The Sixteen Commandments
How To Make Peace With Your Church Musician
Thou Shall Give Thy Musician Space
Sunday morning, before service, is the most
critical time in a musician's day. No amount of
preparation the night before can mitigate the
importance of getting in place, getting warmed
up, troubleshooting, praying, and otherwise
preparing to support the day's activities at
church. But the church often throws up
roadblocks and is aggressively hostile toward
their musicians,
making, typically, no allowances for what the
musician needs to do in the morning.
Joy explains it this way, “Regardless of how
much preparation I put into Sunday's service
during the week or the day before, come Sunday
morning I still need to play in the room I will
be ministering in on the instrument I will be using.
I arrive at the church a half hour earlier than
I need to be there specifically for that
purpose. Even so, there will be the early comers
who want to wander over and talk or ask me
questions or discuss things. This time is
important to me. Please don't come over asking
me things. It's as if the pastor were praying
at the altar, and you just come over and strike
up a conversation. It's exactly the same thing.”
Most every church I've been in, of any
denomination or ethnic group, has some
configuration of Sunday School class in the
sanctuary. And, for reasons I will never
understand, they nearly always arrange these
classes so they are virtually right on top of
the instruments or otherwise very near where the
musician is set up (or needs to set up). I've
been asked to please stop setting up while
Sunday School was in progress, or to arrive at
the crack of dawn so I can be out of their way,
when the Sunday School class has the entirety of
the sanctuary to conduct its class, but
nevertheless chooses to congregate in the
immediate vicinity of where the instruments and
musicians need to be. This was a church that was
worshipping in a borrowed space, so the
instruments had to go up and down every week.
As a result, I'd just wait for Sunday school to
finish. Sunday School superintendents need to be
aware of the chaos they cause when they allow
Sunday School to run over. This church's Sunday
School ran over regularly, dismissing within
minutes, sometimes seconds, of the 11 AM service
start time, which meant that, during devotion or
announcements at the start of service, the
musicians were busying themselves, in
distracting fashion, trying to get settled in.
Churches: please move your Sunday School classes
away from the instruments. As vital as it is for
a pastor to have time in his study on Sunday
Morning, that's how vital it is for the music
director or minister to have access to his
instruments and his team. Just as the pastor is
obliged to prepare during the week and the night
before, he still requires time on Sunday morning
to prepare himself and still needs armor bearers
to minimize the traffic and distractions around
him. I am begging you: please move your Sunday
School class away from the instruments. Please
be patient and allow the musicians to quietly go
about their business in the morning.
Thou Shall Get Out of The
Way
If musicians need to load equipment in and out
of the sanctuary, please assign an usher to
them. The usher should be able to go before
them, asking folks to clear the aisle and watch
their backs. I have kneecapped many a saint
(accidentally, of course) because Church Folk
love to stand in the aisle, blocking the doors,
and talk. Once I was leaving a church with my
bass in one hand, my very heavy amplifier in the
other hand, my gig back slung over my shoulder,
and my bible. I was walking down the long, grand
steps in the front of the church, when a
minister stopped me to chat me up about
something. The minister became offended when I
kind of blew him off, asking him to call me
later. The amp weighed about 80 pounds. I was
laden down with equipment and my back was
strained from having to slooowwwly inch my way
through the throng of fellowshipping
worshippers. Please assign me an usher. That's
what they are there for, to clear the way and
open the door and fend off people who haven't
got the sense to not chat me up when I'm walking
down a long flight of steps carrying over 150
pounds' worth of equipment by myself.
Thou Shall Not Be Selfish
Please bless your musicians. Most churches have
a musician on staff and a number of volunteer
musicians. These volunteers are the backbone of
the church, and they frequently go without so
much as a thank-you. Most times that I play, I
tend not to charge churches. I am of a mind that
we are obliged to tithe our gifts the way we
tithe our money, so playing occasionally as a
volunteer seems my reasonable service. But, just
because a musician doesn't charge you does not
release you from your obligation to bless them.
A card with a few bucks in it. Dinner after
service. Gift certificates to a music store
(every musician's favorite). If you can't afford
to pay your musician, you can certainly give him
a line of credit at a music store so when the
drummer needs sticks or the guitar player needs
strings, he shouldn't EVER have to go into his
pocket. If I'm playing for you for free, all of
my expenses should be graciously and gladly
covered by a grateful congregation. But, more
often than not, I am ignored, unappreciated, and
the church, in large portion, seems indifferent
to whether I play or not.
Your paid staff need to be paid. These are
people who do full and part-time jobs for the
church and are your front line of defense.
Often, getting a musician's check ready for him
on Sunday seems to be low priority, a kind of ,
“well, if we get to it,” mentality, sometimes
based on personality issues— if they like the
musician personally, the check is ready. If they don't,
“Well, if we get to it.” Not paying your paid
staff is simply wrong. Not being diligent about
it is simply not Christ-like. We can't purport
to follow Christ and then treat each other
badly. “The fact is, for your paid staff, Sunday
is the end of their work week, not the
beginning,” the Reverend Darryl Cherry,
Creative Director of Covenant Music Ministry, told me.
