Sound
engineering and worship music
By Dehumo Togonu
Bickersteth
In the past few years, I have had the opportunity to
interact professionally with various musical forms
within the context of worship. From the guitar heavy
praise songs from Australia to the percussion and
rhythm praise songs of Africa; from the cyclic
heartfelt, 2 line worship choruses of Nigeria to the
lengthy expressive worship songs from the US.
All in all, I have come to understand one thing,
worship music from different cultures on the surface
seem to be extremely different however the sound of
worship below the surface is identical across all
cultures.
What is the sound of worship?
Sitting down mixing a live worship recording from
Nigeria, I found myself making decisions about
dynamics, energy, _expression, frequency spectrum,
width, depth, punch, space, dimensions. All these seem
to be purely technical decisions but they are not.
The question that kept plaguing me was simply this?
What was guiding my decisions? Was I attempting to
create the sound of a genre or style or was I
attempting to create a sound that represents the live
experience that was captured?
It might seem that worship is best experienced live
and a recording merely provides a memory of the live
experience. But this is not true.
In the past I wrote a lot as a worship musician, but
now I write as a worship sound engineer. What
we do as sound engineers is bring the craft to the
art. We shape the sound of worship so that the
congregation can experience it completely.
Every technical decision an engineer makes is based on
a mental reference of a sound he is trying to achieve.
He might be aware of this reference or might not be;
nevertheless this reference informs his every
decision.
What is this reference?
For normal sound engineers, the reference is simply a
piece of music from a specific genre or style, a
particular guitar sound, a combination of effects to
achieve a particular vocal sound consistent with this
style or that style. However, this sort of
interpretation pays no attention to the spiritual
dimension of worship music.
The reference for a worship engineer should be a
personal worship experience with the musical culture
of which the music being engineered is a part. What
this means is not merely understanding the music but
understanding the worship dimensions of the music.
This reference is not a static one.
Mixing a worship service is an extremely dynamic
exercise driven both by the worship team and the
congregation. The engineer represents the worship team
through his control of their sound via the mixing desk
and he represents the congregation by virtue of his
position right in their midst.
Based on this, his reference is only as good as his
worship experience at each worship service. If he is
not worshipping his reference is not current and thus
his decisions would also not be current and might
jeopardize the entire worship experience. Having
said all this, it is imperative that the tools
available to the engineer avail him of extensive
control of the sound such that he can implement
whatever he has to.
Sound engineering technology has developed to a point
where virtually any auditory experience can be
engineered provided the tools are available and the
engineer is skilled.
What Skills and Tools?
The ultimate aim of sound engineering is to have an
electrical version of sound that is clean and clear
enough to be creatively manipulated with various
processing tools, and to have loudspeakers that can
reproduce the processed sound without altering it at
all
This is not possible and thus the engineer utilizes
his experienced knowledge of the way technology
changes the sound as well as his trained ears to
ensure what reaches the congregation is exactly what
he had in mind.
Some of the most important things to look out for are:
- The quality of the speakers and where they are
placed: loud doesn’t mean good in worship. For clean
good sound, you might be better off with smaller
speakers spread out with proper volume relationships
than with huge speakers blasting out from one location
like the alter area
-
Graphic equalizers are an essential tool to ensure
that some of the artifacts introduced into the sound
by the effect of imperfect speakers placed in an
imperfect room, can be neutralized
- Parametric Equalizers on the Mixing Desk: these are
an essential tool to deal with masking and timbre
issues as well as make creative alterations to the
quality of the captured sound
- Dynamic processors: Live music is extremely dynamic
and without some sort of dynamic control going on, it
would be impossible to maintain and control a mix that
you have engineered. In addition, creative
possibilities with dynamic processors are amazing.
- Digital Multi-effect Processors: these offer effects
like reverberation and delay, chorus and flange, etc.
These are essential creative tools to be used wisely
and appropriately.
The
above tools are the barest minimum an engineer
involved in worship should have.
However
it is important to note that at the end of the day,
the tools only serve to assist the engineer achieve
the sound he has in his head which is his reference.
Finally, it is important to note that worship is
unique to the individual. Our experience of Worship is
extremely unique to us. So also the sound of worship
we hear.
An advice to all engineers:
“In
worship, discover your sound. Master it and strive for
it every service you
engineer.”
Dehumo produces for Fountain of
Praise. He is an accomplished keyboardist, songwriter
and producer. He presently lectures at the School
of Audio Engineering, Singapore. He can be reached
at dehumo@selahpro.com
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