We Are The Men in Black

One of my favorite movies is Men in Black. The original one. It’s a great mix of humor, suspense and some hilariously outrageous tech. In many ways, I find myself identifying with Agents J and K; and not just because we are all most often seen wearing black. In many ways, the tech team are the men (and women) in black of our churches. 

We work in the background, mostly in obscurity, making things happen‚ protecting the universe, if you will‚ and no one even knows. At least if we’re doing our job right.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes when K discharges his first weapon, the Noisy Cricket for the first time. After incinerating a semi and freighting a city block, he is sternly reprimanded by J. K Fires back that they are under attack and the people need to be warned. What J says next so often describes the life of a church tech:

“There’s always a alien battle cruiser or a Cirilian Death Ray or an intergalactic plague that’s about to wipe out life on this miserable little planet. The only way these people get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it.”

Now granted, we are not typically defending our churches against an alien battle cruiser. Yet no one in your church—in the congregation or leadership—is ever likely to know that you were there an hour early one Sunday to troubleshoot a com issue so the camera team could work. They’ll never know about the projectors that won’t initialize, the moving lights that won’t strike, the batteries that almost died, how close to the edge of feedback you were, the audio interface that wouldn’t, the digital piano that wouldn’t play. 

They come to church thinking everything is just hunky-dory and enjoy the service. They never know about any of the battles you’ve fought to get there. And you know what? That’s probably OK. After all, we don’t want them thinking about that stuff during the service. We really want them to experience a connection with their Creator. We are there to help facilitate that. 

And as much as we might wish our leadership team would recognize what we do, they probably won’t either. Mainly because they have no idea what we do and if we try to explain it to them, their eyes glaze over. And in fact, I’d much rather have my pastor focused on delivering his message instead of wondering if that problem we solved and told him about is going to crop up again. 

No, it’s better to keep these things to ourselves. We are a rumor, recognizable as Deja Vu and dismissed just as quickly. Anonymity is our name. Silence our native tongue. We’re them, we’re they. We are the men in black.

OK, so maybe that last part was a bit dramatic (unless you read it in Rip Torn’s voice, then it’s awesome!). But you get the idea. And I do have two bits of encouragement for you. 

First, if you don’t already have some fellow tech friends, find some. We get each other. When you tell a fellow tech a story of a crazy thing you had to fix, we can laugh (or cry) with you. We get it. We feel your pain, and we understand.

Second, God sees what you do in the shadows. He knows how early you get up in the morning and how late you stay at night working hard to make it all happen. And He is pleased with you. He wants you to be encouraged and strengthened. He loves your heart for service, your mind that is capable of understanding and fixing all sorts of crazy tech issues (in fact, He gave you that mind), and wants you to know it’s all worth it.

So while we may never get our hands on a Noisy Cricket, it is good to know that we are doing our part to defend and protect our congregation from the alien invasion of noise, pops, feedback and other technical anomalies. And that’s pretty cool.

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"Perfection" is the Wrong Word

Recently I was reading an article about Sir James Dyson, the guy who came up with that super-sucker of a vacuum and that really sweet air blade hand dryer. It’s a classic rags to riches story; he toiled away in obscurity in the garage for years trying to get his invention right, and then almost lost everything before it became a success. His “overnight success” was really the result of many years of hard, hard work.

As a fellow entrepreneur, I find stories like that fascinating. But what stopped me in my tracks was his quote about perfection. The write of the review suggested that the inventor would most likely be a perfectionist given his obsessive desire to make his products the best they can be. Instead, he said this:

"'Perfect' is in fact completely the wrong word to use. You start with a goal and you make the best possible version you can make at that moment. You give the customer the best available at that moment, and then you set another goal and start working on it again."

When I read that I thought church tech directors and volunteers. We may want it perfect, or our leadership may want it perfect, but perfect is the wrong word. The truth is, it will never be perfect. But that’s not an excuse to phone it in, either. While we can’t make it perfect, we can make the best possible iteration of it (whatever it is) at this moment. 

Perhaps next week, next month or next year with some additional training, equipment or time, we can make it better. For now, this is the best we can do, and that’s OK. Don’t give up or feel like a failure; just set a new goal and get back to work. 

I actually find this concept quite freeing. As a recovering perfectionist, I tend to get frustrated at the obstacles to my getting something as close to “perfect,” at least in my own mind, as possible. But now I simply have to consider if I’ve done the best I can with what I have available. If I have, and I’m not satisfied, I can set some new goals and give it another go. It’s brilliant, really.

How have you overcome the pursuit of “perfection?”

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Church Tech Weekly Episode 98: Let's Talk About Audio

Actually, let's not. This week, we get into a pretty deep discussion about the need for art in the church, the meaning of technology and ask if we are part of the problem or part of the solution.

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Going to Gurus

Later this afternoon, Van and I will board a plane bound for Chicago so that we can be part of this spring’s Gurus of Tech conference. I am personally very excited about this year’s event, if for no other reason that a lot of my friends from around the country will be there. 