“Your musician has been to rehearsals and
meetings and has prepared and studied and taught
and traveled to and fro. He's put in a week's
work, and just like you he has financial
obligations to meet.” But, come Sunday, on top
of everything else a musician has to deal with,
there's this knot in his stomach: will they pay
me or won't they? Then he has to all but grovel
and wait around and pursue the office staff for
his check, only to be told he has to come back
late Monday. How many of us would tolerate this
on our jobs?
You know you have paid staff. You know that paid
staff has to be paid on certain dates. There is
no surprise. There really is no excuse for
forcing your musician into contortions or make
him plead or explain why he needs his check. You
have made an agreement with this person. You
need to honor it.
Thou Shall Deal With Thy
Sound Engineer
The sound engineer needs to report to your
musical director or music minister. There's a good
reason for this. The music minister is
responsible for the overall atmosphere of the
service, and he or she needs to have dozens of
voices be heard. If the musical director is
butting heads with the sound man, if there's a
turf war going on, that's no good for anybody.
One church I play at occasionally has an
electric piano, and they put the piano through
the house PA system. Unless you have a
reasonably sophisticated monitoring system and EQ system on the house, never, never, never put
an electric piano through the house system. This
particular church has no monitor system at all.
Which means, when I'm playing piano, the only
sound I hear is from the piano itself, from the
speakers mounted under the keyboard, so I am
frequently ducking down as I play, straining to
hear from the tinny-sounding speakers built into
the piano itself.. A singing
choir quickly overwhelms those speakers, and
then I cannot hear myself at all. With the sound
routed through the house, the congregation can
hear me clearly, but I cannot hear myself, which
means I end up playing harder and turning the
piano up to the maximum. The sound guy in back
is typically inattentive (he does double-duty as
a door usher— another major no-no), and the
pastor soon dispatches a number of emissaries to
me telling me to turn the piano down. The
pastor's wife once took me out in the parking
lot and literally scolded me for having the
piano too loud.
Folks: the volume of the piano in the house is
NOT THE MUSICIAN'S RESPONSIBILITY. If your piano
is run through the house, the person you should
address your concerns and complaints to is not
the musician but the sound guy, a guy I have
completely given up on trying to communicate
with because he is inattentive and is selective
in terms of who, in the pulpit, he will respond
to. He is engaged in a turf war with the
minister of music, and I frequently am caught in
the crossfire, where this guy will either refuse
to turn my microphone on or will cut it off, or
will have the piano blaring in the house, so the
little emissaries come along and make me turn
the volume down on the piano. When I do that, I
can't hear myself at all, and I may as well stop
playing, which is exactly what I've ended up
doing. I can't hear myself at all, so I go and
sit down somewhere.
Monitors, properly adjusted, would eliminate
most of the problem here. A separate monitor
system, run from a monitor guy— a guy whose only
job is to run the monitor array down front, NOT
the house from the back— the guy in the back
can't possibly have any clue about what our
needs up front are. Most churches are run by
older people and older people want it quiet.
Musicians want it loud. The real need is
somewhere between: the music should have
presence, should have dimension, but not be
overwhelming. The best example I've experienced
of this mid ground is the sound at Solid Rock
Christian Church, which has a wonderful balance
and presence to it without blasting you out of
your mind. The worst example is likely Church
For All Nations, which has an absolutely
fabulous sound system and talented people to run
it, but the church apparently insists that the
sound design be so timid that it's as if there
were no mics at all. Entire instruments vanish
into the background, and the overall sound has
no foundation or depth.
One Job: Pay attention.
Thou Shall Pay Attention
The two people most critical to your worship service are the
sound engineer and the drummer. Yes, the drummer. I realize not
every church allows drums, but those that do: please get a good
drummer. James Gaulden, a musician at Colorado Springs
Fellowship, put it this way, “A drummer's main job is to keep
time. If he can't keep time, it doesn't matter how fancy his
skills are, he's a menace to the service.” A sound engineer's
job, Reverend Cherry says, “...is to pay attention. That's all
he's go tot do. If he just pays attention, that's half the
battle right there.” And the chain of command should be clear: the
sound guy should not be taking instructions from everybody and
anybody, but he also should not be engaged in some turf war or
power struggle. He should not be doubling as a greeter or
handing out fans or running errands (one sound engineer I know
of, routinely leaves to go drive the church van and pick people
up). The sound engineer station is critical to the service.
