Interview: Mike Sessler | Church Tech Arts

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!

1. The percussionist on a worship team shows up with a cajon.  How would you mic the cajon?

Lots of options here. At my current church, we don't have a lot of mics to choose from, so I'd turn to a SM57 or possibly a Rode NT-5 if we weren't already using both of them. One of the coolest ideas for mic'ing percussion I saw was to use a lav. A wired one would be better, as you'd get more dynamic range, but if the cord gets in the way, a wireless one would work, too. Because percussionists tend to move around and change instruments a lot, putting the mic on them instead of their instrument can be really helpful. Placement is tricky and you have to be really careful if you're using wedges, but it can be a great way to mic percussion.

2. You walk into the sound booth during rehearsal and find one of the musicians  messing with the mixer, without your permission.  What do you do?

Grab his guitar and start tuning.

Seriously, this question just came up recently. First, my hope is that this would not happen under my watch because I really do try to take the time to build relationships with the musicians and demonstrate my competence to them. It doesn't take them too long to figure out that I really do know what I'm doing, that I'm on their team and will do what's needed to make it sound good.

However, in a new situation where I might not have built that level of trust yet, I would probably lead with, "Hey how's it going? Is there something I can help you with?" I know other sound guys who lead with "Hey! Get the *%$& out of the sound booth!" I rarely find this helpful. By first asking how I can help them, it starts to break down some of the defensiveness. I would try to find out what he's hoping to achieve, then tell him I will be happy to work on it. I would then politely ask that in the future if they would please come to me with any requests so I can make sure the worship experience is a positive one for everyone.

Hopefully, this would diffuse the situation and keep it from re-occurring. If it does re-occur, I would have a very frank talk with the worship leader, who is the one presumably in authority over the musician, and explain that this is not acceptable and needs to come to an end post-haste.

3. What's the best tip you received that helped improve your mixing ability?

An FOH engineer once said to me, "You can only turn the 'suck' knob down so far..." After that though,  it would have to be "start with the vocals." I primarily mix in church environments, so for me the key is always making sure the vocals are present in the mix. This gives the congregation confidence to sing out. So before I get the guitar screamin' or the kick thumping, I will work on getting a good vocal sound. Once the vocals are dialed in, I'll start with the foundation; kick and bass. I build guitars and keys on top of that, then fill in the rest of the drum kit and anything else floating around. I've found it's a lot easier to build the band in under the vocals than to try to get the vocals on top of the band.

4. What's the hardest part of mixing a band?

Depends on the band. I've mixed some bands that aren't that good, and don't play well together. Those are really hard. If you have the electric guitar playing the same line as the acoustic, which is playing the same line as the piano, which is the same line as the keys...well, you just don't have much to work with. Without any sense of separation between the instrumentation, there's only so much we can do.

I'm really blessed right now because the band at our church is made up of professional, semi-pro and near professional players. They play really well together and honestly, it's almost hard to screw it up. But when everyone is playing on top of each other, you really don't have a lot of choices. I then make some hard decisions about who will actually be in the house mix, and have often turned instruments entirely off (keeping them in their ears, of course).

5. I know a sound guy who was handed a CD at the last minute to play as an accompaniment track - no time to check the CD.  Turned out the CD wasn't an accompaniment CD and he so he couldn't get rid of the lead vocals.  What would you have done?

That happened to me once at a wedding. First, I reached for the vocal reduction knob, then realized there wasn't one on the console. At that point, there's nothing left to do but let her fly. In this case, the vocalist was expecting a different key, so the song got really ugly, really fast. Once she realized the proper key and adjusted, it got a little better, and I toned the track down and put a lot of reverb on her voice.

I even had someone hand me the wrong CD one time. I hit play and she said, "Oh, wait not that one!" She ran off the stage to her purse, got the other CD and brought it back to me. That was subtle.

6.  Everyone has a war story as it relates to running sound.  What is
your story?

I was in the midst of a rehearsal at 7 AM on a Sunday. The vocal team (all 8 of them) were having a hard time with their monitor mix. Due to system limitations, we had them all on one mix, spread out through 3 wedges. I thought I had them balanced out pretty well, but they didn't agree. I went up to listen, and stood in various spots next to them, and could clearly pick out all the parts, though perhaps not individual voices (I mean, come on, there were 8 of them!). When I got back to FOH, they stopped and said, "[huge sigh], We just can't hear ourselves. The mix is SO bad." I said, "Well, what do you need?" "I don't know, the mix is just SO BAD, I don't think we can even go on."

They then started asking for more of themselves. Seriously, everyone wanted more of themselves. They then went on a 10 minute tirade about how they never had these kind of problems before. After seriously considering leaving, I decided to take everything out of their mix and build it back in little by little. I gave them only piano and snare, then dialed up a pretty good blend of their vocals. The service went on, and after another 3 months, they were thanking me for doing a great job and apologizing for acting so poorly earlier. I really almost did walk out, though.

7.  Your house is empty.  You have nothing that has to be done.  What do you do?

Grab my laptop and start writing. Perhaps with a small piece of fairly traded dark chocolate.

8.  I recently had a friend run sound during a rehearsal.  He has a lot of mixing experience.  He made a recommendation to the piano player about playing in a different octave to get a cleaner sound between the piano and the acoustic guitars.  She changed octaves and the song sounded great.  Do you think the sound tech's have a better view of the overall sound than the band?   Have you ever made similar suggestions?

Often this is very true. A lot depends on the band. I have made those suggestions, and sometimes they are taken in the right spirit and other times they are not. As I said, right now I get to work with exceptional musicians, so it's not an issue. In my last church, I worked with some great people who were good musicians. After I built some relationships with them and they trusted me, I would make those suggestions. Quite often, the result was a better mix. I think all of that comes down to intent and tone. If our intent as a FOH engineer is to create the best worship experience possible and we speak with the tone of humility, we have tremendous leeway in helping craft the sound.

If on the other hand, our intent is to prove to everyone how much we know about sound and music and our tone reflects that, it will not go well.

9. A guitarist busts a string during a worship set.  This is the third time it's happened in a year.  Is it your job to confront them? What would you do?

I would say it's not my job to confront them. That's a job really best left to the music director. I might mention it to the music director and say, "Hey, I noticed that Bob busted a string again today. Can you work with him on his playing technique or perhaps remind him to change strings more often?" If no one is willing to deal with it, I would probably talk to some other guitar players and find out why strings are breaking. Playing too hard? Using the wrong strings? Not changing often enough? Then, after I have some idea of what could be going on, I might strike up a casual conversation with him and throw out some suggestions.

I try to take the approach that I'm always happy to help, but try to also follow proper lines of authority. Doing so keeps me from stepping on toes and saying things I shouldn't to people I shouldn't.