Karl Verkade is a music director for Life Church in Southern California.  You can find him on his web site Guitar For Worship posting up great articles like "Chorus Pedal Shootout" and "Amp Tone: Styles of Power Tubes."  I've hit him with some hard questions like explaining the rift between the sound tech and worship leader.  You'll love his answers!

1. A little background: How long have you been the music director?  A guitarist?

I've been the music director for a little over a year and a half. I've been playing guitar for about 10 years. Guitar that people might actually want to listen to for only about 5, though. hehe

2. How do you arrange a song so it evokes a feeling of worship?  

I like to use a lot of what I call ebb and flow. The traditional way is, for an upbeat song, to start with keyboard pad, then instruments in with a bang, get really big in the bridge, then drop for a chorus, then build back in. And for a slow song, have the band come in on the second verse, then ambient build to the bridge, then drop out. And those are both great formulas, but they can get old if used too often. So I like to do those exact formulas, then the next week do a song only acoustic, another song without a drop, another song where we build back in, but never come back in, just stuff like that. Making sure there is a flow, and a push/pull effect with the music. And you also might find on a certain Sunday that you have 5 songs with the best arrangements ever; but if they all happen to be the same arrangement, you might need to change a couple of them for that particular Sunday. Worship of God shouldn't get old; but music definitely does. And as long as we're choosing to use music through which to worship Him, we should keep it on the balance of being fresh, but also cohesive enough to be learnable for the congregation.

3. If you were stranded on an island with the sound guy and a can of spam, which would you eat?  How do establish a good relationship with your sound tech?   

Ha! Well, since I'm a worship leader, which means that the sound tech is automatically my slave, I'd probably tell him to make the spam taste like an ESPNZone burger (mmm.....ESPNZone.....), and if he said that was impossible, I'd just give him a dirty look and pretend that his inadequacy is why the spam can't transform into ESPNZone (mmm.....well, you get the picture). Seriously, though, that's how most of us treat our soundguys. We don't practice the vocals to a song all week, and then get annoyed when he can't give us enough reverb to make us sound on pitch.

I think the key to maintaining a good relationship with your soundtech is to realize that he is the absolute most important part of the worship team. It doesn't matter if your band sounded like Coldplay this morning on stage; what matters is how it sounded in the house, and that is up to the sound guy. Once we realize this, it will be simply academic to treat the sound guy as part of the worship team, not the tech team. The sound guy gets all the worship e-mails, is invited to all the worship functions, and is listed every Sunday on the band roster. The soundboard is simply another instrument......and the most important one.

4. As a pedal fanatic, how much do you rely on the sound tech to sculpt your guitar tone?  

My approach is to have tone that is so good, it is impossible to mess it up on the soundboard. hehe Unfortunately, I'm not quite there yet; but that's the goal. But I want the end sound to be as pure as possible...so you want to send a signal back to the board that is as close to sounding great without any eq'ing as it can be. The soundboard eq's should be only for putting back whatever frequencies get lost in the length of the audio snake, the size and shape of the room, and the deficiencies of the front of house speakers.

5. If you could give a sound tech advice, what would you say?   

My advice would be to take note of all the songs the worship leader is choosing, and then to listen to the original recorded versions by the collective artists. This will give an idea of what the worship leader's vision is for the style and final sound. Then mix according to the general style and mix of those recorded songs. A lot of times we worship leaders are doing our best, but we may not be the most talented, or our bands may not be the most talented. As a result, the sound tech has no idea of what the final product should sound like, and so he just throws in a generic mix. If you can get an idea of what the worship leader is "trying" to sound like, you can help out the sound of a mediocre band and worship leader a ton. I also see so many times a band who sounds like U2, but the sound guy wants too mix them like his favorite band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Or vice versa. No matter what your particular preferences are, the worship team (which as I explained before, absolutely includes the sound guy) should work as just that--a team.

6. You are halfway through a song set and you bust a string, which throws you out of tune, what do you do?

I try to always have a backup guitar on stage. Worship leading is no different from any other performing art; you've got to have backups for your backups.

7. What is a common problem you hear with electric guitar sound in the worship environment?

The first problem is that it's too loud. And of course, I'm an electric guitarist; and not only do I like it loud, but the amp also has to be loud enough to get to its sweet spot. But not at the expense of the rest of the band, or of worship as a whole. Get a smaller amp, get a half power switch, get baffles, whatever needs to be done so that your guitar sound mixes in well with the rest of the band. Great tone from the sweet spot of the amp but that doesn't mix well with the final product sound, will sound worse than just good tone from not quite the sweet spot of the amp but that sits nicely in the final band mix.  