Your church musician or minister of music, more often than not,
knows more about sound systems than your sound person. This is
not universally true as there are some properly trained sound
people out there working in churches today, but the majority of
my experience has been sound people who are parishioners trained
to run the board. More often than not, these people are not
sound engineers. They are trained in which buttons to push but
they have no ears: no artistic sense of what is important to
listen for. Actual sound men, pro sound men who work with
professional bands, have trained ears. They know what they are
listening to and what they should not be listening to. There is
often a conflict between the sound person and the minister of
music because many churches refuse to resolve the chain of
command issues between the two, typically dismissing the
conflicts as personality clashes or immaturity. They may be
right, but even so, a clear chain of command must exist, or your
ministry will suffer as the sound person, usually not a trained
professional and thus perhaps incapable of hearing the same
thing the music minister is hearing, braces against the music
minister's direction. Most sound people I've met are extremely
territorial and extremely dismissive of the music director. But,
in my experience, the music director knows more about the sound
person's job— not just the button pushing but, in most cases,
what to listen for. This is why I conclude the minister of music
is more qualified to pull the train, and so the sound person
should, ideally, report to him.
Reverend Cherry says, “The sound person should think of the
sound system as an instrument— much like the way people view the
church organ or piano. It would be a good idea to regularly,
with the help of a second person, practice setting up and
adjusting the sound system for it's optimum performance. The
days of turning on a sound system and walking away from it are
over. The idea of an automated sound system in a church seems
restrictive. The sound person should be able to play it as if it
were a concert violin. The most sophisticated, well tuned, sound
system can sound terrible with the wrong person running the
console. “The sound person should make it their business to know
how to operate every piece of equipment effectively in the sound
room. Many sound problems stem from the fact that they don't
practice during the week, or take the time to become familiar
with the console and equipment.”
Joy adds, “It'd be a good idea if the sound engineer came to
choir rehearsal. So he or she could know what to expect come
Sunday morning and spend the time working the problems out of
the system.
Thou Shall Hire A Drummer Who Can Actually
Keep Time
The drummer's role, likewise, is to keep time and provide a
foundation for the music. A good drummer should also know when
to shut up. I've seen drummers who, inexplicably, tap on the
kick pedal during announcements or otherwise fidget and become
distracting when they should remain silent. The other extreme is
drummers who wander off, leaving their station unmanned, when a
sudden move of the Spirit or change in program now demands their
presence. Musicians, generally, need to be disciplined, mature,
attentive, prepared and submitted to leadership. They should
never, ever, take their eyes off of the musical director or
minister of music, and their movement around the sanctuary
should be at the director's explicit direction. Having too much
drums, too many fills, too flashy or too showy, is a
distraction. Having no drums when there should be drums, is a
distraction. A drummer who loses time, who routinely gets thrown
off or out of beat, really isn't up to the level where he should
be serving on Sunday morning. A church should make some
reasonable sacrifice to get a good drummer and a good sound
technician.
Don't put Plexiglas around your drums unless you are going to
mic the drums. The sound shields are intended to isolate the
drums so there is less “bleed", less overlap of sound from one
channel to the other. They are not designed to just shut the
drummer up. If you put the baffle up and DON'T mic the drums,
all you're doing is causing problems for the drummer, who now
hears only himself and nothing around him, making it difficult
for him to keep time, and you've muffled the dynamic range of
the drums without compensating for it with miccing. If your
choir travels a lot, it might be a good idea to buy a second
drum set. This drum set would remain inside road cases, ready to
go when you do, so your choir and musicians are not at the mercy
of whatever may be awaiting you at your destination.
Thou Shall Take Thy Musicians Off The
Leash
When I was coming up, we had the concept of the First Chair. The
best musicians were always the First Chair musicians. We had A
Drummer. There were several of us who played drums, and
anxiously waited our turn, but there was only one Official Drummer, the First
Chair Drummer, whose job it was to make sure there was always a
drummer for every service. He didn't have to play every service
himself, but it was his responsibility to make sure the drums
were covered. It was a simple matter of skill: the better
musician got the First or Second chair. Your opportunities to
play were based on your skill level, which encouraged us
youngsters to come in during the week and practice. These days,
I see almost NO practice going on at ANY church I frequent. I
man, I'm sure somebody somewhere has to be practicing, but,
honestly, I never see musicians— just musicians— come in and
really work it out. Musicians, like hunting dogs, need to be let
off the leash every now and then, allowed to come in and play
very loud for hours. Play until their fingers bleed. Play until
they don't want to play anymore. That's how a bunch of musicians
becomes a band. The only way that will ever happen is if they
get to jam with each other in regular intervals. Too often, the
only time musicians come together is choir rehearsal. You cannot
adequately rehearse a band at choir rehearsal. I should not be
learning a part at choir rehearsal. Choir rehearsal is for the
choir. By the time I arrive at choir rehearsal, I should know
all of my parts, and I shouldn't be in the way. If I don't know
my parts, I won't play at choir rehearsal, but will tape the
rehearsal and learn my part at home.
Thou Shall Have No Microphone Before Me
This other thing really gets me: people who refuse to use
microphones. One of the services I regularly play at has several
ladies who go, “Oh, I don't need that, they can hear me.” No
they can't. You can hear you. Polling the audience to see who
can and can't hear you is a waste of time. And, the main point,
if she doesn't use a mic, I have to stop playing. If I stop
playing, the atmosphere in the sanctuary changes. Not that I
need to be playing all the time, but if you simply use the mic,
we have a wider variety of options than if you don't. These
ladies refuse to use the mic, and everything comes to a dead
stop, with a dead spot where soft music should go. When you get
a dead spot in service, people become acutely aware of time
passing, and also become self-conscious about their worship.
