Mike Sessler, of Church Tech Arts, is the Director of Technical Arts at Upper Room Community outside Minneapolis. He has 20 years of experience in sound, lighting, and video. Mike enjoys helping others create the best worship experience.   His blog is full of useful information!  read more »

I know people who work on dead bodies.  I have several friends who, after graduating from college, went on to medical school.  They were given cadavers (dead bodies) which lasted throughout much of their schooling.  They dissected the bodies so they could learn how the body works; where nerve bundles are found and how muscles are connected, among other things.  In time, understanding the parts of the body meant gaining a better understanding of how the body works together as a whole.  read more »

Check out the post of Basic Mic'ing Techniques for Piano from ChurchAudio.

I'm finding some worship team pianist's like to play a regular piano instead of an electric such as the Clavinova.  While a baby grand does have a great sound, toss in a guitar, some drums, and a whole congregation singing, then you see why you need to mic the piano.  JB shows in his article that it usually takes more than one microphone.

When you hear a musical sound, let's say at 500 Hz, you are also hearing related sounds at 1 kHz, 1.5 kHz, 2.0 kHz and so on until the energy level of the frequency drops off.  Understanding harmonics will help you identify related frequencies and control your sound system's output accordingly.  Find out how...  read more »

Mix-minus is a particular setup for a mixing console, such that the output to a specific device contains everything except the input from that device.   The advantage of a mix-minus is the elimination of echoes and feedback.

A mix-minus signal is sometimes also known as a 'clean feed' or a 'Select Audio Return' (SAR).

How is it used?   read more »

A common approach to sound mixing is the four step approach; Set fader's at 0 point , set the gain, turn on the channels, and leave the board alone until the end of the service.  Looking at the fader's, they are all in a flat line. This is a good place to start but it's not the final answer.

Mixing the different sounds in a service is much more than that.  Read more to find out how you can bring your sounds to life.

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When I first learned how to run a church sound system, the only thing I heard about phantom power was "the phantom power switch is right next to the power switch in the back of the mixer.  Make sure you turn on the power and not the phantom power."  Now, many years and a lot more microphones later, I know the reason behind the phantom power.  It's quite simple...  read more »

Gain, a.k.a. Trim, is a volume control for each channel of a mixing console.  The Gain knob controls the volume being input into the channel, not the amount of volume output through the channel.  Learn how to properly set these levels for better volume control.  read more »

Do you use headphones when you mix sound?  Many times, headphones are not used or used throughout the whole service.  Find out what works the best.  read more »

Here is something you can try at your next service for monitor mixing...I've just read about this so take it for what it's worth...it's from a worship teams old blog. Everything seems theoretically sound...and it seems easy. 

1. Have one person liasing the sound from the Stage with the Sound guy from the Desk

2. Line Check Instruments in this order : Vocals, then Instruments and then drums last  read more »