One of the great things about technology is that it allows us to stay connected to people on the other side of the country (or world). Thus, I get to maintain great friendships with people in Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Nashville and all over. But there’s nothing like being together in one room. And a conference like Gurus is a great place to facilitate that. 

We talked about it on the podcast last week, Dave wrote about it on his blog, and I want to say it again; if you’re coming to Gurus and see me standing around talking with some guys, please come up and say hi. As Dave said, we’re all fairly introverted (except for Van) and tend to talk with the guys that we know—especially when we don’t see each other very often.

But we all really want to meet you because we all enjoy getting to know other guys and gals who are in the tech trenches every day. I love having the opportunity to interact with so many of you on Twitter and through comments and e-mails, and welcome the chance to put faces to names (or Twitter names). And speaking of Twitter names, it’s sometimes helpful if you introduce yourself with your Twitter handle if it’s different from your real name. In fact, I think our Twitter names should be on our name badges. But I digress…

If you haven’t already signed up for the CTLN dinner on Tuesday, here is the link to do so. A bunch of us will be there, and we’d love to hang out and swap stories with you. 

On Wednesday morning, I get to be part of a FOH roundtable with (and I can’t believe I get to be on this panel) Dave Stagl, Scott Ragsdale, Andrew Stone, Lee Fields and Daniel Rosenbalm. I’ll also be around all day Tuesday as well as before and after our panel discussion so if you want to talk audio, or pretty much any other topic, feel free to look me up. 

I will try to be Tweeting my whereabouts during the conference so if you want to hang out, you can find us easily. I do sometimes forget or get caught up in the moment, so if I’m not doing so, it’s not me being secretive. It’s just because I forgot. 

I know I speak for Van, Duke, Jason, Dave and a bunch of other CTW regulars when I say we’re really looking forward to seeing and meeting many of you this week.  

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The Box of Freedom

At first, it might seem like being in a box is antithetical to the concept of freedom. But in fact, we find our box quite freeing. Let me elaborate. 

We came up with the “Box of Freedom” concept about a year and a half ago. We were running into some issues with our lighting team; well, that may be too strong. What we were finding was that some of the guys did things one way and others did it another way. Some of the ways were fine, others were not as well received by senior leadership. And if you remember from my recent post, What’s Important?, consistency tops the list of things that are important at Coast Hills.

So we needed a way to create some parameters for our lighting guys without completely shutting down their creativity. And thus was created, the Box of Freedom. The idea behind the Box of Freedom is to essentially create a “sandbox” big enough to play in, but with boundaries that are acceptable to our leadership team. 

In our box, we set standards for house light levels during different parts of the service, guidelines for a few things not ever to do (shine lights in the eyes of the congregation, for example), and other general parameters. Other than that, the guys are free to do pretty much whatever they want. 

When creating the Box of Freedom, we involved my boss—the Pastor of Weekends, our service producers, me and my ATD and two of our more experienced lighting volunteers. We wanted to be sure to include the team in the process so that they could not only speak into it, but also hear the reasoning behind some of the parameters. We took detailed notes and afterwards, I condensed it down to a double-sided single page of guidelines. After getting final approval from all at the meeting that this is what we agreed to, this was printed, laminated and left at lighting.

In practice, this has worked quite well. What we didn’t want to be doing was constantly running up to lighting telling the guys they were doing something “wrong” (and I put wrong in quotes, because it’s not necessarily wrong, just not appropriate for our venue). We all felt like that would eventually demoralize the team, and not bring out their best. By creating a set of parameters that everyone works within, and giving freedom to be creative inside those parameters, everyone wins. 

We get much less negative feedback from leadership after a weekend, and the guys have more fun doing lights because, like many areas of art, restrictions actually increase creativity. Our services are more consistent, though each one bears the fingerprints of the L1 for that weekend.

The Box of Freedom concept can also be applied to other disciplines as well. It is fairly easy to come up with a Box of Freedom for audio—maximum SPL, average SPL for music, average SPL for speaking, overall mixing style, etc.. Inside that box, each engineer can approach the weekend in their own way, but the week-to-week consistency is reasonably high. And—hopefully—there are fewer complaints from management and the congregation about things being out of bounds. 

In many ways, the Box of Freedom is like a style guide. Style guides provide organizations a way to keep their message and branding consistent. In the technical arts, we need to do the same thing. 

Do you have a Box of Freedom at your church? How is it working out?

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What's Important?

One of the most important (and difficult) things a church technical director needs to learn is how to determine what is important. We have a never-ending list of things to do, work on, fix, set up, prepare for and take down. There are events to cover, volunteers to train, plans to make and systems to upgrade. Based on my conversations with dozens and dozens of TDs over the years, I think we could all easily fill a few pages with the projects we feel we need to work on. 

Obviously, can’t work on all those projects at once. We don’t have the time or the budget to do everything. That means we must prioritize. And that’s where we can get into trouble. 

Before we start attacking our list, we need to determine what is important. The problem is, what is important to us may not be important to our leadership. And as my friend Van says, what is important to the Sr. Pastor is what is important. Everything else? Not so much. 