Things they might do under cover of a blanket of music, they're
less likely to do if they feel too self-conscious about raising
their voice amid dead silence. “Anointed music softens the
ground,” Minister Sharon Wilson-Wheeler of The Women of Purpose
told me, “makes it easier to till and enables the Word to take
root.” Knowing when to play and when to stop, where a pad or
fill is called for and where silence is needed, is a specialized
skill, one that develops over time. It requires gifting,
intuition and anointing to know how to shape a service with
music, and this is the primary difference between a music
director or music department head and a minister of music.
Refusing to use the mic (likely out of shyness) works against
the service. Maybe they can hear you, but you are certainly
forcing the music to stop and the service to come to a halt
while they strain to do so.
There is only one microphone, and that microphone is the Shure
SM58 vocal mic. It's that simple. If you do not have Shure
SM58's, you are kidding yourself. Every other microphone made is
built to some specification of the SM58. It's hype sheet will
likely read, “...as dynamic as a Shure SM58 for half the cost!”
Don't believe it. Trinity and Emmanuel Baptist Church use Shures,
both churches also using the wireless SM58 for certain
applications. I am not a fan of wireless mics (most serious
musicians will tell you they're far more trouble than they're
worth), but if you must get a wireless mic, get a Shure SM58
wireless with the True Diversity digital receiver. The True
Diversity receivers have dual receivers in them and a computer
chip that switches between the two several times per second to
ensure there will be virtually no dropouts. And, under the bulky
transmitter apparatus is the classic Shure sound: fat, clean,
wide range. For a VHF mic (UHF mics are way better, FM mics are
way worse), the Shure is a winner. But, for the price of one
Shure wireless SM58 and a True Diversity receiver, you could buy
almost five, yes five, wired Shure SM58's. And mics with wires
are more reliable, less breakable, and in terms of church
services, a better deal. I'd recommend the wireless mics only
for certain applications and users.
The dual mics on the speaker's podium is a typical black Baptist
thing, begun, I suppose, because some preacher wanted to look
important. The president of the United States routinely has two
mics on his podium because one is to the media feed and one is
to the house. Outside of the vanity of the “presidential ook,” and the
time-honored “That's the way it's always been done” mentality,
there is no need for dual podium mics. Reverend Cherry points
out they cause more problems than they solve, “Two microphones
installed on the pulpit podium are just a bad idea. This is
traditionally a misleading theory for those in the black church.
When you have two microphones facing each other, it creates a
sound field that causes feedback when turned up too high.”
Overhead condenser choir mics don't work. It's that simple.
Don't believe me, go on and waste your money. “The condenser
microphones pick up the ambient field within a certain
distance,” Reverend Cherry says. “When they are too close
together they feed into each other.” The things howl and whistle
and cause nothing but problems UNLESS you've set up your sound
field effectively (i.e. placed your house monitors forward of
the stage or pulpit). But, even in those cases, choir mics and
(gasp!) lavaliere (lapel) mics simply don't work: they are the
worst examples of brain-dead technology. Pastors: please throw
out those lapel mics. They sound terrible and they feed back on
a dime. “The truth is, most black churches are looking for
bargains,” Reverend Cherry says. “The deacons go out to Radio
Shack or somewhere and shop for bargains. A bargain lavaliere
mic is just feedback waiting to happen. You go to the white
churches and their lavaliere mics sound great and have warmth
and depth to them, but they cost fifteen hundred dollars. We're
crowing about the bargain we got on a $200 mic.” Real cordless
mics, cordless mics that Whitney Houston uses, cost, minimum,
twelve hundred dollars. Any cordless mic in the three to four
hundred dollar range is a big question mark. “The truth is,”
Cherry says, “you get what you pay for.”
And stop trying to save money with rechargeable 9-volt
batteries: they are a joke, too. You can never tell when they're
going to quit on you, and God's work, I imagine, deserves a
fresh 9-volt battery. I buy them in bulk from Walgreens, the
cheap Walgreens store brand. An average 9-volt Alkaline will
work just fine through the day, no matter how many services.
After the service, I mark the battery with a permanent marker,
noting the date I used it. From that point on, the battery is
good for rehearsals or bible studies or something, but for the
worship services, I always crack open a fresh
battery so I know I'm juiced up.
Reverend Cherry recalls, “The batteries in the cordless mics
were not checked before service. We had a time not too long ago
[at his church in New Jersey] where they didn't have any
batteries for the mics and had to send someone to the store to
purchase them during service.”
The absolute best way to mic a choir is with hand-helds. But, if
your choir has more than ten folks, obviously that won't do.
