Barbershop, Show Choir, and a Soundguy

The other night I had the privilege of running sound for the Christmas show of the Duke City Sound, a Barbershop Choir. They sing a capella and usually have a barbershop quartet or two sing with them. They also invite a high school show choir and the 505, which is 25 and under a capella men's chorus, to sing do a few songs. The show is always great but there are some lessons I would love to teach to all the groups involved. Here at DSC we don't exactly take a huge amount of time for sound checks but we always do them. The Duke City Sound always spend a good hour warming up and singing on stage which makes for a great sound check and a great show,but I always have to remind them to do a sound check for the quartets( I will go over how I mic up the choir and the quartets in a later post). The show choir and the 505 never do a sound check. The show choir usually has at least one song with a CD as a backing music track. The choir's timing is off because they can't hear the CD and I have to make adjustments so they can get back on during the performance. If I had a sound check they could have told me whether or not they could hear. The 505 never stays on the Choir risers and ends up out of the sweet spot of the microphones. Both scenarios bring the performance of the choirs down. I can't state it enough, always do a sound check.

Reflections on a Long Couple of Months

Well another great couple of months here at DSC. It was one of those ultra busy times starting in March with our Music for the Glory of God Jazz and Cello recital. End of March beginning of April started the Easter frenzy. We had extra rehearsals for Easter. We added a choir, two trumpets, two flutes, two violins along with out core band of Piano,Acoustic, electric, percussion, bass, drums. Here is how the week of Easter went: Monday off, Tuesday The Well(our young adult ministry) had it's service, Wednesday we had Lord's Supper, Thursday we had our first rehearsal with choir and band, Friday we had our Good Friday Service (we had piano, cello and 2 vocals), Saturday we had our second rehearsal for Sunday, Three services on Sunday. Monday we took off and then set up for The Well's next meeting and trying recover the stage for a more normal week. We got a couple of weeks off then on the 24th of April we had a wedding, and the following week we had our Clarus conference with nine sessions and music before 6 of the sessions. We had one normal week and then had a children musical the following week. Monday rehearsal - Friday performance. There were eight leads on Lav mics CD tracks for the music, four videos and 125 kids in various choir arrangements. Great fun trying to keep up with all that. I am ready to settle in for some time off and normal work weeks until we get into July when VBS starts taking over the church. That is always a fun time. Check out some of the pics.
chris