First time playing electric running through the boss me 80 multi fx pedal. My sound was really terrible in the house but sounded excellent in my in ear mix.
Our sound tech defines his role as a ministry. As such, he decided to study it like crazy to do the best possible job he could. He built a team around himself and teaches them everything he's learning, as needed. A few months ago, he spent an hour or two with each musician, building what he called a "sound profile" specific to their gear and play style. As the main electric guitar player for our praise team, and using a Walrus Audio ACS1 in place of a real amp, I can honestly say that working with our skilled sound team has been only a good experience. My sound at church is BETTER than my sound at home! He knows it too, and the whole sound team is really enjoying praise and worship. Encourage your sound team to do their homework. Help them, if need be. They are worth investing in, and the music we play for Jesus is DEFINITELY worth investing in.
@@henryvanweeren7233 Thanks! I 100% agree! I have been in other scenarios where pride ruined things, whether from the stage, or from the sound booth, or both. But we are working on a culture of honor and humility. It is so enjoyable! The Lord bless you my brother in Christ!
I actually just talked to the sound person, who I’m actually good friends with, and asked if we could come in one day and dial in my pedalboard for the sound system, and asked when it was convenient for her. She was totally cool with it and we worked together on making it sound good.
And I always thought it was me... Thank you for this video. Great points, all of them, lots of stuff I never considered. I have a few things to add: 1) The acoustics of the house change when it fills up with people. 2) I finally quit worrying about how I sound and started enjoying being in the worship moment. I have a lot of peace about my worship now. I think it has something to do with not focusing on me and placing the focus on God.
I love this podcast setup. 1 table, 2 mics, 3 cameras: person 1, person 2, and zoom out to catch both. And the lighting...ugh...so clear! I love this setup!
Sound Engineer and Musician 🤘🏻 You guys are spot on. Understand your space, be proficient (not necessarily professional) with an EQ, and build relational equity with your team. Those things will yield more positive productivity. Thanks for the help you guys bring to the community!
Build relational equity? Just never use that in real life unless you want to alienate 99% of humans. I’d think you’re an elitist self important church person. No equity. No bueno. No churchy buzz phrases. WWJD? Not try to impress everyone with big words while saying very little.
I am so validated by this topic. God has used the sound system to teach me patience, humility, forbearance for thirty something years. You give great advice and it would be wonderful if volunteers could see this video but I think that very unlikely!
Your story resonated with me. My son began a new role as a worship leader in Newark, UK recently, and he asked me to help him set up the sound-desk, since they have no sound guy. He was concerned his acoustic guitar was broken and might need replacing.Sure enough, when he played it sound awful. With a flash of inspiration, I realised the signal was clipping. It turned out that someone had simply cloned the guitar channel from another instruments channel and the gain was set way too high. A simple teak, and everything was fine: no new guitar needed. It took a little longer to set up the compressor and EQ though and I have yet to help with the delay, since his church is a huge stone space with masses of delay!
It is easy to blame the sound guy. I played at church once where I didn't feel there was a huge discrepancy but the other guitar player did. Fact is, every speaker, power amp, or room will change the tone... you can't expect that your headphones will give you the same audio profile that a full sound system in a worship facility will give you. Great content boys!
It's like singing in the bathroom at home and sounding great. Then try the same in a concert hall. . . not as great as you thought! Same with electric guitar. Amp volume is a key factor. Now with amp modellers, we can get quality sound at low volume. Make sure your signal path is clean and as noise free as possible. Everything matters: key ones for me are: Guitar set up and intonated properly, quality of cables, length of cable run, using a looper instead of chaining pedals, a good compressor, avoid tinny thin sounds. sit well in the mix, listen to what your sound tech says. Record sessions and listen to how your guitar sits in the mix with congregation in and in rehearsal. Big difference. I could go on. . . and will another time. Any questions?
Yes. A perfect storm of budget, installation experience, and skill level in running it..... All true. One other issue I ran into when we did our church building buildout.... The elders/pastor dictate the sound system is designed for SERMONS, not MUSIC. A SPEAKING VOICE, not VOCALS. The guitar will never compete with that mindset. Ironically, that mindset will also keep you checking your own priorties in what should be most important in a service.
At my Catholic parish there is no “sound personnel “ basically its me and the pianist…the PA system is very old but functional..so I sing and play guitar the liturgical peices I get and basically try to keep my sound with not too many effects BUT I truly love my MX5 headrush modeler ( I can customize my virtual pedalboard with (reverb-doubler-comp-EQ) and on the chorus part of the song i use “Cloudburst “ by Strymon., Mel9 EHX… it’s so super great. I’m so blessed and helps me get more into the song for the Lord‘s mass and worship.😊 At times you can ask your parishners ( early birds) to ask them how does it sound clear enough, or a bit too loud😊etc And we always ask for the Lord’s grace for the music and everything please, please help us Amen 🙏
Thanks for all the ideas for the Prime creating patches (rigs). I agree with the problems faced by equipment not being up to the best standards, not being installed professionally and the possibility that the sound people might not be as experienced as we’d like. This add up to some pretty poor sound mixes and experiences. There may be some other variables that really add into our guitar mix. First, when I create patches for songs, I’m probably playing and practicing those using the songs recorded by the groups who made them, either in a studio setting or live. So, these professional musicians are all playing their exact parts, all mixed and blended together using an engineer who has a lot of experience with this group. I would assume those original musicians are more professional than most volunteer musicians. So, I’ve got a patch that works with that mix. When I play with a completely different set of musicians in church, they come with their own personalities and ideas of what is appropriate for the song. This includes the keyboard player who may play up and down the keyboard or maybe plays in the center. Usually, they are playing where the bass and acoustic guitar are playing. Or maybe the bass is playing all over the place. So, the mids frequencies become quickly crowed. The electric guitar player will experience their own instrument being lost in the mid frequencies, so they will feel their sound has thinned out. This can really become apparent if a piano sound or, especially a Rhodes piano is in the mix. Those instruments can consume a lot of the frequencies the guitar player would use. Second, guitar players have a tendency to over drive their sound., a lot. 😅 They may favor a scooped sound or even come from metal rock, (yes I’ve played with these players). So, we might want our sound to be harsher than is appropriate. Guitar players tend to over play the parts. Let’s admit it, most contemporary songs have parts that are fairly minimalistic for the guitar player. So, we want to add more. I’m guilty of this. Third, sometimes it’s very hard to really get the guitar parts to sound like the original. Not all volunteers have an arsenal of guitars, the ability to change guitars between songs or the desire or finances to do so. Some of us are more Fender oriented, some PRS, some Gibson, etc. The current contemporary sound seems very P90 oriented where the guitar is fairly bell sounding, not rounded but more mid thick. Bells don’t have tons of overtones, humbuckers and single coils have different harmonics. While you can try, you’re not going to get a P90 sound from those other pickups. Fourth, many times the songs we are attempting to play have been changed to a different key, possibly 4 or 5 steps away from the original. Basically, the way we play what is needed in the song changes, maybe drastically. What was written in E is now played in B or A. This means the tonality of the song changes. And what’s more, we’re trying to create a patch for a song in a key that has probably been morphed. The sound of the guitar we are trying to recreate doesn’t really even exist. The harmonics have changed. And this goes for the backing tracks as well. When backing tracks are morphed 4 or 5 steps, the harmonic structures of those backing tracks change. In fact, the backing tracks are now probably no longer in actual tune because they were based on a tempered scale which has been morphed. When we now play with the group, the patch we created doesn’t fit what others have created. Last, I’m going to state the most obvious problem we now face in a contemporary group. The drums are mixed as though they are a solo instrument. Between the kick, snare, toms, and cymbals, they have used most of the frequencies. While the mixing engineers have perfected the drums so each and every strike is perfectly audible, the rest of the band is left behind. The bass become a low frequency under tone. The guitars and keyboards are sitting somewhere in the background under pads and drums. In most contemporary music, what the keys and guitars plays 90% of the time makes almost no difference as long as it’s within the chords structure and key signature. So while guitar players are spending time, energy and money trying to get that perfect sound, for the most part , it won’t be heard over the drums and backing tracks. I’m not even sure if we should mention the poor backing vocalist. I’ve been playing bass, some keyboards , acoustic and electric guitars in contemporary bands for the past 25 years. And I’ve been writing and recording my own music for over 40 years.
We you really nailed so many points that are rarely mentioned. I practice with the professional recording and mix my modeler in my headphones and sound like a guitar hero. I play with tons of confidence and get totally pumped for Sunday. Then everything is so thin and weak along with my patches sounding bad per the above it really leaves me frustrated. I play more reserved and that just compounds the problem. I've own several expensive modelers and never found them to be usable for me. I am sure it's due to my own limitations to adjust the nuances of modeling no matter how many videos I watch or patches I buy. Nevertheless, I will look at some of the things you mentioned and things in the video and keep searching for the holy grail of live tone.
Great insight. After over 20 years of lead guitar in worship settings myself, I couldn’t agree more. After trying virtually everything I’m using a Boss ME80 without using a single preset or patch. Every room is different, every key change effects the open strings and character of the chords. Even a capo chokes open chords so different singers in different keys can make a preset unusable. It sadly all comes down to your ears and your ability to understand how the effects need to be used AND, the sound person needs to have ears as well. You can’t replace skill, thank God we all have the responsibility to love and teach each other.
Another thing to consider and maybe discuss at some point. Most pedals (I play a Helix Floor) have mono and stereo effects. If you are setting up your patch at home in stereo, but you are running mono when you get to church, your reverbs, delays, and other spatial effects are not going to sound the same at all. Though we're running everyone stereo now, we had that issue with guitar players quite a bit.
