chaos from when we took over is evident in the songs from then but we are trying put effort in. We were just volunteers and over they years they started paying us we get 100 a week between the two of us to cover both sunday service and wednesday practice sunday being there for 3.5 to 4 hours and wednesday is roughly 1.5 to 2 hours for practice. people are shocked when we say we stay an extra 2 to 4 hours on wednesdays to get everything done between picking pictures and font work and making sure the words are right and look good.
The second part to this is the sound. I mainly run it. Maybe for 4 years. I ended up taking over because the man that was before didn't want the job anymore too old and was getting tired of it hed sit up with us mainly sleep through choir practice set it and forget it and also didnt know much about what he was doing. He was super nice amazing guy. I remember sitting next to him looking at the berhinger x32 not knowing really what it was or what it was doing they were asking him to make the cd louder and he was like i dont have any control of that im sorry and im looking at this board like he didnt even check the cd channel…they gave me the job because i was already sitting up there with my mom when he retired they were like its really simple nothing to it this is on turn this on first and last and that was about it and they were really happy when i was able to turn the cd up for a special. That was it. I was told this turns up the speakers this turns up the monitors turn this person up if we ask this person down. and i trusted them and what they said and neglected a lot unfortunetly. As I tried over the last few years to learn watch yourtube taking breaks as my brain just could not grasp the concepts and self learn and i was stuck not undertandign how things worked or not confident enough to ask. They installed wireless mics. First set one they elder approached me said hey im getting them im going to install them im like oh okay can i be here for that id also like to rearrange the board wires so our main ones are on the first row he went nooo its fine just swtich screens…he installed them one day told me the next sunday showed me what he had done. the next set of wireless just showed up he didnt tell me when he switched the stage monitors i wasnt told anything when he adjusted main speakers i wasnt told anything we once had a professional musician join our church for a bit offered to help me was talking to this elder like hey your front of house speakers arent even set to the the right input youre lucky they arent broken who knows how long they were like that he offered to get with me and my mom to look at more the elder came in before we could and 'fixed' stuff himself. I would look at our set up and talk to my mom like this doesnt sound right when i move this knob it doesnt sound like anything changes why is it that if i pan to one direction it gets waaaay louder are we sure this does anything it took us like 8 months before we had enough confidence to relabel the mics on stage so they would stop just willy nilly picking them up and also so that i could swap the current mics to the first 8 channels or so and not switch screens during that time i found a box in the backroom that looked like someone had just spewed spaghetti all over it…that is my stage snake. We have been so careful to make changes to not break things or cause probelms while it slowly has gotten so worse from equipment and knowledge to our singers even singing in their mics some just go im too loud anyway dont need to stand others go too shy or dont know the words so hold it down next to their stomach and then dont project when its next to their mouths so their gain is too high to get anything which is feedback so you turn them down and its a never ending loop. Last year we got new acs in the sanctuary. Wireless. helps with the temperature its great. We upgraded our internet wireless much stronger great. We installed a secturity camera system wireless great. Our tv screens communicate wirelessly for a signal our mics all wireless. As more things came in the tvs would blink more the microphones would get cut off and i would look at my mom like is this gonna cause problems i dont know i dont think theyd install this stuff if it would i asked as the problem got worse i coudlnt figure what was wrong beginning of this year i force moved myself the signal boxes for the wireless downstairs because my sound board is in a loft across the sanctuary to the stage where the microphones are, putting the antennas pointing up not just random pointing left right down and away from the stage, and it has helped soooo much. The youth was fighting me and like we need to ask the elder that installed it we cant just do this so i did he went oh well just build a little like lip up there dont move it down there i moved it down there and he went oh good job let me know if you need anything else or help with anything else. It literally fixed we had marked 2 mics as broken for some reason they work again. I also learned the knob for the stage speakers the monitors they told me did something didnt i had suspected tried to prove it but found for sure it did not I also found that our output was set to 1 speaker stage right and that speaker fed stage left and a monitor that montior fed a second and the left speaker fed a different monitor that fed another. i didn't know how to fix this but i was outraged theyd been telling me to fix their sound insisting knobs and directions they gave me were adjusting and changing things only to find it was basically a gaming controller with no batteries given to a child. Not to mention this elder helping over the months had also given my piano player worship leader her own monitor to face her so on stage facing her pointing to the congrigation and directly into her mic and the piano…we sat wtih that for months till i took it down fixed some monitors on stage to sound better gave it its own mix adjusted levels so we were not blowing the speakers at 100% max so i could turn up the board. the fact it sounds different than main house mix has been a painful adjustment for everyone but it was going well explaining im working on it i need you to sing yeah its not great. but this lovely helpful elder that sings on the choir has another habit that if they say they cant hear and im like okay im working on it i need you to practice so i can balance better he will get up and just turn up the knob on the montiors or the main house….so during one of these tiems he turned it up and the stage monitors blew enough they now produce mega buzzing. like my front