And, never let people share a mic. The rule is: when two share a
mic, neither is heard. Because these well-meaning folks tend to
hold the hand-held mic at shoulder level, between them, as they
sing. A hand-held mic is designed to be sung into. It is
designed to be held right by your mouth. Despite what you may
have seen on a concert video, they are not designed for two or
more people to share.
Alternatively, you might divide your choir into sections and
form semi-circles around quality condensers like the AKG-c1000s,
the “Swiss Army Knife For Musicians,” which I swear by. The AKG
is designed with a removable pattern converter that changes the
mic's radial pattern from a wide one to a narrow one. You can
virtually eliminate feedback while keeping this mic hot enough
to pick up everyone in the circle.
Thou Shall Not Use Giant 1970's Disco
Speakers
Most black churches I've been to have appallingly bad sound
systems. Patched together out of dusty relics collected over the
years (while the pastor drives a brand new Cadillac, but I
digress). They have either inadequate monitors down front or no
monitors at all. The house speakers are almost always behind the
field of regard ( the wide angle from the front of the
microphone: the mic is subject to pick up sound waves from any
sound within its pickup pattern, think a wide “V” in front of
the mic). If the speakers are behind this field, you will
inevitably have feedback problems. If the speakers are placed
properly forward of the sound stage area, you will have fewer
problems BUT you now MUST have adequate monitors so the people
on stage can hear themselves. Many churches have HUGE “disco”
style speakers, massive cabinets with giant horns and woofers,
precariously suspended from the ceiling just over Mother Angie
Lou's head. That day, the Day of The Giant 1970's Disco Speaker,
is sooo dead. The giant speaker must come down. Must be
destroyed. The giant speaker is an abomination unto God.
The proper application for house-style speakers with massive
woofers is for music. If all you are broadcasting through your
P.A. is vocals, the massive speakers are likely not even being
used. The horns are, likely, the only parts actually being used,
as these cabinets usually include some kind of crossover, which
sends the mids and highs to the horn and the low-end frequency
sounds to the woofer. There is not enough low-frequency notes in
the human voice to move those massive
cones in and out. But you DO need a huge amplifier to power
those dinosaurs.
Most modern churches now use satellite speakers not much bigger
than bookshelf speakers you'd use at home. Many of these
speakers are wireless (though, like the mics, I dislike wireless
speakers intensely). They weigh mere ounces and can be placed
anywhere. They are energy efficient, often being low-wattage
4Ohm speakers (as opposed to many of the giant speakers, which
are 8Ohm; the lower the Ohm, the more efficient the speaker; by
“more efficient,” yes, that often translates into “louder”).
NEVER stack your amplifiers way in the back with the mixer.
Place your amplifiers, ideally one high-voltage mono amp per
speaker or speaker pair, as close to the speaker as possible.
Again, most black churches have the amplifier either way in the
back with the sound board, or it is *shudders uncontrollably*
behind the pulpit itself or under the steps (I kid you not) or
some other odd place. “The pastor should not be responsible for
adjusting the P.A. system during service,” Reverend Cherry adds.
“The old amplifier-behind-the-pulpit bit is very 1965. That day
is long over.”
“The truth is, though,” he continues, “most black churches build
the sanctuary and then think about the P.A. They think about the
sound last, as if they just went, 'Oops, we need some
microphones.'”
The most efficient place to put your amplifiers are where the
speakers are. Keep your run of speaker cable as short as
possible and do NOT go cheap on the speaker cable: get the very
best shielding you can afford to cut down on FM and CB RF (radio frequency)
transmissions. Keep the amps well ventilated and in
a secure place, but a location that is easy to get to in a hurry
should something go wrong.
So many churches are set up so poorly, in fact, with bad sound,
inadequate instruments, cheap mics and so forth, that when I go
out, I tend to bring my own portable rig with me. This rig, a
self-contained PA system, not only powers my keyboards and mics
my vocalists, but I can run almost any small to medium-sized
church right from the compact 20-channel stereo mixer in my rig.
Setting the rig up takes me about fifteen minutes, and I
frequently incur the snickers of church folk, amused that I'd go
to the trouble. But, it never fails: once service starts, once
they hear the difference between my rig and their house system,
every time they gravitate towards my mics and my keyboards. And
then nobody is laughing anymore.
They Saw You Coming:
The unscrupulous morticians of music equipment: Clavinova dealers.
For the price of one of these, you could buy three high-end keyboard workstations.
Thou Shall Not Let The Deaconesses Pick Out Thy Piano
The great majority of black churches I've served in have had the
piano picked out by a committee. Or, worse, by a decorator. I
have not, in 25 years of ministry, encountered a black church
where the instrument was picked out by the musician who will
play it (though I'm
sure it's happened, I personally have not seen it). Often, the
musician is the last to know what instrument is being chosen.