Great advice! I would also add, if you can't make the patch at church, at home, use a good monitoring system that is as flat as possible. And use multiple monitoring sources even at home! Headphones, studio monitors, FRFR amps, $20 ear buds, your in ear monitors, your computer speakers, your car, whatever you can get your hands on. If it sounds good on 80% of those sources, chances are it'll translate okay on a PA system too. (with the right adjustments)
Good topic. At our previous church it took us months to figure out that the crossovers in the speakers were shot….the sound was terrible as a result but it took a professional to diagnose the problem…
Having served as a guitarist in a fairly large church and also working FOH as a mix engineer with others I have come across what I think is a common misunderstanding. Let me set this up: A guitarist, if they are any good will attempt to tone shape and EQ his patches to match the original worship recording pretty closely. In this process *we* often use a HPF to eliminate all of the energy below 100hz and get the guitar so, like the record, it really cuts through the mix while still containing all of those juicy overtones. This track was mixed and mastered by pros who made the guitar sound awesome AND they made certain to leave sonic space for the vocals, bass, and drums. Then we get to church, set up our rig and expect to project this awesomeness that really is 99% close to the original track that was mixed by top tier engineers and mastered by even more top tier mastering engineers. Good stuff right. Now the FOH engineer comes in who has good knowledge of the board, has studied mixing at some level, and was trained along the way he must EQ THE GUITARS AND MAKE SONIC SPACE FOR VOCALS AND BASS!! Ruh roh! We already EQ'd the guitar to make sonic space. Now without spending a lot of time listening he pulls out a bunch of energy between 100-300hz which is all of the meat and potatoes of our guitar to make room for the vocals. He does this while the band is rehearsing and never actually solos the guitar channel to listen with headphones to understand the damage that was just done. Then during 1st service the guitarist has a cool intro solo line and as he begins, his guitar sounds like a banjo or mandolin. It has been WAY over EQ'd. All of the juicy overtones have been squeezed out and now we have this weak, anemic, soul crushing tone coming through the IEM and FOH. All of the other musicians onstage look around to see who is playing the banjo while the guitarist is quietly peeing his pants. The FOH engineer, has no idea this was his doing. He shrugs, figures this guitarist really sucks, and pulls his fader down for the rest of the worship service to eliminate that nasty banjo tone. A bummer outcome for all. How do we fix it? The best way I have found is to generate a working relationship between guitarist and FOH engineer. Explain that this misunderstanding has happened at other churches in the past and how diligently the patches we are using adhere to the original tracks EQ, making room for vocals, bass, and drums. In most cases, no further EQ should be needed but if in your judgement you want to explore it, please please solo the guitar track with headphones while making changes and then listen to the FOH mix to get it right. We want to preserve the juicy natural sound and overtones of the guitar because all of the solo lines are a critical theme in the first song. They need to have tonal authority and not be eviscerated by EQ. This works pretty well when guitarist and FOH engineer have mutual trust. What if time is tight and I cannot have a pow wow w/FOH prior to 1st service? If I hear that my guitar has been banjo'd with EQ during rehearsal, I will simply reach down and add 3-5db of 100-300hz energy after rehearsal and before 1st service. The guitar hook is often the first instrument heard and I know it needs to sound massive so I make this happen. We can have a conversation after the fact and discuss our guitar EQ strategy in private but I have a job to do as a guitarist and I don't want to let a misunderstanding over EQ spoil the intro to worship for 3000 early risers at 1st service. Cheers!
Been serving for 30+ years and it always comes down to the attitude of the sound guy. The key is for them to invest in understanding that using modelers requires a different mindset and approach. And also being open to learning and investing time in understanding what the musician is trying to achieve. Of course a musician also needs to have a sweet spirit to get the needed outcome.
Great topic, and how on point!!! I once had the sound guy (he had all the other non musicians fooled!) tell me, we couldn't add a non powered JBL wedge monitor. He said the amps were too powerful and would blow it! Sad when someone tries to hold onto what they think is their little kingdom. That was the beginning of the end for him. I asked for all the manuals and paperwork for the sound system. I gently educated church leadership that the information we were being told was NOT true. Crazy!
One of the things I learned to do along the journey was to flatten out the board after each show and then set it to the new space because every space is unique and every room changes (even in short periods of time). Humidity levels fluctuate, sunlight may bathe the room one day and not the next, etc.. So many factors affect the sound and if you don't take the time to listen to your room and get to know how you want it to sound, you can't reproduce that sound consistently. And yes, sound guys LOVE when you bring them snacks especially if you're asking them to help you troubleshoot an audio issue. I really appreciate your insight and knowledge when it comes to addressing this issue, I only wish 90 % more of the leadership of churches would pass these videos on to their sound staff, they could learn so much from them. I recently had to leave my bass at church on the stand for the week. When I returned, the atmosphere of the room had fluctuated so much that I had to take much longer than usual to get it back in tune. It rarely goes out of tune when stored in the case but just that short period of time affected it greatly. Thanks for your time.
Man, I'm glad I found this video. Tonight, I used my new Quad Cortex for our church's Good Friday service. I had an acoustic preset worked up that sounded amazing at home. As soon as I started playing at church, I couldn't believe it. It sounded harsh, like there was a significant upper mid range boost. That's probably the case. We were short on time, but I'll have the sound remove the effects and EQ from my channel and see how it sounds.
There are a ton of valid points brought up in this video. If you do not have a professional acoustician and sound designer install and set up the sound system, there is a good chance it won't sound ideal no matter what you do. Acoustics is an entire field of physics that most people don't have any idea about. That being said there are definitely things that you can do as a musician to try and help mitigate total loss of sound control. Fletcher Munson Curve. The volume at what you're playing absolutely affects the tone of any piece of amplification or modeling gear that you're using. The room that you are in plays a massive role as well. It'll affect how the Sound reacts with everything else that is around it. If you're playing a large venue, lower your reverb (possibly remove if needed). If you are using a traditional set up with a speaker cabinet and a microphone, the microphone placement is the most important factor because that is the final step before it reaches the mixing board and then the FOH and Monitor speakers. You have to dial in your sound in the room you're playing at the volume you're playing at with the equipment you'll be using. That's why soundcheck is so important. I tour with Fractal Audio gear and even though my tone sounds the same through FOH every night, each sound engineer still tweaks it very slightly for the specific room, even though it doesn't ever change for my IEMs. And finally if you are using some sort of digital gear, you can create a separate signal path or split your current one so that you're in ear monitoring tone is the way it should be, but then you have a split with a different EQ that can be adjusted for the gig itself. You still have to fit in the mix with the rest of the band and you do have to mind yourself in that situation as well. You don't need a lot of bass in your tone if you're playing with both a bassist and a keyboard/organ player. Cut out everything below 120 Hz in your signal if you need to. You also shouldn't be cutting more than the vocal and the choir, so you might have to trim out everything above 6000 Hz. This all just comes from years of touring experience in everything from churches and nightclubs, to casinos and festivals, to community musical theater gigs and weddings. The key is communication and working together with everyone else involved in the production of the show. 😄
Led worship in small to large sized churches (and ran sound) from about 2001 to 2012 and one of my biggest regrets is not taking more time to work with, learn with, and teach the sound techs. IMO, everyone on the stage should take a turn as copilot behind the sound board. The room can change drastically from sound check to when a bunch of humans show up; helps to know why and how to fix it. Also helps vocalists understand how monitoring works/sounds in a mix. Lastly, if tone stinks live and the board is running flat as suggested, probably need to take a look at distortion and mids. We usually need less drive and more mids than we think we do.
Good advice. I would also add get your hearing checked (for the whole team if possible). This will identify if there are some frequencies that you don't hear well and may be overcompensating for with eq or volume. It will also form a baseline for future hearing assessments.
I agree with everything you are saying. On top of being a guitar player ... let me say this also as a Pastor ... and I agree with what you said here OK ... regarding having a good relationship with the sound guy ... yes we should ... we MUST have a great relationship with everyone but ... why do we almost have to suck up to the sound guy, in order to fix an issue ? ... How about raising Disciples, who know and understand what it means to have a servant heart? It's sad to see the current state of many churches, where buttering up the sound guy seems necessary!
good point about having a "room at home version" of your patch and a "at church version" of your patch...this also applies to different guitars you're using (ie: i have 2 identical models of the same guitar, but one is way hotter in the mix than the other, so adjustments have to be made to the patches i use with that guitar)...
thats a good topic , being a worship leader in a small church i do a bit of everything. i appreciate this talk, its helpful. ive dealt with "sound guys" that like to make the sound to their particular liking or dont have good practices. this helps me try to think of different ways to communicate. again great talk guys
One extra thing that I feel was quickly glossed over that I struggled with. If your church/venue is in an older building (designed to hold service before microphones) chances are you have really high vaulted ceilings and ALOT of natural reverb. If you chase after the modern worship tone of long reverbs and trailing delays you can very quickly wash yourself out. At home in the headphones you of course need the reverb and delay to keep things from sounding dry (especially with modelers). But in these sorts of high reverb scenarios definitely try to dial it back to try to regain some punch and clarity.
That is a great point you have made here. Our building was built in the 1950's. Plus we are in the process of remodeling. Vinyl plank flooring, Many windows with no window coverings yet, No sound treatments. It is horrific, but we are getting through. And yes, many times lately I cannot even be heard and barely can be heard when I am doing my leads... but they don't want it any louder... so... I suffer. ;-)
Man, right on guys. I was just learning "This is our God" using your patch for the Helix I bought and thinking how killer it sounds through my home studio monitors and just wishing that it would sound half as good at our church when we do it.
I just bring my amp with a line out. The line out sounds great and I dial it in to my liking. Once I set up on stage as long as my amp sounds great and I can feel the amp on stage, I could care less how the line out sounds out of the front of the house- that would be up to the sound guy to figure out. I'm still going to enjoy myself on stage and can't worry about anything else.
thanks for the video ... it doesnt matter if you are gigging or if you are playing in church - have a good relation to your sound people is essential! I made the experience, that it helps to have a professional sound technician mixing your bands from time to time - have him helping you to create a "basic mix" for each band / musician (of course including the guitar guides using modelers). Also let him advice your own technician in church what he is doing and why ... such way helped us a lot, especially when new persons join your technician or your music team
Great thread! It takes time to work with the equipment in the PA to get any sound right. Great idea to turn off everything or flatten the channel first. I have an Alesis mixer and QSC powered speakers that I like a lot and know how to use. Although I use an amp with pedalboard, my Fractal AX II (old now) into the PA also sounds great. The other solution is to have your independent sound - amp, modeler into a cab…..then mic it. I am amazed at the music equipment some churches have.
At 9:00 - hit the nail on the head with perceived frequencies at different volumes. With my headphones at home, I have my volume around 30-40%, so my presets sound darker and less punchy. But I've set my Helix to send full 0dB output to FOH. As a result, the signal in my IEMs sounds much brighter, but that's because it's the full 0dB tone coming back from the desk into my IEMs. In the end I got a wireless lead to hear FOH and analysed our online streams a lot to get an idea. Our sound techs still do a lot of sweeping during sound check though so I may send them this video 😁
As the guy who had to learn how to eq a room from scratch I can attest to 1) I had no idea what I was doing 2) it took a lot of trial and error to figure things out 3) 17 years later I have a decent idea of what’s going on and what frequencies to avoid
These guys are spot on I took a helix to one church on a Thursday evening….sounded amazing….just like the headphone output and maybe slightly better. Took the exact same rig to another church that Sunday…and it was unbearable. I’m not even exaggerating.