The second problem is that the guitar sound is usually a little tinny in the house. A lot of this comes from the fact that we eq our amps while standing over them; but the mic picks up the sound directly in front of them. What I try and do is to eq my amp to sound good when my ear is directly next to the speaker that is getting mic'd. It takes some kneeling and standing, but it's worth it. Now, once you eq your amp to sound good for the mic, when you play standing over it, it will sound a tad mid-heavy. This can be solved by standing farther away from your amp, or by lifting your amp off of the ground. I use a rack case to do this. It makes a world of difference in getting the tone you hear out of your amp to come through the house better.

8. How do you like your monitor mix?

I'm one of the jerk guys who likes to hear everything in his mix. I really need to hear every instrument to know how to play off of everybody, to know how the end product sounds, and, unfortunately, to be able to tell people what not to play. hehe But if worse comes to worse and I can tell the sound guy is having a rough day, I can live with just my voice and acoustic if I'm leading. (My electric I can hear from my amp, and the drums.....well, it's drums. You can't not hear them.) If I'm just playing lead guitar, I just need the lead vocalist and his acoustic.

9. Do you start the day with a hearty breakfast or a cup of coffee?

Ha! Neither one. I don't drink coffee, and when my alarm goes off in the morning, I think, 'Hmm. I can either sleep for 10 more minutes or have breakfast. And then I sleep.'

10. Why do you think there is a perceived rift between sound tech's and worship leaders?   

Well, first and foremost, because we worship leaders usually have a really, really difficult time simply admitting, 'Hey, I was off-key on that part. It had nothing to do with my monitor mix, or the reverb levels, or what mic the sound guy set up for me.' Instead, we blame the easiest one to blame, the sound tech. And I include myself in this, too. And maybe we don't do it all the time, but it only takes one bad day for bad blood to start. Just once, I think we should try taking responsibility for a bad Sunday, even if it really was the sound tech's fault. I think we'll be surprised by how far that goes.   

And secondly, we need to remember that on the average, worship leaders are artistic wackos. Sound guys on average are tech wackos. Not all the time, but just in general. So while the worship leader will drive the sound tech crazy by not letting him work on the issue of none of the subs turning on because he still has too much treble on his acoustic guitar eq in the monitor. But at the same time, the sometimes the sound guy will drive the worship leader crazy by trying to chase the 60 cycle hum that no one can seem to hear but him, while meanwhile the drummer has nothing in his monitor. So learning to understand each other is huge! The sound tech should try really hard to come half way and start listening to music, and learning more about how to mix music then just how to make sure that everything is running properly and efficiently. And the worship leader should maybe take a week off and run the sound for a Sunday so he can learn how everything is hooked up. It'll give him a much better understanding of what the sound guy goes through, and how to not cause the sound techs problems by hooking something up wrong. I try and do this every few months.....it just really gives you an appreciation for how incredibly difficult running sound really is.

11. Do you think you should worship as you lead or do you think your leading is an act of worship?   

Gotta do both. I've been at the place where I've been on stage having the most intimate worship through music of my life. And then looked out at the congregation after the music was over and seen nothing but blank stares' I left them all behind. And the fact is, as good as it sounds to say, 'I'm not a worship leader, I'm a lead worshiper', we're up there for a purpose--to help people worship the Lord. If we want to just worship through music on our own, we have another 6 1/2 days to do that throughout the week. It's a lame excuse, in my humble opinion, to not take our jobs of leading people in worship seriously enough to bring them along with us as we worship, and say it's because we have to worship, too. That doesn't fly if we have time when there's no audience to lose ourselves in worship of the Lord during the week; but most us (myself included) don't do that on our own, and then say on Sunday that we don't want to worry about leading because we want to worship. Have your intimate worship time during the week. Sunday mornings you are up in front of people so that you can lead them.   

That being said though, one of the best ways to lead them is to have yourself be in worship of the Lord. Leading by example is huge, especially when on a stage. So we need to be fully worshiping the Lord, but as leaders, we just can't leave the congregation behind. We have to worship the Lord and lead others in worship at the same time. And many times that will cause you're own 'feeling of worship' to not be as intense. But by leading others in worshiping the Lord, you are worshiping God by putting the congregation in front of yourself.....you're showing them love. So by doing this, you are able to worship God through your own singing and playing, and also love the congregation by bringing them along with you in that worship. And in that way, you fulfill both the two greatest commandments: loving God, and loving others. And if we do a good enough job of that, there will be times when the congregation is right alongside you in the worship, and suddenly you are no longer leading them, but you're all just worshiping together. Once you've led them that far, then you can step back and just worship without worrying about leading.