Often, a piano is chosen by its color or veneer or finish or how
it fits into the decor of the sanctuary, without much regard
given to the fact Daewoo probably doesn't make a great piano. I
have routinely played better sounding, better-playing pianos in
school auditoriums than in churches. So much so that I am
actually afraid of church pianos. I am afraid to
visit churches without coming prepared with my rig and my
keyboards just in case the instruments are bad or I can't hear
myself. I go in, check it out; if the sound or instrument is not
up to snuff, I pop the trunk and start loading in my own gear. A piano, and write this down someplace, is not
furniture. It is an instrument. It is played by a musician. And
the musician's input on the buying decision should be the major
deciding factor.
Thou Shall Not Buy A Clavinova (or
Technics or Kawai)
Clavinova Digital Pianos by Yamaha are the evil money pits of
the black church. They have gained popularity as all-in-one
instruments that have organ sounds (terrible organ sounds), and,
some, disc drives and touch screens and all of that. Most
musicians will tell you they hate Clavinovas. Most musicians
would never spend a dime of their money on these beasts because
they exist, in large portion, to take advantage of gullible
non-musicians, like mommies who want a piano for the house or,
yes, churches who think a Clavinova can pull double-duty as a
Hammond organ. Well, it can't. We hate Clavinovas. Hate, hate,
hate. Technics, Akai, all of that— those creepy contraptions
with all the buttons that sound horrible and play horrible. They
are either run through the house, overwhelming the congregation,
or not, so the player can't hear himself at all. And they've got
all of this crap nobody ever uses— the Bosa Nova rhythm section,
the always-horrible fake Hammond sound. The ubiquitous and
horrible Glockenspiel fake-sounding electric piano patch.
Please stop wasting your money on Clavinovas. They are cheaper
than pianos, but they are, in effect, really average to lame
synthesizers with a HUGE markup. For the money you wasted on a
Clavinova or Technics psuedo-piano, you could have gotten one of
Yamaha's high-end 88 weighted-key digital pianos, or any number
of high-end synthesizers that not only do 3-5 times as much as
the Clavinova is capable of, but also has high bitrate samples
of real Hammond B3's. Yamaha's MO8, a cheaper alternative to
their flagship Motif, not only sounds like a B3,
but can emulate the rotary speaker of a Hammond (not only
spinning it up and down, but the “free spin” of a real Hammond
Leslie speaker— when you shut the vibrato off, the speaker
doesn't just stop, it slowly winds back down, creating a unique
effect). A high-end Clavinova with glossy piano finish can cost
around seven grand. The MO-8 streets for around $1999. For
$2500, you can get one heck of a good synth, one that an actual
musician would appreciate, and one that is a much more potent
weapon than the toothless, laughable Clavinovas. No matter how
fancy they look to you, no matter how high-tech the touch screen
and all of that, any real musician will snicker at how you got
took for all of that money for what is, under the hood, a
Hyundai with a Porsche price tag. I am personally not aware of
any professional keyboards (save, maybe, a Synclavier or
Fairlight MFX3.48 System workstation) that cost anywhere near
seven grand. For seven grand, I can outfit your church with a
whole armada of keyboards. But, this is what happens when you
send a deacon to pick out an instrument: he or his wife picks out
something that looks right in the sanctuary, and they are, as
often as not, taken advantage of by the unscrupulous morticians
of the music business— the Clavinova salesman.
Thou Shall Not Let The Deaconesses Decide
Where To Put Thy Piano
The mistake most every single church I have ever seen routinely
makes is they place the musical instruments forward of the
choir. The exact opposite should be true. Musicians need not be
seen. Most real musicians prefer not to be seen, prefer to
concern themselves only with their instrument and the music and
not with looking cute or being seen. The main reason many
churches struggle with loud musicians is they've put the
musicians in the wrong place and/or they have not supported them
adequately. A musician who has a decent monitoring system, who
can hear himself, is much less likely to overplay or play too
loudly. Musicians need to be able to hear themselves, and hear
themselves at a ambient level considerably louder than most
regular church folk want to hear. Not only do I need a monitor,
I need that monitor to be hot. I need it to be both loud and
clear, free of distortion. The cleaner my monitor is, the less
inclined I am to continually increase the volume or over-play,
playing harder than I need to. A simple, low-tech solution is an
earbud system. Headphones tend to isolate, so this needs to
be done carefully, but, done right, it can be very effective in
providing the musician what he needs while keeping the music
down at a level the larger audience appreciates.
Move your musicians from in front of the choir. The only reason
they are there, in the time-honored tradition of Hammond organ
on one side of the sanctuary, piano on the far extreme other
side, is because that's how we've always done it. These
decisions, where to place the instruments, are typically never
made by musicians but by interior decorators, typically women
(no offense, sisters, but it's true anyhow), deacons' or
pastors' wives. We all grow up with this idea of what a
sanctuary should look like, the organ way over yonder, the piano
way over yonder, the pulpit, the choir behind. It's a nice
tradition, but it was wrong 100 years ago and it is wrong now.