Finally! Thank you for acknowledging that: 1. Most congregations are in a shoestring budget and will never be able to afford thousands and thousands dollars worth of equipment to "get the sound". 2. Most volunteers are not trained. So this is what needs to be shown - how do you get decent "production" (I hate that term) for a small to midsize congregation. Side note - all I really want is to preach the Gospel and help others follow Jesus. I strongly dislike that our society and (church) culture have put these production standards in the church. At the moment, it is what it is.
As someone who owns several of your patches, and at a church who has properly EQ'd the sanctuary PA, the reason I sound terrible at church is because I"m a terrible player 😂
One thing I do to help is I have the identical FRFR speaker/amp at home that I have at church - this way whatever I dial at home is exactly what comes out of the monitor/speaker on stage. Also, using an FRFR is going to be closer to what is going to the soundboard vs going into a guitar amp that would sound drastically different.
Going wireless let’s you “fix” the board so easily. I was a youth pastor and got an Xvive wireless system, the. I did exactly what you guys talked about and man it changed the sound so much.
"Does your tone sound bad? It couldn't possibly be the patches we made in a vacuum with no context similar to the one in which you play! Buy more patches!" But in all seriousness, it is clear you guys mean to help and you have a lot of great content available for free. Thank you.
I'm no sound engineer but I'm pretty sure you want to start with the best signal or sound coming out of your rig that you can. I understand what you are saying but what these guys are doing for me with patches and IR's is to create a quality sound template that saves me time recreating sounds that I would like to produce from amps I will never own. Thier acoustic guitar IR's are really good. The pads they have produced are good as well.
Well right from the get go, you covered the reason I don’t want to use a helix, fractal, Kemper, or QC direct at church. Nobody knows what they are doing. I don’t pretend to either. But I do know how to use an amp. It may not be great like a huge production but it’s better than my alternative.
I thought the idea of building relationship with the sound guy was just me... excellent tip! Guitar FOH has gone up by many dBs since... also using Boss WL-20 helped during fine tuning. Thank you for making this video, the top tip for me was to ask the sound guy to turn everything off and hear the source. The biggest factor in (my opinion/experience) affecting tone is the venue/building/room.
In both of the churches I play in, we have issues with old sound systems. One has monitors that look like stereo speakers from the 80's. The other has updated boards, but the speakers we use were found in our upstairs storage. It works, but not without its conflicts. I think continuity is another issue. Limited budgets doesn't allow for consistency in monitors and speakers. When you have One EV main, and one Yamaha, and 2 Kustom floor monitors, and the third is a BOSE ( Buy Other Sound Equipment), can't expect to sound like you're playing at the Long Beach Arena.
No experience at church....yet, however everything you say is valid even with experienced techs at other venues. There is however another factor is the human one. I.e. if you are new to performing live, you may be nervous and tight and you can believe it will affect your tone.
I have started using your head rush patches for my core tone I just switched the organization around I used the Dr Z. Sound amazing. I just added an IR with a little bit more mids for my guitar
Two Things: As a Quad Cotex owner, i have found that the included factory presets need to be adjusted - usually the volume or gain level of the amp model. A pair of 2000w QSC speakers are a recommended investment for small churches...they are great for anywhere from 50 to 350 members, IMO.
We have pro level audio that was installed by audio pros, so no issue there. Allen & Heath board, RCF hanging arrays and subs as well as forward facing RCF stage speakers. We run IEMs so silent stage. I think our live sound is usually very good. There sometimes can be a difference between the two FOH engineers. The biggest difference is the livestream mix, which can be mixed in a back room using a different A&H board. Sometimes it is not mixed by shall we say.......a musician or audiophile. It makes a difference if someone is familiar with that weekend's songs and how everything sits in the mix.
Gibson Les Paul Standard: $3000 Helix Floor: $1700 Church announcement on screen before service: "Sound Team volunteers needed. No experience necessary." : PRICELESS
Imagine your FOH engineer doesn’t know what they’re doing, but also gets butt hurt when you make suggestions (even when doing it nicely). Would you suggest removing compression and EQ from patches in that case?
@@worshiptutorials I installed a Weber beam blocker in the cab to diffuse the sound, which helps. I always run it in 45W mode and never turn up the master past 2. I also keep my channel volumes down. I primarily use Channel 2 with the gain set at the edge of breakup. I rarely use channel 3 since it's not often I need a high-gain tone for church. Every once in a while will play an old Delirious song or an Honor and Glory song that calls for it. We played my Glorious a few times, and I used the Mark II or IV mode. I still run my gain pretty conservatively. I'm just after the voicing. I don't want to hinder anyone by being super loud.
Boogies are such cool amps. We had an original pre mark 1 from the 70s for a bit. Super cool. And I have a 100w Lonestar. That thing is LOUD and sounds great in pretty much every setting.
This is why I keep my amps just in case. I have a amp cage and a power attenuator if need be. If I have to run a direct solution then I take the right out to the house and left into my inear. Not the best but my current solution.
One time I was playing a medley of patriotic songs on an acoustic guitar. I got there early and we practiced into a Mic. Everything was good. During the service as I walked up to the Mic ready to play, the sound guy was not paying attention. He was talking with someone and never turned the Mic up the whole time. After the service some lady said I could barley hear you. I always use and amp now as a stage monitor and they can Mic it if they want...
I've been struggling with this for a few months playing an hd500x straight into house, finally tonight i convinced them to remove all EQ from my channel and leave it completely fresh, sounded like a brand new guitar
I agree with many of the comments. "... and properly set the gain stage..." - that can be KEY. Be sure your level is in the right place. Digital clipping is BAD - but it's equally bad to be under-gained as you may be overly mushy and dull sounding.
Great advice, although I think you pretty much nailed it in the first 30 seconds or so - if you only listen to your modeller through headphones at home, it will sound WAY different in a live system. Especially relevant to closed-back headphones.
Absolutely true!!! A couple years ago I was playing a lot of gigs, and my bass setup sounded amazing everywhere except this one particular church. The sound man kept tryin to convince me something was wrong with my bass. I stopped playing at that church because the sound guy was a novice and thought he was pro, totally unbearable. I actually played a gig at that church on a off night with a professional sound man and it was beautiful! Same system.
100% like you said at the top. Sound system is poorly installed/setup, the guitar channel on the board has processing or eq or some effects that are unnecessary, your sound guy doesn’t know what he/she is doing.
If you're in the Behringer eco-system just download the software/app, bring your laptop or mobile device and fix your own channel setting or the entire mix. I have done this many times and sometimes still do. Most sound guys won't even notice.
Great video, and great insight. I agree with the points you make. But I think it also needs to be said and understood, that sometimes a great "bedroom tone" can be a bad "stage/in-mix tone". There is only so much a sound tech can do with EQ and comp. As a guitarist and sound tech, I've been on both sides of this. I've tried dialing in amazing tones at home AND solo on the PA, that just didn't work, and disappeared in the mix. I think all worship musicians should/would benefit from learning the basics of mixing FOH. I've at least become a better musician, since becoming a sound tech.
I had this issue, where my pedalboard will sound great at home with my amp, then at church it was totally different and bad. The reason is because my pedalboard was not going to an amp anymore, it was going straight to the digital mixer. In order to fix this, I had to add a pre-amp which it model a Fernder amp, now that changed the game and now my guitar and my pedalboard sounds great.
or set your amp on stage like professionals do and set the amp to your liking and mic it and only let the sound guy control your volume for balance with the rest of the team. Done
2:40 As a working audio engineer and a guitarist who also does both at church, it MIGHT be partially your fault. Electric guitars that sound great on their own might make a dense band mix sound like mud. If you do have a volunteer sound person they may not know how to shape it without killing it entirely. In my experience, you can preempt that by making sure you’re not too heavy around the 200Hz and 500Hz range (which can help with fullness, but can quickly muddy up a dense mix of tracks and key layers). Also the guitar will get bite-y and compete with vocal intelligibility in the 2-3k range. Depending on the guitarist, I’ll often run a high pass with a fairly flat eq. If I’m making cuts those are usually the culprits. My 2 cents
I am an FOH and guitarist. I have a benefit to other FOHs. In the last 20 years where i am mixing in different churches, my experience is, that most churches have tech to work with. Maybe it was cheap, but you will get good sound from cheap tech IF they didnt make a big mistake on Speaker selection and placement. With selection i mean to have a balanced speaker setup. It doesnt have to be expensive. But most churches can be mixed better by better understanding. Also, as an FOH, nothing is more annoying, than being ignored in the beginning to dial in everyone by themselve but then a top sound is expected... that is usually a time problem and mostly that is the first thing to skip... so if you want your sound to be good, take your time with your FOH and as already said, build a relationship, not a fight
The best sound people that I know are musicians because they think the way we do. I’ve worked with sound people in the secular world and think because they have a two-year degree from some sound engineering school they know what they’re doing, but they don’t have an ear for music. Plus many of them have big egos.
Great video. I'm dealing with this now. I feel like I come to play mostly to support the band and the worship leader. They all tell me I have amazing tone and touch but friends in the room tell me they can't hear me through FOH. I've been playing worship guitar for over 20 years so it's frustrating. The good news is our church is dropping some serious change to get the room acoustically treated/optimized and upgrading the audio system. We have fairly good techs who I think are battling room related issues (it's a very large room, probably seats 1200 that is typically only about 25% full - historically they've hosted large conferences and still do but avg. Sunday is mostly empty). I may try running a bit less reverb and less gain to see if it improves clarity. I might sacrifice some of the goodness of what is heard for the IEMs and the feel but get better clarity in the mix when everyone is playing. Interestingly it seems to be more the lower frequencies that are obscured. If I play single note lead parts they tend to come out more. I do also notice though there's a very weak signal on the streaming mix too so I've wondering about using different DI solution that has some kind of line driver.
