By: John Mills

We've all been to concerts, church services, and/or musical events where we walked away with one of two thoughts. “Wow, that sounded amazing” or “That was a great event, but the sound was horrible."

There are a multitude of things that can go wrong in a mix, but there are just a few tricks that will separate the good engineers from the great ones.

The biggest trick to keep in mind is most attendees at musical events are not sound people they are music people . Try not to get so lost in tweaking the vocal effects and keep in mind most audience members don't care if you have too much 1kHz on the guitar, or that there is a funny lobe in the room at 200Hz. What they want is a great experience. They want to clearly hear all the words and instruments, and especially in worship, to be motivated and inspired by the music. Honestly I think most of them judge their experience based on 3 simple little things: blending all the vocals, hearing all the parts, and how loud it was.

Vocal blend:
Strive for a well-balanced mix of all the background vocals first then set the lead vocal just on top of that.

There is nothing more annoying than one person sticking out of the BGV mix (BackGround Vocal) too far, especially if they have a harmony part, or worse, if they are off pitch.

When I have a large quantity of BGVs, say 10 or more, I often rely a little more on my meters. If you have a console with a meter bridge here is an easy trick. Set the meters to post fader and try to visually balance all the vocals to roughly the same mark on the meters. Keep in mind, meters are not ears, bass singers make a meter react a little differently than soprano singers, so in the end always trust your ears over electronics.

Hearing all the parts:
I've said this in past articles, but this is probably THE major point. When you've got more than one instrument on stage, it's important to actually hear ALL the instruments. Please don't be one of those engineers that is satisfied once everything is up and running. You should be constantly scanning the stage with your eyes and thinking/listening through your mix. Say to yourself, �Do I hear the high hat, keyboard, acoustic guitar, ect?� When the team goes on to the next song, dynamics often change, so ask yourself again, �Do I hear everything?� If you don't, make a change.

Keep the changes subtle as to not distract or call attention to a missing instrument. If you realize that the acoustic guitar isn't even in the mix, don't just slam it up to the right volume, consider waiting to do a quick fade in on the downbeat of the next verse or chorus.

Sub Woofer Energy vs. Volume:
This is a touchy subject. Simply put everyone has an opinion on the volume.

If you haven't already, stop and read the sidebar called How Loud Is It?

That isn't a license to hand this article to the next person that says it's too loud. You still need to be cautious of excessive sound levels and also the comfort of your listeners.

That noted, I'd like to offer a little trick to help build a more energetic mix without adding volume, and actually cutting damaging sound pressure levels (SPL) down.

Consider the �Loudness� button on most stereo systems. Most times when I'm listening to my stereo at lower volumes this button seems to make the cd sound much bigger and more alive. Basically what that button does is it adds a little bass, cuts some mids, and adds some highs. I'm not advocating the smiley face eq , but the theory behind it is valid. When running sound at a lower volume we still want some of the energy low and high frequency energy. That's why AM radio can't do justice to music. Since AM has no low frequencies there is no energy.

So instead of reaching for the master eq or master volume, why not try to build your mix around this theory. I think you'll find that you can achieve a big full sound, without it being excessively loud.

We perceive sound level in two different ways. The �Ouch, I want to plug my ears� loud, and the �Ooh, I can feel that in my tummy� loud. Most people don't like too much of either, but a good balance between the two can create a great experience for the audience and often times elicits a better response by them being more involved.

The trick is to boost your low frequencies around 40 to 50Hz by 6dB on kick drum, bass guitar, and keyboard, and then back down the master about 4 to 5dB. Obviously you'll need a system that can handle those frequencies and keep in mind you don't want to kill the first row with too much chest thumping lows, but just the right blend of it will let you turn down the ear bleeding highs while still creating energy and make the music �feel� bigger. Doing this will create that energy I'm talking about in the mix and it will appear louder, but in actuality it is not, since you turned down the master volume fader you are effectively decreasing the frequencies that could hurt your hearing. You want to create the energy with the subs not the entire system.

Over the next few months we'll go a little deeper on how to get more out of your system, your subs and where they should be, and even some basic system wide tweaks that will help create a clean environment to mix in.

Remember; you are amplifying an experience. Music has energy. We should strive to enlarge what the worship team is doing not by just turning it up, but by blending everything well and creating energy.