Musicians want to sit together. It is incredibly frustrating
trying to play at Trinity because Reverend Cherry seems a
football field away from where I am sitting, and I have to
squint and duck and lean this way and that to see around the
pulpit and the gamut of flowers the sisters set up around the
pulpit that block my line of sight to the most crucial man in
the building for the musicians. “Last week, one sister started
singing in the wrong key,” Reverend Cherry says. “She was
standing over by the piano, way on the other side of the pulpit.
So far away she couldn't hear the tonality of the organ. When I
heard the recording later, I could tell she was off key.”
Joy adds, “In most cases, the piano and organ are so far apart
there's this delay— this millisecond or two off-timing— that
makes it harder for the musicians to be in sync.” Musicians, by
and large, don't care about space. We'd rather be cramped up but
bunched together than to have lots of space but be spread out
across the front of the sanctuary. As a musician, I could care
less whether or not anyone sees me. My main concerns are: (a)
seeing the musical director and (b) being able to hear myself.
Thou Shall Not Place Thy Leslie Speakers
In The Balcony
The Hammond B3 Organ is the definitive lethal weapon of the
black church in America. Most black Baptists don't even feel
like they're in church until they hear that Hammond playing.
There is no other. There is no getting around it. There is no
substitute. Not even the very best and most expensive
synthesizers can touch it for tonal quality. The Hammond B3 is
the end of all arguments. It is the place, in the black church,
where the buck stops. Where the rubber literally meets the road.
Where you have to put up or shut up. The musician's holy of
holies. Without it, you are merely kidding yourself. The
toughest and most electrifying keyboard players cannot move a
crowd the way a B3 can. Absent this unique, classic instrument
(which hasn't been manufactured— the tube organ, anyway— in
nearly 35 years), your church loses a bit of its credibility (at
least among the seniors).
I was always amazed when, at Emmanuel, I could quiet a noisy
pre-service crowd by simply firing the thing up and playing a
quiet prelude. People who would ignore me on piano suddenly
remembered they were in church, and people moved to take their
seats and the ministers lined up and order was restored— all
because of that sound. That unmistakable sound. We've been
trained, in Pavlovian fashion, to respond a certain way, with
dignity, respect, and reverence to that sound. That sound and no
other. Ladies and gentlemen: the Hammond B3.
I never learned how to play the thing. At Emmanuel, the late
Bart Reynolds occasionally sent me upstairs to stall for him
while he whipped the choir into shape downstairs, but that's
about as close as I've ever come to being an actual organist. Playing
the Hammond requires a specialized skill I never acquired. I
have seen many a talented keyboard player mount a Hammond and
fail miserably, eking out only an anemic, pathetic sound. You
can be the meanest keyboard player who ever walked the Earth and
still be a lousy B3 player.
In Colorado Sprfings, if you're talking Hammond B3's, you are talking
about one guy: John Bowen. Mr. Bowen, the venerable elder
statesman of black church musicians here, is
unquestionably the best known and best respected organist in the
city. A retired music teacher, Mr. Bowen (everybody calls him,
“Mr. Bowen,” despite his protests to, “Just call me 'John'.” I
mean, he calls himself John, but when you meet a man who can
make a Hammond talk the way he can, you call him Mister) served
as Minister of Music at Trinity Baptist Church for 22 years.
Currently, he plays at Trinity on fourth Sundays (not
coincidentally one of the best attended Sundays of the month),
and plays at Emmanuel on second Sundays. Besides Mr. Bowen,
there are, maybe, a dozen people who can play a B3. And only a
half dozen or so who are any good at it, among them (in no
particular order): Trinity's Minister of Music, Reverend Cherry,
Emmanuel's Professor David A. Sharpe and Vicki McCampbell,
Israelite COGIC's Earnest Dunn, and Sam Bryant, who teaches the
Cadet Gospel Choir at the United States Air Force Academy.
Playing the Hammond, with its drawbar and foot pedals, is a
dying art. Fewer and fewer young people are coming along who
show any interest in the thing at all. B3 organs have no pitch
change button and no sustain pedal. You can't cheat it, you
can't fake it. Playing a B3 in a black Baptist devotion (where
people can and do pop up singing, literally, any song,
unannounced, in any key whatsoever) truly separates the men from
the boys. A B3 organist has to have an extraordinary grasp of
his craft. He is constantly changing the wave shape of the
sounds with the EQ section on the organ (the drawbars), and
switching between custom and pre-set sounds, vibrato on or off,
chorus on and off, and other sound variations, including sending
the sound to one Leslie or another or both— making these changes
dozens of times during a song while also playing the bass line
with one foot and controlling the volume level with his other
one. This gives the Hammond a smooth, fluid, and “live” or
organic sound that synthesizers cannot duplicate. I can dial up
a tasty B3, a cool B3 or a hot B3 on my synth rig, but I lack
the ability to meld the three into one sound. The test of a true
B3 player is his ability to constantly shape and re-shape the
sound so it takes on the fluidity of water, while mastering the
blues house styles that define black Gospel. Lacking either the
blues chops or the B3 technical skills exposes the Hammond
player as a dilettante. It's a tough racket. It takes years to
master. And, if done correctly, it should appear, to the
observer, to be effortless and easy when it is, in fact,
neither.