Not sure if this was mentioned in the video, but the way guitars have piezo or some kind of electronic pick up is worthy of discussion. Specifically, when you want to play in a band, you actually DON'T want the round, full, lush sound of a guitar, you actually want the piezo electric pick up sound that "cuts" through a certain mids/highs. Most people think having the round, full, lush sound of a guitar is good for stage, but it isn't. It's good for solo guitar at home play, but on stage, you're playing with other instruments. Acoustic guitar needs to play its role, and it is actually better to have a "worse" pickup system in the acoustic for band play, as opposed to a $500+ pickup in the guitar. My two cents.
Was literally talking about this with another musician friend earlier. Lately I’ve been playing in our auditorium (larger YWAM base) for our Monday Morning Worship, and my guitar with my Headrush MX5 has been sounding muddy as heck live, but when I’m practicing alone, amazing. I kind of figured that it had to do with the EQ (been training as a sound engineer myself), but the guy who has been running it said nothing needed to be changed. Even my other friend’s guitar sounds muddy as well (he has an actual pedalboard). What ends up happening is that the electric gets lost in the mix when the whole band plays, unless it’s played during a more quiet time in the song. Or the guitar just sounds cheap and dead. I appreciate y’all’s advice to ask them to test things out together. I’m gonna try and talk with our sound guy to see if he’s willing to try things out. But I also didn’t think about adjusting the EQ of the patch itself, too. So needed. This video. Much appreciated, God Bless y’all!
I intend to ask the Audio guy----we have two, who alternate Sundays-----about my track on the Midas. Gonna get him to turn OFF any FX on that board. Another REASON for that, which you guys didn't mention, is that there's EQ and Compression on many of the POD GO devices I already mentioned. GOOD suggestion. Interesting video. I play EG more than half the Sundays at my church, the other Sundays, on AG. I have a POD GO. I do experience this issue as it sounds different at church than it does HERE. I also have a home recording studio so when I work with my POD GO, I have it hooked up to my Allen & heath ZED 60, into my Interface, and through my KALI 8 inch 3-way studio monitors. I also LOVE and USE the Pod Go Edit s/w while here. Too much work to adjust anything on the fly at church just on the unit. SO, at church, at times, it just sounds different than here. I use Weston UM-20's, but only in one ear. Usually sounds very good in my In-ear, but sometimes, it just sounds a bit "tinny", or more High's at church than here. I also usually have an EQ, Compressor and a Reverb ON my POD GO. Use Delay when needed, as well as light distortion, and sometimes modulation, with a Chorus. I switch off between a TELE and my Gretsch 5420T, depending on the songs we're doing.
Well done. There is another whole topic, or let's say another "group" of reasons your rig will sound very different, home studio/bedroom/music room, to church. But it's enough for you to make another tutorial just for this issue . . . Your rig will sound hugely different playing it solo than it will with other instruments playing at the same time. Be it a church band, a wedding band, jazz band, bar band . . . You could cover what happens to this marvelous mid range heavy instrument when you play your patches in a setting where there are 6 cymbals and a snare drum filling the space with hugh highs, while a kick drum, some toms, a bass guitar, a "left hand heavy" keyboard player (who doesn't know how to sit on their left hand!) are all there filling more space with gigantic lows! All of a sudden your lush, ambient guitar patch gets lost in the mix. There are tons of factors involved that could fill the space of a tutorial. Frequency cancellation, effects that tend to "mush", as in why we often keep a tube screamer or OD on all the time, even with the gain at zero. etc. One you mentioned, the difference between playing loud, vs. quietly. Plus, the other instruments burying the highs and lows in your patches. I suggest, when possible, once you have your patch roughed in, get some backing tracks, or even recordings of the types of songs you're going to be playing. Run them through a decent sound system. Dial the patch in a bit more. Then...crank it up to performance level, for just long enough to hear what all you lose. Adjust, tweak, then crank it up again. I'm fortunate enough to be able to play (day or night) at performance volume in my music studio. But if you cannot (if you live in an appartment, or have neighbors too close by) then create a performance environment through your headphones. So you hear the recorded music or backing tracks, and your guitar at unity. And tweak from there. That won't give you the identical sound of being in the room, and/or at higher volume. But it will be a good bit closer. THEN, when at soundcheck, be prepared to bring up your mids a bit. Maybe even cut the lows and highs a bit. Teeny bits at a time! When the mids are out front, your sound will shine! IMHO, of course! LOL It's far better for you to learn how to EQ and create patches that will sound good through your FOH mix than it is to expect a sound man to replicate your sound, running it through the board. As you said, work with the sound tech. Ideally, give you a pretty flat mix. No effects! You already have them in your patch. Zero comp and EQ. Although, once tweaked you might help them add a teeny bit of enhancement to your mix. AND . . . if at all possible, do your final tweaking with the full band playing. LISTEN while the full sound check is running. If wireless, go out front and listen. It's a science! : )
I always check my line out before each set right at the end of my board... that way I know I am sending the best signal possible. It is rare that it ever sounds the same once it leaves the board. My issue is usually that the board is run by someone that doesn't play music, or have the appropriate skill set. Churches need to prioritize that position more.
You guys are amazing! I am really surprised you didn't mention anything about FRFR Speakers such as the HeadRush FRFR-108. I have been playing lead and rhythm electric for over 15yrs now and until this speaker came out I was always puzzled by the difference in my tone from home to church even dialing in to the room. The FRFR doesn't give you the exact tone match as you covered the EQ, Compression, etc have a HUGE play from FOH, but it made all the difference in the world. Playing through this speaker in a medium-sized room and then plugging it into FOH...... was pretty dog-gone close, enough to definitely matter and change the game. Head Phones are the worst to try and mimic guitar tones from room to room. DONT TRY!! I use my Head Rush amp each time I tweak my patch or download something. Once I dial in that sound into what I like it takes me no time to make FOH sound very similar. Curious if you guys ever use those speakers.??
This video is actually part of a longer video we’ll post later where we talk about all the ‘other stuff’ you need when you use a modeler. We cover FRFR’s and give some recommendations 👍🏻
My sound guy thinks its ok to plug a guitar straight into a DI without the need of some sort of pre amp/cab sim! They were running it like this for a while before I turned up until I had to say that “the guitar is sounding a little thin there!” Took a while to convince him tbh but people can be so stubborn which is half the problem 🙈
What I've noticed the most is the gain staging. Weak gain staging ie not enough level through the FOH makes for weak thin guitar. Seems obvious, but something I've been experimenting with while making patches is building them out at lower monitoring levels and finding the sweet spot between the peaks and valleys that I know my sound guys will probably be mixing the guitar at. Extra tip- Get to know your sound guys mixing style and then while building out pre-sets think how you can maximize your sound through their approach.
he's not wrong about the "environment" you're playing in...the sound system, the acoustics, and the experience level of the people running the board all effect how everyone sounds on any given Sunday (and he was gracious in how he pointed all this out)...working with your sound-techs, etc will help you both figure out how to get everything sounding more solid/consistent...it's like anything else- if you don't understand each other's perspective on a situation, you can't come up with solutions that make both parties jobs easier, with better results for everyone...and, yeah- it could also be that you have your settings dialed in incorrectly for the environment and equipment you're playing in/through...
Thanks for covering this topic. I was just thinking about asking you all about this last week. I’m happy with the tone that comes through my in-ears but what comes through the house sounds nowhere near as good.
You know what. I actually agree with what you've said that you should have a good relationship with the sound guy/tech. And we do that to all people in the church. May it be a volunteer or not, a loving kindness relationship is good for any organization, church or workplace. But if you are a sound guy and you are claiming to be a christian, and you require your musician to give you a special relationship so that you give them a good mix or a good sound, then you're not a christian at all. You want bribes. You prostitute your knowledge and skills. Because no matter if people don't give you the treatment you want, you will give them your service without expecting in return because you love God, so you love His people, so without partiality you give them your best. Your musician and your congregation. Don't act like a boss because you hold the volume slider and you will turn down those you don't like but be a servant. If one doesn't produce a good sound, help them, assist them, communicate with them.
Love this format! Although I know this suggestion would be quite "involved", I would LOVE to take this topic taken into the practical where we see this happen at church. Have the recorded audio of what the headphones sound like. Then record the audio of what is heard in-house. Then run through the options of adjusting EQ at the board vs. from a Helix. Although you said you could do a special patch, unless you're able to walk out INTO the house and hear it, adjusting Global-EQ and/or the patch itself still seems like a shot-in-the-dark. Wouldn't it be better for the FOH to make the adjustments at the board so you can still hear the "inspiring tones" of your Helix un-adjusted and un-tampered with?
I own just about everything you guys have created. The verb and delay settings don't sit in the mix and sound washed out. I have to boost mids just to be heard. And this is on a quality sound system. Don't misunderstand. They're good but they are not good for live without tweaks
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Have you experienced this at your church? What did you do? Let us know! 👇🏻
First time playing electric running through the boss me 80 multi fx pedal. My sound was really terrible in the house but sounded excellent in my in ear mix.
i luckily dont have these problems but i agree for other churches its a problem. ;)
I have this happen with my actual pedals too!!!
Still working on it but its a combination of things so gonna take some time. Small tweaks here n there has helped and still praising God
Good information Thank You
Our sound tech defines his role as a ministry. As such, he decided to study it like crazy to do the best possible job he could. He built a team around himself and teaches them everything he's learning, as needed. A few months ago, he spent an hour or two with each musician, building what he called a "sound profile" specific to their gear and play style.
As the main electric guitar player for our praise team, and using a Walrus Audio ACS1 in place of a real amp, I can honestly say that working with our skilled sound team has been only a good experience. My sound at church is BETTER than my sound at home!
He knows it too, and the whole sound team is really enjoying praise and worship.
Encourage your sound team to do their homework. Help them, if need be. They are worth investing in, and the music we play for Jesus is DEFINITELY worth investing in.
That sound tech is blessed to have all of you working together!
@@henryvanweeren7233 Thanks! I 100% agree! I have been in other scenarios where pride ruined things, whether from the stage, or from the sound booth, or both. But we are working on a culture of honor and humility. It is so enjoyable!
The Lord bless you my brother in Christ!
@@mrstrypes Thanks for the encouragement. 😶
Now THAT is a great sound technician! Faithful in the little and the big!
The key to this is a sound person that has the vision and the heart to do things like this.
I actually just talked to the sound person, who I’m actually good friends with, and asked if we could come in one day and dial in my pedalboard for the sound system, and asked when it was convenient for her. She was totally cool with it and we worked together on making it sound good.
And I always thought it was me...
Thank you for this video. Great points, all of them, lots of stuff I never considered. I have a few things to add:
1) The acoustics of the house change when it fills up with people.
