Live Sound Reference Guide for Beginners
For Church Volunteers
Your church either just got a new sound system that nobody knows how to run or has a sound system that isn't being utilized. No one wants to mess with it but you feel that your choir or church group can benefit from it. This church may already have a sound system already in use but only as speaking microphones for services and not for music. So you either take it upon yourself or are chosen out of the choir to take care of the tasks of audio engineer. You may also benefit from the other sections of this guide depending on the situation. The situation here will be, what do you need to get the audio working if your church has a system that has been installed but has no one to run it?
Situation #1
This was a real life situation that I encountered with a church that had a system and no one to run it. Everything was already installed with a mixing console in the rear of the church with all the faders marked with the name of the vocalist or instrument. The only thing the Pastor knew was where the faders were for his mic and the podium. He never messed with any of the other knobs or knew what they did. There were also hanging choir mics installed and marked on the console but all faders were down and all knobs set to 12 o'clock. The Pastor also wanted these mics on for the choir. So it was my job to teach one of the congregation how to use the mixer. This has been a common problem for smaller churches in small towns that usually don't have an abundance of audio technicians that are willing to volunteer their time.So this section will mostly be a crash course on how to use a mixer that is setup for churches with this similar setup.
The Mixer
The audio mixer maybe intimidating with all those knobs and buttons but it is actually setup a lot simpler than it looks. A mixer is setup in vertical sections called channels. Some mixers can contain 4, 8, 16, 24, to 32 channels. Each channel controls an individual microphone or instrument. Each channel contains sections that we will go over using this smaller mixer as our simplified example. Even though this mixer is smaller, the basic functions and flow will be common with larger mixers, which will be later introduced in future sections of this guide.
