Mixing sound for the musical portion of your service is extremely important. Why you say? Remember you are the ears for the congregation and as such you are responsible for what they hear. You are responsible for reproducing how God meant the songs to be presented when He inspired the writers to pen the songs.

By how you mix helps create the atmosphere for the service. Worship is participatory and as such if the congregation cannot participate it becomes to them performance. Even if the worship team is worshiping, it becomes performance to the congregation. We, as mixers, can help worship be all it should be by following a few basic guidelines.

1. Make sure you are familiar with the songs and the style of worship of your church.
2. Work with the musicians and singers to get the best sound out of their instruments. This means you need to have a good sound check. I suggest not doing it on Sunday morning as your time is limited. How about once a month on a Saturday. This gives you time to address any problems the musicians and worship team may have. This will make Sundays go a lot smoother.
3. Understanding musically how to mix for worship. Remember worship without participation is performance, so what do we need musically to get people to participate? You don't have to be musical but a basic understanding of how music is structured is essential.

For people to sing along they must be able to hear the melody, who carries the melody is therefore important in the mix. The soprano normally carries the melody vocally, and the piano musically. This is not always the case so you need to find out who carries the melody for each song.

Timing and clapping is also important so the instruments carrying the timing needs to be prominent in the mix, the kick drum and bass.

This makes the foundation with all else guitars, horns etc added as enhancements that create the emotion of the music.

Remember you are mixing for the congregation, get involved in the music and enjoy it.