2) I finally quit worrying about how I sound and started enjoying being in the worship moment. I have a lot of peace about my worship now. I think it has something to do with not focusing on me and placing the focus on God.
“Leaders define reality.”
The above is the most profound statement I have heard in awhile.
I love this podcast setup. 1 table, 2 mics, 3 cameras: person 1, person 2, and zoom out to catch both. And the lighting...ugh...so clear! I love this setup!
❤🎉
Sound Engineer and Musician 🤘🏻
You guys are spot on. Understand your space, be proficient (not necessarily professional) with an EQ, and build relational equity with your team. Those things will yield more positive productivity. Thanks for the help you guys bring to the community!
Build relational equity? Just never use that in real life unless you want to alienate 99% of humans. I’d think you’re an elitist self important church person. No equity. No bueno. No churchy buzz phrases. WWJD? Not try to impress everyone with big words while saying very little.
I am so validated by this topic. God has used the sound system to teach me patience, humility, forbearance for thirty something years. You give great advice and it would be wonderful if volunteers could see this video but I think that very unlikely!
My sound guy on tour was an electric guitarist himself. Not as much of a tone junkie as me, but it gave me comfort with him behind the console.
Your story resonated with me. My son began a new role as a worship leader in Newark, UK recently, and he asked me to help him set up the sound-desk, since they have no sound guy. He was concerned his acoustic guitar was broken and might need replacing.Sure enough, when he played it sound awful. With a flash of inspiration, I realised the signal was clipping. It turned out that someone had simply cloned the guitar channel from another instruments channel and the gain was set way too high. A simple teak, and everything was fine: no new guitar needed. It took a little longer to set up the compressor and EQ though and I have yet to help with the delay, since his church is a huge stone space with masses of delay!
It is easy to blame the sound guy. I played at church once where I didn't feel there was a huge discrepancy but the other guitar player did. Fact is, every speaker, power amp, or room will change the tone... you can't expect that your headphones will give you the same audio profile that a full sound system in a worship facility will give you. Great content boys!
It's like singing in the bathroom at home and sounding great. Then try the same in a concert hall. . . not as great as you thought!
Same with electric guitar. Amp volume is a key factor. Now with amp modellers, we can get quality sound at low volume. Make sure your signal path is clean and as noise free as possible. Everything matters: key ones for me are: Guitar set up and intonated properly, quality of cables, length of cable run, using a looper instead of chaining pedals, a good compressor, avoid tinny thin sounds. sit well in the mix, listen to what your sound tech says. Record sessions and listen to how your guitar sits in the mix with congregation in and in rehearsal. Big difference. I could go on. . . and will another time. Any questions?
Yes. A perfect storm of budget, installation experience, and skill level in running it..... All true.
One other issue I ran into when we did our church building buildout.... The elders/pastor dictate the sound system is designed for SERMONS, not MUSIC. A SPEAKING VOICE, not VOCALS. The guitar will never compete with that mindset. Ironically, that mindset will also keep you checking your own priorties in what should be most important in a service.
This is so true. I have purchased many of your tones. Take them to church and… Everything you have said is true.
This format is outstanding! Please consider making it a permanent part of all you do for the church community! Appreciate y’all! 🙏🙌🎸
At my Catholic parish there is no “sound personnel “ basically its me and the pianist…the PA system is very old but functional..so I sing and play guitar the liturgical peices I get and basically try to keep my sound with not too many effects BUT I truly love my MX5 headrush modeler ( I can customize my virtual pedalboard with (reverb-doubler-comp-EQ) and on the chorus part of the song i use “Cloudburst “ by Strymon., Mel9 EHX… it’s so super great. I’m so blessed and helps me get more into the song for the Lord‘s mass and worship.😊
At times you can ask your parishners ( early birds) to ask them how does it sound clear enough, or a bit too loud😊etc
And we always ask for the Lord’s grace for the music and everything please, please help us Amen 🙏
Thanks for all the ideas for the Prime creating patches (rigs).
I agree with the problems faced by equipment not being up to the best standards, not being installed professionally and the possibility that the sound people might not be as experienced as we’d like. This add up to some pretty poor sound mixes and experiences. There may be some other variables that really add into our guitar mix.
First, when I create patches for songs, I’m probably playing and practicing those using the songs recorded by the groups who made them, either in a studio setting or live. So, these professional musicians are all playing their exact parts, all mixed and blended together using an engineer who has a lot of experience with this group. I would assume those original musicians are more professional than most volunteer musicians. So, I’ve got a patch that works with that mix. When I play with a completely different set of musicians in church, they come with their own personalities and ideas of what is appropriate for the song. This includes the keyboard player who may play up and down the keyboard or maybe plays in the center. Usually, they are playing where the bass and acoustic guitar are playing. Or maybe the bass is playing all over the place. So, the mids frequencies become quickly crowed. The electric guitar player will experience their own instrument being lost in the mid frequencies, so they will feel their sound has thinned out. This can really become apparent if a piano sound or, especially a Rhodes piano is in the mix. Those instruments can consume a lot of the frequencies the guitar player would use.
Second, guitar players have a tendency to over drive their sound., a lot. 😅 They may favor a scooped sound or even come from metal rock, (yes I’ve played with these players). So, we might want our sound to be harsher than is appropriate. Guitar players tend to over play the parts. Let’s admit it, most contemporary songs have parts that are fairly minimalistic for the guitar player. So, we want to add more. I’m guilty of this.
Third, sometimes it’s very hard to really get the guitar parts to sound like the original. Not all volunteers have an arsenal of guitars, the ability to change guitars between songs or the desire or finances to do so. Some of us are more Fender oriented, some PRS, some Gibson, etc. The current contemporary sound seems very P90 oriented where the guitar is fairly bell sounding, not rounded but more mid thick. Bells don’t have tons of overtones, humbuckers and single coils have different harmonics. While you can try, you’re not going to get a P90 sound from those other pickups.
Fourth, many times the songs we are attempting to play have been changed to a different key, possibly 4 or 5 steps away from the original. Basically, the way we play what is needed in the song changes, maybe drastically. What was written in E is now played in B or A. This means the tonality of the song changes. And what’s more, we’re trying to create a patch for a song in a key that has probably been morphed. The sound of the guitar we are trying to recreate doesn’t really even exist. The harmonics have changed. And this goes for the backing tracks as well. When backing tracks are morphed 4 or 5 steps, the harmonic structures of those backing tracks change. In fact, the backing tracks are now probably no longer in actual tune because they were based on a tempered scale which has been morphed. When we now play with the group, the patch we created doesn’t fit what others have created.
Last, I’m going to state the most obvious problem we now face in a contemporary group. The drums are mixed as though they are a solo instrument. Between the kick, snare, toms, and cymbals, they have used most of the frequencies. While the mixing engineers have perfected the drums so each and every strike is perfectly audible, the rest of the band is left behind. The bass become a low frequency under tone. The guitars and keyboards are sitting somewhere in the background under pads and drums. In most contemporary music, what the keys and guitars plays 90% of the time makes almost no difference as long as it’s within the chords structure and key signature. So while guitar players are spending time, energy and money trying to get that perfect sound, for the most part , it won’t be heard over the drums and backing tracks. I’m not even sure if we should mention the poor backing vocalist.
I’ve been playing bass, some keyboards , acoustic and electric guitars in contemporary bands for the past 25 years. And I’ve been writing and recording my own music for over 40 years.
We you really nailed so many points that are rarely mentioned. I practice with the professional recording and mix my modeler in my headphones and sound like a guitar hero. I play with tons of confidence and get totally pumped for Sunday. Then everything is so thin and weak along with my patches sounding bad per the above it really leaves me frustrated. I play more reserved and that just compounds the problem. I've own several expensive modelers and never found them to be usable for me. I am sure it's due to my own limitations to adjust the nuances of modeling no matter how many videos I watch or patches I buy. Nevertheless, I will look at some of the things you mentioned and things in the video and keep searching for the holy grail of live tone.
Great insight. After over 20 years of lead guitar in worship settings myself, I couldn’t agree more. After trying virtually everything I’m using a Boss ME80 without using a single preset or patch. Every room is different, every key change effects the open strings and character of the chords. Even a capo chokes open chords so different singers in different keys can make a preset unusable. It sadly all comes down to your ears and your ability to understand how the effects need to be used AND, the sound person needs to have ears as well. You can’t replace skill, thank God we all have the responsibility to love and teach each other.
Another thing to consider and maybe discuss at some point. Most pedals (I play a Helix Floor) have mono and stereo effects. If you are setting up your patch at home in stereo, but you are running mono when you get to church, your reverbs, delays, and other spatial effects are not going to sound the same at all. Though we're running everyone stereo now, we had that issue with guitar players quite a bit.
Great advice! I would also add, if you can't make the patch at church, at home, use a good monitoring system that is as flat as possible. And use multiple monitoring sources even at home! Headphones, studio monitors, FRFR amps, $20 ear buds, your in ear monitors, your computer speakers, your car, whatever you can get your hands on. If it sounds good on 80% of those sources, chances are it'll translate okay on a PA system too. (with the right adjustments)
Good topic. At our previous church it took us months to figure out that the crossovers in the speakers were shot….the sound was terrible as a result but it took a professional to diagnose the problem…
Having served as a guitarist in a fairly large church and also working FOH as a mix engineer with others I have come across what I think is a common misunderstanding. Let me set this up:
A guitarist, if they are any good will attempt to tone shape and EQ his patches to match the original worship recording pretty closely. In this process *we* often use a HPF to eliminate all of the energy below 100hz and get the guitar so, like the record, it really cuts through the mix while still containing all of those juicy overtones. This track was mixed and mastered by pros who made the guitar sound awesome AND they made certain to leave sonic space for the vocals, bass, and drums. Then we get to church, set up our rig and expect to project this awesomeness that really is 99% close to the original track that was mixed by top tier engineers and mastered by even more top tier mastering engineers. Good stuff right.
Now the FOH engineer comes in who has good knowledge of the board, has studied mixing at some level, and was trained along the way he must EQ THE GUITARS AND MAKE SONIC SPACE FOR VOCALS AND BASS!! Ruh roh! We already EQ'd the guitar to make sonic space. Now without spending a lot of time listening he pulls out a bunch of energy between 100-300hz which is all of the meat and potatoes of our guitar to make room for the vocals. He does this while the band is rehearsing and never actually solos the guitar channel to listen with headphones to understand the damage that was just done.