of house does when turned on except so much worse. I hadn't been watching him to tell him not to to not touch it to be aware but he just goes okay how to fix sound max it out thats it. my worship leader has now been asking him to buy new ones shes thinking one monitor on stage maybe for every 2 people. its a small stage btw we have drum set and maybe 8 singers crammed out basest isnt even on the stage nor in the system which makes a whole other problem cause he turns his amp up and points it at the stage and the singers cant hear themselves when he joined we talked about adding him to the system i saw him talking to that oh so helpful elder then he never came back and approached me about the topic. So we are at okay no one is gonna ask me or talk to me about the monitors to buy or figure this out do i even want to touch it if hes gonna just buy them ive been doing more research on sound sound waves eq how to set it how to gain stage the combing effect monitors in ear and out im looking at our front of house speakers the mains again like i did years ago going ummm i dont think those are pointed even at the audience right we adjusted them a little its made a huge difference but they buzz like monsters and its like yeah i probably need to get new ones. But im looking at we are at 2 monitors they were at 4 that didnt make much noise if we get 5+ monitors its gonna be so loud not understandable or the sounds will be distorted canceling eachother out still no ones talked to me and its week in and out shes like oh were reaching out to professionals to come in and fix it consult figure this out i'm getting frustrated of like how do i start a conversation or do i had gotten the monitors working holding so i could check the other equipment and work with it so when they asked what we do i went i dont know yet we are still checking things and running diagnosis now no one talks to me im both running patch jobs every time we turn the system on and how do i fix this they said they have a budget but asked its oh its no problem im like do you even know what that means to buy equipment. the youth that helps me says just let it go let them do this they wanna mess around solve it themselves fine but i feel bad its my job my position yeah im a volunteer but they pay me. In doing research im like okay we need to measure the room make sure the speakers fill the space eq it make sure i set gain right im trying to figure all this out and find out just causally weve been live streaming at our church mom and i are the av team we didnt know we were live streaming no someone is standing on the stairs to our loft no longer just recording sermon but live streaming it to somewhere music and sermon….no one asked us talked to us and im like ummm is this something else i should be researching approaching them like how are you handling this what do you want out of this because this quality is probably not what you want but no one has talked to us about it we found out cause they were telling the singers to listen to it to hear themselves and how they sound…like a guy at the back of the room up the stairs would get quality from a camera when to do proper sound from just their practice i go downstairs. the youth is like not our problem no one would watch it anyway just leave it. But it feels like our problem our domain. I also realize here im probably trying to bite off more than i should. should relax stay in my lane. But so much of this feels like slapped together with chewing gum spit and a prayer like even our music songs we pick pastor picks them great he as some database on his work computer his wife pulls the music from cabinets in the back files and we get a written list from pastor of the songs for our easyworship. his computer lyrics are what goes on the handouts sunday morning. not all the songs have the same names his records versus their music or he will have verse 4 twice instead of 2 or 3 typos or if they do word changes it wont get in the hand out bulletin. There is lack of consistency it seems but they also seem just fine with it but when he sits there every sunday saying words are in your bulletin or on the screen its like no you dont have the right words in the bulletin its not always but its often enough but this is just how we do it apparently no one can think of updating his computer information or double checking it or he doesn't want to i dont know we are getting to also our pastor is old so is his wife out worship leader so are the people that help them we tried a few years ago to approach see if we could help more they were like this other lady does all that is their secretary oh okay this lady who has so many grandchildren shes gone for what seems an accumulative months out of the year were looking at this going we dont know how to step in and help but it seems to be a failing system like worship leader has tried retiring from piano playing 2 years ago she cant see the music gets lost cant remember but no one else can play the piano we have asked congregation over and over. its all these things that are just small ticking away to decay but as mom and i have seen with the current mess of the sound system that not a good thing. But also we arent sure who to approach or ask or how we arent confrontational about this. I've finally gotten enough confidence to push like i need more data to make a proposal or something for the sound system talking to the youth helping me and so he stops and goes will they listen to you or believe you will they care they are stubborn about change as it is even if you have data and proof they might brush you off wait for a professional so is it even worth our time just leave it.
It is a headache a mess. Not just weekly struggle with sound eq and trying to learn so it doesnt sound too compressed so they complain but also battling altos that dont project but complain they cant hear themselves and sopranos who just break glass with every high note that drive everyone away to teens that mess around on stage and tenors that just wanna sit the whole time and not pay attention but they just feel it out anyway. Balancing trying to make it sound good while system is failing left right and center and being like if i try changing anything is it worth it. where do i even start that it will matter or help. Would they even spend money on proper equipment or whatever when they already are like yeah we will get good deals. More and more lately its been like how much of their view on what we do related back to my dads original statement towards my mom of its an easy job even a monkey could do it.
Source: r/ChurchSoundGuys · by /u/babydinokiss