I’ve said may times before that what we do is as much about people as it is about technology (regardless of how we feel about that). If we are going to be successful as a TD, we need to learn how to figure out what is important to senior leadership, and make those things priority. 

For example, one of the things that is very important to our senior leadership is consistency. They don’t really care for big changes. So we have to move slowly and incrementally improve things. When we take a really big swing at something, we usually get pushback. Audio is a high value as well; it needs to be clear, mixed well, not too loud and—you guessed it—consistent. Video is not as important. So I spend a lot more time tweaking our audio systems and training that team than I do on the video system (much to the chagrin of the video team). 

Long-time readers will also know that I consider being a TD a long game. We really can’t measure things in terms of months, but in terms of years. And this is where it gets interesting. If we spend a good amount of time building trust with leadership, focusing on the things that are important to them, improving those things and demonstrating progress, we will get increasing amounts of time, budget and leeway to work on the projects that are important to us.

Trouble comes when we reverse that process. I know guys who have gone into a new situation and immediately started making changes to suit their preferences. They often get a lot of negative feedback from leadership and it starts the relationship off on the wrong foot. It then takes months or years to rebuild that trust—if it is ever rebuilt.

The better plan is to come in and not make any changes for a while. Learn the systems and the people. Figure out what is important—to leadership, not to you—and start working on those things. Once we demonstrate progress on the issues that are troubling management, then we can working on the things we deem important. 

As much as we might think we know best (and honestly, sometimes we do), it doesn’t matter. The technical director is a servant role; we serve the needs of the worship leader and senior pastor. Take care of those needs, and you get the freedom to do what you want to do. Start off doing what you want, and your life will be full of strife. 

What have you found to be important in your church, and how have you addressed it?

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Church Tech Weekly Episode 97: Hey Little Buddy

Fact or fiction: Externally clocking an M7 makes it sound better. Tonight we find out. We also talk about some other cool stuff we've been working with including the Portico 5045 "magic box."

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The Spectrum of Time, or How To Fit All That Stuff Into The Mix

My friend Dave says one of the most important things we can do as audio engineers is to listen to music. Lots of music. Many different styles of music. And don’t just listen, break it down. How is it mixed? How is it arranged? Where did they put things, and how did they make it sound good (or fail at making it sound good)?

I subscribe to this practice, though not as much as I would like. The other day, I was watching a Classic Albums show on Netflix. The subject of that episode was Phil Collin’s early solo project, Face Value. While watching, I was reminded that I listened to that over and over as a high school student. Honestly, I had forgotten how good of a record that was. So I broke it out on Spotify and listened to it a few times. After 30 years, it still sounds fantastic. 

As I listened, I realized they spent just as much effort placing sounds in time as in space. Let that sink in for a second and I’ll explain. We’ve talked a lot about the frequency spectrum and how we need to have all the instruments occupying their own little corner of real estate in said spectrum. And that’s very true. 

It's also an especially difficult proposition in many churches because in order to be inclusive, we often find ourselves with a lot of musicians on stage. And often, their skill level is, well, less than optimal, and as such they tend to all play the same thing. I’ve mixed worship bands that have three guitars, keys and piano, and they’re all playing the same line of cords. If you just turn it all up, it sounds like mush because all that energy is concentrated into a very narrow slice of audible spectrum—which is typically also occupied by vocals. 

Now to be fair, this is as much an arranging problem (ie. a musical director problem) as it is a mixing problem. In fact, it’s really more of an arranging issue. But as most churches don’t really want to deal with the lack of musicianship, it falls on us to fix it. And that’s where Phil Collins comes in (see, there was a point to that paragraph).

One of the things that stood out to me is that there were many, many instruments playing any given song. But they didn’t all play at once. In fact, there were a few things that hit a few notes and that was the last you heard of them. Take the remake of the classic Genesis song, Behind the Lines. Listen to the horns in that mix; they don’t play continually, instead they stab some notes than go away for a while. During the chorus, the horns play quite a lot, but notice that the other instrumentation lays back.

A few weeks ago, we had a pretty full band, so I had some opportunities to put this theory into practice. Instead of trying to make the B3 fit into the mix for the entire song, I pushed it up between phrases of the lyrics, then ducked it back down. I went back and forth between the electric and acoustic depending on the part in the song. Sometimes I pushed the bass up to fill the bottom, other times, I let the kick do it.

The result of all this is a cleaner mix, and better overall sound. Instead of trying to make everything fit, just turn some of it down. Each instrument will still contribute to the overall texture of the song, but some will carry more weight at different times. 

Ideally, the musicians would figure some of this out on their own and start playing segments instead of the whole thing; and it’s something our bands are generally really good at, actually. In fact, it’s our band that really has driven this point home for me. In most other church settings, I’ve dealt with the “everyone plays everything all the time” syndrome. But here, I actually have musicians playing around each other, and it makes my job so much easier. 

But if you find yourself in an environment where everyone is playing the same line, try spreading them out over time. It may just help clean up your mix.  

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