Then during 1st service the guitarist has a cool intro solo line and as he begins, his guitar sounds like a banjo or mandolin. It has been WAY over EQ'd. All of the juicy overtones have been squeezed out and now we have this weak, anemic, soul crushing tone coming through the IEM and FOH. All of the other musicians onstage look around to see who is playing the banjo while the guitarist is quietly peeing his pants. The FOH engineer, has no idea this was his doing. He shrugs, figures this guitarist really sucks, and pulls his fader down for the rest of the worship service to eliminate that nasty banjo tone. A bummer outcome for all.
How do we fix it? The best way I have found is to generate a working relationship between guitarist and FOH engineer. Explain that this misunderstanding has happened at other churches in the past and how diligently the patches we are using adhere to the original tracks EQ, making room for vocals, bass, and drums. In most cases, no further EQ should be needed but if in your judgement you want to explore it, please please solo the guitar track with headphones while making changes and then listen to the FOH mix to get it right. We want to preserve the juicy natural sound and overtones of the guitar because all of the solo lines are a critical theme in the first song. They need to have tonal authority and not be eviscerated by EQ. This works pretty well when guitarist and FOH engineer have mutual trust.
What if time is tight and I cannot have a pow wow w/FOH prior to 1st service? If I hear that my guitar has been banjo'd with EQ during rehearsal, I will simply reach down and add 3-5db of 100-300hz energy after rehearsal and before 1st service. The guitar hook is often the first instrument heard and I know it needs to sound massive so I make this happen. We can have a conversation after the fact and discuss our guitar EQ strategy in private but I have a job to do as a guitarist and I don't want to let a misunderstanding over EQ spoil the intro to worship for 3000 early risers at 1st service.
Cheers!
Been serving for 30+ years and it always comes down to the attitude of the sound guy. The key is for them to invest in understanding that using modelers requires a different mindset and approach.
And also being open to learning and investing time in understanding what the musician is trying to achieve.
Of course a musician also needs to have a sweet spirit to get the needed outcome.
Great topic, and how on point!!! I once had the sound guy (he had all the other non musicians fooled!) tell me, we couldn't add a non powered JBL wedge monitor. He said the amps were too powerful and would blow it! Sad when someone tries to hold onto what they think is their little kingdom. That was the beginning of the end for him. I asked for all the manuals and paperwork for the sound system. I gently educated church leadership that the information we were being told was NOT true. Crazy!
One of the things I learned to do along the journey was to flatten out the board after each show and then set it to the new space because every space is unique and every room changes (even in short periods of time). Humidity levels fluctuate, sunlight may bathe the room one day and not the next, etc.. So many factors affect the sound and if you don't take the time to listen to your room and get to know how you want it to sound, you can't reproduce that sound consistently. And yes, sound guys LOVE when you bring them snacks especially if you're asking them to help you troubleshoot an audio issue. I really appreciate your insight and knowledge when it comes to addressing this issue, I only wish 90 % more of the leadership of churches would pass these videos on to their sound staff, they could learn so much from them.
I recently had to leave my bass at church on the stand for the week. When I returned, the atmosphere of the room had fluctuated so much that I had to take much longer than usual to get it back in tune. It rarely goes out of tune when stored in the case but just that short period of time affected it greatly.
Thanks for your time.
Man, I'm glad I found this video. Tonight, I used my new Quad Cortex for our church's Good Friday service. I had an acoustic preset worked up that sounded amazing at home. As soon as I started playing at church, I couldn't believe it. It sounded harsh, like there was a significant upper mid range boost. That's probably the case. We were short on time, but I'll have the sound remove the effects and EQ from my channel and see how it sounds.
Wow, I am so happy our church had Sweetwater install our system. I use your patches with my pod go and it sounds great.
There are a ton of valid points brought up in this video. If you do not have a professional acoustician and sound designer install and set up the sound system, there is a good chance it won't sound ideal no matter what you do. Acoustics is an entire field of physics that most people don't have any idea about. That being said there are definitely things that you can do as a musician to try and help mitigate total loss of sound control.
Fletcher Munson Curve. The volume at what you're playing absolutely affects the tone of any piece of amplification or modeling gear that you're using.
The room that you are in plays a massive role as well. It'll affect how the Sound reacts with everything else that is around it. If you're playing a large venue, lower your reverb (possibly remove if needed).
If you are using a traditional set up with a speaker cabinet and a microphone, the microphone placement is the most important factor because that is the final step before it reaches the mixing board and then the FOH and Monitor speakers.
You have to dial in your sound in the room you're playing at the volume you're playing at with the equipment you'll be using. That's why soundcheck is so important. I tour with Fractal Audio gear and even though my tone sounds the same through FOH every night, each sound engineer still tweaks it very slightly for the specific room, even though it doesn't ever change for my IEMs.
And finally if you are using some sort of digital gear, you can create a separate signal path or split your current one so that you're in ear monitoring tone is the way it should be, but then you have a split with a different EQ that can be adjusted for the gig itself. You still have to fit in the mix with the rest of the band and you do have to mind yourself in that situation as well. You don't need a lot of bass in your tone if you're playing with both a bassist and a keyboard/organ player. Cut out everything below 120 Hz in your signal if you need to. You also shouldn't be cutting more than the vocal and the choir, so you might have to trim out everything above 6000 Hz.
This all just comes from years of touring experience in everything from churches and nightclubs, to casinos and festivals, to community musical theater gigs and weddings. The key is communication and working together with everyone else involved in the production of the show. 😄
Led worship in small to large sized churches (and ran sound) from about 2001 to 2012 and one of my biggest regrets is not taking more time to work with, learn with, and teach the sound techs.
IMO, everyone on the stage should take a turn as copilot behind the sound board. The room can change drastically from sound check to when a bunch of humans show up; helps to know why and how to fix it. Also helps vocalists understand how monitoring works/sounds in a mix.
Lastly, if tone stinks live and the board is running flat as suggested, probably need to take a look at distortion and mids. We usually need less drive and more mids than we think we do.
Good advice. I would also add get your hearing checked (for the whole team if possible). This will identify if there are some frequencies that you don't hear well and may be overcompensating for with eq or volume. It will also form a baseline for future hearing assessments.
I agree with everything you are saying. On top of being a guitar player ... let me say this also as a Pastor ... and I agree with what you said here OK ... regarding having a good relationship with the sound guy ... yes we should ... we MUST have a great relationship with everyone but ... why do we almost have to suck up to the sound guy, in order to fix an issue ? ... How about raising Disciples, who know and understand what it means to have a servant heart? It's sad to see the current state of many churches, where buttering up the sound guy seems necessary!
good point about having a "room at home version" of your patch and a "at church version" of your patch...this also applies to different guitars you're using (ie: i have 2 identical models of the same guitar, but one is way hotter in the mix than the other, so adjustments have to be made to the patches i use with that guitar)...
thats a good topic , being a worship leader in a small church i do a bit of everything. i appreciate this talk, its helpful. ive dealt with "sound guys" that like to make the sound to their particular liking or dont have good practices. this helps me try to think of different ways to communicate.
again great talk guys
One extra thing that I feel was quickly glossed over that I struggled with. If your church/venue is in an older building (designed to hold service before microphones) chances are you have really high vaulted ceilings and ALOT of natural reverb. If you chase after the modern worship tone of long reverbs and trailing delays you can very quickly wash yourself out. At home in the headphones you of course need the reverb and delay to keep things from sounding dry (especially with modelers). But in these sorts of high reverb scenarios definitely try to dial it back to try to regain some punch and clarity.
That is a great point you have made here. Our building was built in the 1950's. Plus we are in the process of remodeling. Vinyl plank flooring, Many windows with no window coverings yet, No sound treatments. It is horrific, but we are getting through. And yes, many times lately I cannot even be heard and barely can be heard when I am doing my leads... but they don't want it any louder... so... I suffer. ;-)
@@BrianVallottonmaannn I feel your pain
Exactly!
Man, right on guys. I was just learning "This is our God" using your patch for the Helix I bought and thinking how killer it sounds through my home studio monitors and just wishing that it would sound half as good at our church when we do it.
I just bring my amp with a line out. The line out sounds great and I dial it in to my liking. Once I set up on stage as long as my amp sounds great and I can feel the amp on stage, I could care less how the line out sounds out of the front of the house- that would be up to the sound guy to figure out. I'm still going to enjoy myself on stage and can't worry about anything else.
thanks for the video ... it doesnt matter if you are gigging or if you are playing in church - have a good relation to your sound people is essential! I made the experience, that it helps to have a professional sound technician mixing your bands from time to time - have him helping you to create a "basic mix" for each band / musician (of course including the guitar guides using modelers). Also let him advice your own technician in church what he is doing and why ... such way helped us a lot, especially when new persons join your technician or your music team
Great thread! It takes time to work with the equipment in the PA to get any sound right. Great idea to turn off everything or flatten the channel first. I have an Alesis mixer and QSC powered speakers that I like a lot and know how to use. Although I use an amp with pedalboard, my Fractal AX II (old now) into the PA also sounds great. The other solution is to have your independent sound - amp, modeler into a cab…..then mic it. I am amazed at the music equipment some churches have.
At 9:00 - hit the nail on the head with perceived frequencies at different volumes. With my headphones at home, I have my volume around 30-40%, so my presets sound darker and less punchy. But I've set my Helix to send full 0dB output to FOH. As a result, the signal in my IEMs sounds much brighter, but that's because it's the full 0dB tone coming back from the desk into my IEMs. In the end I got a wireless lead to hear FOH and analysed our online streams a lot to get an idea. Our sound techs still do a lot of sweeping during sound check though so I may send them this video 😁
As the guy who had to learn how to eq a room from scratch I can attest to 1) I had no idea what I was doing 2) it took a lot of trial and error to figure things out
3) 17 years later I have a decent idea of what’s going on and what frequencies to avoid
Live sound is an extremely complicated and difficult thing to do well. I can attest.
That was very helpful; especially the part about dialing in your patch at the volume that you will use it at. Thank you!
These guys are spot on
I took a helix to one church on a Thursday evening….sounded amazing….just like the headphone output and maybe slightly better. Took the exact same rig to another church that Sunday…and it was unbearable. I’m not even exaggerating.
you need to be in charge of your sound not the non-musician sound tech
Finally! Thank you for acknowledging that:
1. Most congregations are in a shoestring budget and will never be able to afford thousands and thousands dollars worth of equipment to "get the sound".
2. Most volunteers are not trained.
So this is what needs to be shown - how do you get decent "production" (I hate that term) for a small to midsize congregation.
Side note - all I really want is to preach the Gospel and help others follow Jesus. I strongly dislike that our society and (church) culture have put these production standards in the church. At the moment, it is what it is.
As someone who owns several of your patches, and at a church who has properly EQ'd the sanctuary PA, the reason I sound terrible at church is because I"m a terrible player 😂
One thing I do to help is I have the identical FRFR speaker/amp at home that I have at church - this way whatever I dial at home is exactly what comes out of the monitor/speaker on stage. Also, using an FRFR is going to be closer to what is going to the soundboard vs going into a guitar amp that would sound drastically different.
What do you use? I've been on the lookout for a small portable FRFR monitor for a while.
@@NedJeffery Headrush FRFR-108. Not as sexy as the 112, but more portable and sounds great.
Going wireless let’s you “fix” the board so easily. I was a youth pastor and got an Xvive wireless system, the. I did exactly what you guys talked about and man it changed the sound so much.
"Does your tone sound bad? It couldn't possibly be the patches we made in a vacuum with no context similar to the one in which you play! Buy more patches!"
But in all seriousness, it is clear you guys mean to help and you have a lot of great content available for free. Thank you.
I'm no sound engineer but I'm pretty sure you want to start with the best signal or sound coming out of your rig that you can.
I understand what you are saying but what these guys are doing for me with patches and IR's is to create a quality sound template that saves me time recreating sounds that I would like to produce from amps I will never own.
Thier acoustic guitar IR's are really good. The pads they have produced are good as well.
@@jelinor9611 I'm really not hating on them, just poking a little fun at an obvious issue with the way we modern guitarists are getting our tones :)
Well right from the get go, you covered the reason I don’t want to use a helix, fractal, Kemper, or QC direct at church. Nobody knows what they are doing. I don’t pretend to either. But I do know how to use an amp. It may not be great like a huge production but it’s better than my alternative.
I thought the idea of building relationship with the sound guy was just me... excellent tip! Guitar FOH has gone up by many dBs since... also using Boss WL-20 helped during fine tuning. Thank you for making this video, the top tip for me was to ask the sound guy to turn everything off and hear the source. The biggest factor in (my opinion/experience) affecting tone is the venue/building/room.
In both of the churches I play in, we have issues with old sound systems. One has monitors that look like stereo speakers from the 80's. The other has updated boards, but the speakers we use were found in our upstairs storage. It works, but not without its conflicts.
I think continuity is another issue. Limited budgets doesn't allow for consistency in monitors and speakers. When you have One EV main, and one Yamaha, and 2 Kustom floor monitors, and the third is a BOSE ( Buy Other Sound Equipment), can't expect to sound like you're playing at the Long Beach Arena.
No experience at church....yet, however everything you say is valid even with experienced techs at other venues. There is however another factor is the human one. I.e. if you are new to performing live, you may be nervous and tight and you can believe it will affect your tone.
Yes the global EQ on the headrush I used it exactly the way you're saying for a different rooms Good point.
Informative video! I AM having this issue,; I now have some "next steps," so thanks! And Bradford, thanks for bringing up Jason Isbell!
I have started using your head rush patches for my core tone I just switched the organization around I used the Dr Z. Sound amazing. I just added an IR with a little bit more mids for my guitar
This is such an underrated topic. Thanks for covering it!
My goodness!, what a subject! One of the main reasons why guitarists quit playing in the church settings.
Two Things: As a Quad Cotex owner, i have found that the included factory presets need to be adjusted - usually the volume or gain level of the amp model. A pair of 2000w QSC speakers are a recommended investment for small churches...they are great for anywhere from 50 to 350 members, IMO.
very nice studio setup. great use of the home depot husky workbench
It would really be a shame if I sold it like a month ago 😢. Meaning the house. Not the desk 👌🏻
@@worshiptutorials lol oh that's not the new studio?
Nope 😢😢😢. But the new setup will be better. I hope ha
@@worshiptutorialsit will be.
We have pro level audio that was installed by audio pros, so no issue there. Allen & Heath board, RCF hanging arrays and subs as well as forward facing RCF stage speakers. We run IEMs so silent stage. I think our live sound is usually very good. There sometimes can be a difference between the two FOH engineers. The biggest difference is the livestream mix, which can be mixed in a back room using a different A&H board. Sometimes it is not mixed by shall we say.......a musician or audiophile. It makes a difference if someone is familiar with that weekend's songs and how everything sits in the mix.
Gibson Les Paul Standard: $3000
Helix Floor: $1700
Church announcement on screen before service: "Sound Team volunteers needed. No experience necessary." : PRICELESS
😂😂
Hahahaha
Imagine your FOH engineer doesn’t know what they’re doing, but also gets butt hurt when you make suggestions (even when doing it nicely). Would you suggest removing compression and EQ from patches in that case?
I completely agree with you X 1000 on the church sound system installation and operation. This is why I use my Mesa Mark V thought a 1x12 at church.
Ha if you turn that thing up past like 3, nobody will be able to hear anything else
@@worshiptutorials I installed a Weber beam blocker in the cab to diffuse the sound, which helps. I always run it in 45W mode and never turn up the master past 2. I also keep my channel volumes down. I primarily use Channel 2 with the gain set at the edge of breakup. I rarely use channel 3 since it's not often I need a high-gain tone for church. Every once in a while will play an old Delirious song or an Honor and Glory song that calls for it. We played my Glorious a few times, and I used the Mark II or IV mode. I still run my gain pretty conservatively. I'm just after the voicing. I don't want to hinder anyone by being super loud.
Boogies are such cool amps. We had an original pre mark 1 from the 70s for a bit. Super cool. And I have a 100w Lonestar. That thing is LOUD and sounds great in pretty much every setting.
This is why I keep my amps just in case. I have a amp cage and a power attenuator if need be. If I have to run a direct solution then I take the right out to the house and left into my inear. Not the best but my current solution.
One time I was playing a medley of patriotic songs on an acoustic guitar. I got there early and we practiced into a Mic. Everything was good. During the service as I walked up to the Mic ready to play, the sound guy was not paying attention. He was talking with someone and never turned the Mic up the whole time. After the service some lady said I could barley hear you. I always use and amp now as a stage monitor and they can Mic it if they want...
I've been struggling with this for a few months playing an hd500x straight into house, finally tonight i convinced them to remove all EQ from my channel and leave it completely fresh, sounded like a brand new guitar
I agree with many of the comments. "... and properly set the gain stage..." - that can be KEY. Be sure your level is in the right place. Digital clipping is BAD - but it's equally bad to be under-gained as you may be overly mushy and dull sounding.
Great advice, although I think you pretty much nailed it in the first 30 seconds or so - if you only listen to your modeller through headphones at home, it will sound WAY different in a live system. Especially relevant to closed-back headphones.
Absolutely true!!! A couple years ago I was playing a lot of gigs, and my bass setup sounded amazing everywhere except this one particular church.
The sound man kept tryin to convince me something was wrong with my bass. I stopped playing at that church because the sound guy was a novice and
thought he was pro, totally unbearable. I actually played a gig at that church on a off night with a professional sound man and it was beautiful! Same system.
exactly, it's your guitar not his, nobody knows better then you what it takes to make it sound great
100% like you said at the top. Sound system is poorly installed/setup, the guitar channel on the board has processing or eq or some effects that are unnecessary, your sound guy doesn’t know what he/she is doing.
If you're in the Behringer eco-system just download the software/app, bring your laptop or mobile device and fix your own channel setting or the entire mix. I have done this many times and sometimes still do. Most sound guys won't even notice.
Great video, and great insight. I agree with the points you make. But I think it also needs to be said and understood, that sometimes a great "bedroom tone" can be a bad "stage/in-mix tone". There is only so much a sound tech can do with EQ and comp. As a guitarist and sound tech, I've been on both sides of this. I've tried dialing in amazing tones at home AND solo on the PA, that just didn't work, and disappeared in the mix.
I think all worship musicians should/would benefit from learning the basics of mixing FOH. I've at least become a better musician, since becoming a sound tech.
My church has next level sound system! It was shocking how different it sounded from my QSC K10s at home to the system at church
I had this issue, where my pedalboard will sound great at home with my amp, then at church it was totally different and bad. The reason is because my pedalboard was not going to an amp anymore, it was going straight to the digital mixer. In order to fix this, I had to add a pre-amp which it model a Fernder amp, now that changed the game and now my guitar and my pedalboard sounds great.
or set your amp on stage like professionals do and set the amp to your liking and mic it and only let the sound guy control your volume for balance with the rest of the team. Done
2:40 As a working audio engineer and a guitarist who also does both at church, it MIGHT be partially your fault.
Electric guitars that sound great on their own might make a dense band mix sound like mud. If you do have a volunteer sound person they may not know how to shape it without killing it entirely.
In my experience, you can preempt that by making sure you’re not too heavy around the 200Hz and 500Hz range (which can help with fullness, but can quickly muddy up a dense mix of tracks and key layers). Also the guitar will get bite-y and compete with vocal intelligibility in the 2-3k range.
Depending on the guitarist, I’ll often run a high pass with a fairly flat eq. If I’m making cuts those are usually the culprits.
My 2 cents
I am an FOH and guitarist. I have a benefit to other FOHs. In the last 20 years where i am mixing in different churches, my experience is, that most churches have tech to work with. Maybe it was cheap, but you will get good sound from cheap tech IF they didnt make a big mistake on Speaker selection and placement. With selection i mean to have a balanced speaker setup. It doesnt have to be expensive. But most churches can be mixed better by better understanding. Also, as an FOH, nothing is more annoying, than being ignored in the beginning to dial in everyone by themselve but then a top sound is expected... that is usually a time problem and mostly that is the first thing to skip... so if you want your sound to be good, take your time with your FOH and as already said, build a relationship, not a fight
The best sound people that I know are musicians because they think the way we do. I’ve worked with sound people in the secular world and think because they have a two-year degree from some sound engineering school they know what they’re doing, but they don’t have an ear for music. Plus many of them have big egos.
If straight from a multi effects to mixer. The output should have Amp Sim / IR
Great video. I'm dealing with this now. I feel like I come to play mostly to support the band and the worship leader. They all tell me I have amazing tone and touch but friends in the room tell me they can't hear me through FOH. I've been playing worship guitar for over 20 years so it's frustrating. The good news is our church is dropping some serious change to get the room acoustically treated/optimized and upgrading the audio system. We have fairly good techs who I think are battling room related issues (it's a very large room, probably seats 1200 that is typically only about 25% full - historically they've hosted large conferences and still do but avg. Sunday is mostly empty).
I may try running a bit less reverb and less gain to see if it improves clarity. I might sacrifice some of the goodness of what is heard for the IEMs and the feel but get better clarity in the mix when everyone is playing. Interestingly it seems to be more the lower frequencies that are obscured. If I play single note lead parts they tend to come out more. I do also notice though there's a very weak signal on the streaming mix too so I've wondering about using different DI solution that has some kind of line driver.
Not sure if this was mentioned in the video, but the way guitars have piezo or some kind of electronic pick up is worthy of discussion. Specifically, when you want to play in a band, you actually DON'T want the round, full, lush sound of a guitar, you actually want the piezo electric pick up sound that "cuts" through a certain mids/highs. Most people think having the round, full, lush sound of a guitar is good for stage, but it isn't. It's good for solo guitar at home play, but on stage, you're playing with other instruments. Acoustic guitar needs to play its role, and it is actually better to have a "worse" pickup system in the acoustic for band play, as opposed to a $500+ pickup in the guitar. My two cents.
Was literally talking about this with another musician friend earlier. Lately I’ve been playing in our auditorium (larger YWAM base) for our Monday Morning Worship, and my guitar with my Headrush MX5 has been sounding muddy as heck live, but when I’m practicing alone, amazing. I kind of figured that it had to do with the EQ (been training as a sound engineer myself), but the guy who has been running it said nothing needed to be changed. Even my other friend’s guitar sounds muddy as well (he has an actual pedalboard). What ends up happening is that the electric gets lost in the mix when the whole band plays, unless it’s played during a more quiet time in the song. Or the guitar just sounds cheap and dead.
I appreciate y’all’s advice to ask them to test things out together. I’m gonna try and talk with our sound guy to see if he’s willing to try things out. But I also didn’t think about adjusting the EQ of the patch itself, too. So needed. This video. Much appreciated, God Bless y’all!
If we’re going to call it like it is do that instead of laughing and trying to sidestep all around it. I appreciate the info spit it out.
There are 3 sets of sound. 1) what we hear in our ears, IEM. 2)what is heard through overhead speakers. 3) what we hear on line. Many moving parts.
I've had the opposite problem. They sound better live to me than at home. But I'm not using studio monitors or top tier headphones.
Exactly this for me. I feel like my tone is trash until I get to church and I’m like “wow who’s that?!!!” Lol
I intend to ask the Audio guy----we have two, who alternate Sundays-----about my track on the Midas. Gonna get him to turn OFF any FX on that board. Another REASON for that, which you guys didn't mention, is that there's EQ and Compression on many of the POD GO devices I already mentioned. GOOD suggestion. Interesting video. I play EG more than half the Sundays at my church, the other Sundays, on AG. I have a POD GO. I do experience this issue as it sounds different at church than it does HERE. I also have a home recording studio so when I work with my POD GO, I have it hooked up to my Allen & heath ZED 60, into my Interface, and through my KALI 8 inch 3-way studio monitors. I also LOVE and USE the Pod Go Edit s/w while here. Too much work to adjust anything on the fly at church just on the unit. SO, at church, at times, it just sounds different than here. I use Weston UM-20's, but only in one ear. Usually sounds very good in my In-ear, but sometimes, it just sounds a bit "tinny", or more High's at church than here. I also usually have an EQ, Compressor and a Reverb ON my POD GO. Use Delay when needed, as well as light distortion, and sometimes modulation, with a Chorus. I switch off between a TELE and my Gretsch 5420T, depending on the songs we're doing.
Well done. There is another whole topic, or let's say another "group" of reasons your rig will sound very different, home studio/bedroom/music room, to church. But it's enough for you to make another tutorial just for this issue . . . Your rig will sound hugely different playing it solo than it will with other instruments playing at the same time. Be it a church band, a wedding band, jazz band, bar band . . . You could cover what happens to this marvelous mid range heavy instrument when you play your patches in a setting where there are 6 cymbals and a snare drum filling the space with hugh highs, while a kick drum, some toms, a bass guitar, a "left hand heavy" keyboard player (who doesn't know how to sit on their left hand!) are all there filling more space with gigantic lows! All of a sudden your lush, ambient guitar patch gets lost in the mix. There are tons of factors involved that could fill the space of a tutorial. Frequency cancellation, effects that tend to "mush", as in why we often keep a tube screamer or OD on all the time, even with the gain at zero. etc. One you mentioned, the difference between playing loud, vs. quietly. Plus, the other instruments burying the highs and lows in your patches. I suggest, when possible, once you have your patch roughed in, get some backing tracks, or even recordings of the types of songs you're going to be playing. Run them through a decent sound system. Dial the patch in a bit more. Then...crank it up to performance level, for just long enough to hear what all you lose. Adjust, tweak, then crank it up again. I'm fortunate enough to be able to play (day or night) at performance volume in my music studio. But if you cannot (if you live in an appartment, or have neighbors too close by) then create a performance environment through your headphones. So you hear the recorded music or backing tracks, and your guitar at unity. And tweak from there. That won't give you the identical sound of being in the room, and/or at higher volume. But it will be a good bit closer. THEN, when at soundcheck, be prepared to bring up your mids a bit. Maybe even cut the lows and highs a bit. Teeny bits at a time! When the mids are out front, your sound will shine! IMHO, of course! LOL It's far better for you to learn how to EQ and create patches that will sound good through your FOH mix than it is to expect a sound man to replicate your sound, running it through the board. As you said, work with the sound tech. Ideally, give you a pretty flat mix. No effects! You already have them in your patch. Zero comp and EQ. Although, once tweaked you might help them add a teeny bit of enhancement to your mix. AND . . . if at all possible, do your final tweaking with the full band playing. LISTEN while the full sound check is running. If wireless, go out front and listen. It's a science! : )
I always check my line out before each set right at the end of my board... that way I know I am sending the best signal possible. It is rare that it ever sounds the same once it leaves the board. My issue is usually that the board is run by someone that doesn't play music, or have the appropriate skill set. Churches need to prioritize that position more.
You guys are amazing! I am really surprised you didn't mention anything about FRFR Speakers such as the HeadRush FRFR-108. I have been playing lead and rhythm electric for over 15yrs now and until this speaker came out I was always puzzled by the difference in my tone from home to church even dialing in to the room. The FRFR doesn't give you the exact tone match as you covered the EQ, Compression, etc have a HUGE play from FOH, but it made all the difference in the world. Playing through this speaker in a medium-sized room and then plugging it into FOH...... was pretty dog-gone close, enough to definitely matter and change the game. Head Phones are the worst to try and mimic guitar tones from room to room. DONT TRY!! I use my Head Rush amp each time I tweak my patch or download something. Once I dial in that sound into what I like it takes me no time to make FOH sound very similar. Curious if you guys ever use those speakers.??
This video is actually part of a longer video we’ll post later where we talk about all the ‘other stuff’ you need when you use a modeler. We cover FRFR’s and give some recommendations 👍🏻
Excellent, Thank you! it's not your patches it's us...
My sound guy thinks its ok to plug a guitar straight into a DI without the need of some sort of pre amp/cab sim! They were running it like this for a while before I turned up until I had to say that “the guitar is sounding a little thin there!” Took a while to convince him tbh but people can be so stubborn which is half the problem 🙈
I stopped dialing in my tones at home through headphones. Now I use an Atomic Neo CLR FRFR monitor and the results are much better
Reminds me of the scene in Good Will Hunting.. " It's not your fault....it's not your fault.... it's not your fault.."
What I've noticed the most is the gain staging. Weak gain staging ie not enough level through the FOH makes for weak thin guitar. Seems obvious, but something I've been experimenting with while making patches is building them out at lower monitoring levels and finding the sweet spot between the peaks and valleys that I know my sound guys will probably be mixing the guitar at.
Extra tip- Get to know your sound guys mixing style and then while building out pre-sets think how you can maximize your sound through their approach.
he's not wrong about the "environment" you're playing in...the sound system, the acoustics, and the experience level of the people running the board all effect how everyone sounds on any given Sunday (and he was gracious in how he pointed all this out)...working with your sound-techs, etc will help you both figure out how to get everything sounding more solid/consistent...it's like anything else- if you don't understand each other's perspective on a situation, you can't come up with solutions that make both parties jobs easier, with better results for everyone...and, yeah- it could also be that you have your settings dialed in incorrectly for the environment and equipment you're playing in/through...
Thanks for covering this topic. I was just thinking about asking you all about this last week. I’m happy with the tone that comes through my in-ears but what comes through the house sounds nowhere near as good.
3:12 I always encourage new people to bring the engineer a burrito! Makes a great friend!
You know what. I actually agree with what you've said that you should have a good relationship with the sound guy/tech. And we do that to all people in the church. May it be a volunteer or not, a loving kindness relationship is good for any organization, church or workplace. But if you are a sound guy and you are claiming to be a christian, and you require your musician to give you a special relationship so that you give them a good mix or a good sound, then you're not a christian at all. You want bribes. You prostitute your knowledge and skills. Because no matter if people don't give you the treatment you want, you will give them your service without expecting in return because you love God, so you love His people, so without partiality you give them your best. Your musician and your congregation. Don't act like a boss because you hold the volume slider and you will turn down those you don't like but be a servant. If one doesn't produce a good sound, help them, assist them, communicate with them.
Love this format! Although I know this suggestion would be quite "involved", I would LOVE to take this topic taken into the practical where we see this happen at church.
Have the recorded audio of what the headphones sound like.
Then record the audio of what is heard in-house.
Then run through the options of adjusting EQ at the board vs. from a Helix.
Although you said you could do a special patch, unless you're able to walk out INTO the house and hear it, adjusting Global-EQ and/or the patch itself still seems like a shot-in-the-dark. Wouldn't it be better for the FOH to make the adjustments at the board so you can still hear the "inspiring tones" of your Helix un-adjusted and un-tampered with?
I own just about everything you guys have created. The verb and delay settings don't sit in the mix and sound washed out. I have to boost mids just to be heard. And this is on a quality sound system. Don't misunderstand. They're good but they are not good for live without tweaks
Great video! It would be nice to see future videos on “how to EQ” and other such things
a video on guidelines how to adjust compression and EQ would be awesome!