A church Reverend Cherry used to play at in New Jersey had a
Hammond organ with two Leslie (that's the name brand) speakers.
Someone, in their infinite wisdom, placed those Leslies up in
the balcony, at the extreme REAR of the sanctuary, in the left
and right corners. Now, in case you don't know, the Leslie is
the speaker for the organ. The only way the organist can hear
what he or she is playing is by the sound coming out of the
Leslie. A Leslie placed some fifty feet away from the organists
(as these were) is utterly useless in terms of the organist
being able to hear himself. Reverend Cherry was routinely
chastised for playing too loud, even when he was trying to play
quietly, because, frankly, he could not hear himself. Reverend
Cherry points out, “There is no speaker built into B Series
Hammond organs. Some C Series Hammonds have a speaker, but it's
usually a cheap speaker that probably doesn't work anymore.”
The decision to place the Leslies way up there was made by
deacons and their wives, largely in a
misguided attempt to move these speakers away from the older
congregants who tended to complain about the volume of the
music. This is an extreme example of a common practice: deciding
on Leslie placement based on aesthetic choices, on how they look
in a particular place, or out of concern for or fear of the
wrath of people who have no apparent understanding of the nature
of live music.
Thou Shall Not Shush
Most musicians I've known share a universal complaint: they hate
being told to quiet down. In the black church, it's more like,
“Tone it down.” “What's that mean?” Reverend Cherry exclaims,
“WHAT 'tone'? 'Tone' what? 'Tone' is a measure of the sound's
quality, not its volume. I'm also annoyed when church folk tell
me a song is 'Too Jazzy.' 'Jazzy?' What we do isn't Jazz. Has
nothing to do with Jazz, other than that it is largely
improvisational. Traditional black Gospel music is derivative of
blues, nor Jazz.”
It is fair to say the musicians in an average are outnumbered
and outvoted 300 or even 500-to-1. There
are, after all, around a thousand church members, and maybe five
musicians. The will of the people is overwhelming, and these are
people— the sound engineer included— who are not musicians and
who do not hear the same things. Non-musicians' understanding of
music is typically limited to the radio or stereo— most of those
purchased at Walmart and other fine family stores. Most
people's ears are not trained enough to appreciate the nuances
of the performance, and their understanding of Reverend Cherry's
fiery chromatics or Professor Sharpe's vocal calisthenics are
extremely limited. The volume of music in the sanctuary,
therefore, tends to be conceptualized by these people— not by
the musicians— based on the dynamics of music played in the home
or, worse, the elevator. When I hear complaints about the music
being too loud, it is never, ever from a musician. It is always
from a non-musician. They are always, without fail, universally
wrong, and they always, every single time, get their way because
there are more of them.
Comparing home music to music played live by actual musicians is
like comparing apples and Volkswagens. It's two completely
different subjects. The women at church complained mightily when
Reverend Cherry talked me into playing bass at Trinity because
the bass notes made the choir stand vibrate. “He's too loud,”
they'd say. I was not. But a Hartke XL Series 410 cabinet puts
ouit a standing bass wave that can be 50 feet long. A properly
set-up bass rig simply dominates the room it is in, not with
volume but with presence. The ladies are hollering at me
to turn down, but I'm not actuallyh playing all that loud, it's
just that bass has depth and shape. When I stop playing, to
scratch my nose or what have you, the entire bottom falls out of
the room and the entire sanctuary--to a person--turns to look at
me. What happened? It's like someone shut off the lights. Having
grown accustomed to no bass in the sanctuary, adding a bass
guitar, especially from a high-powered SWR (top of the line
bass) rig, is quite an
adjustment for most church goers. Not knowing how to quantify
this invasion of bottom end, the complaints began flying about
my volume when it is, in fact, my presence they are objecting
to. Most musicians love
bottom end. Playing over bottom end is like jumping on a bed
when you were a kid. The drummer and Reverend Cherry giddily
wailed away and reveled in the bottom end, which now brought
Cherry's chords into sharper focus (the bass notes define the
color of a chord), and gave the music a whole new dimension. Still,
I was urged to “tone it down," one deacon, trying to be helpful,
suggesting I turn the bass down so it wouldn't have so much
bottom. I just stood there, blinking at him, “Ah...” I said,
“...you do realize that works against the reason I am here...” I
eventually grew so frustrated with Church Folk complaining that
I stopped playing bass altogether. [Postscript 2013: I've
actually stopped playing any music at all in churches, mainly
due to burnout from ignorant Church Folk.]
Thou Shall Respect Thy Musicians
At a recent gig, I was sound checking with my rig, and the event
host complained that the music was too loud, and sent her little
emissary over to advise me of this. I kind of shook my head in
acknowledgement and
went on adjusting things, which apparently annoyed the host, who
once again dispatched another emissary. Which forced me to stop
sound checking, a half hour before the service began, to
explain to the emissary what a sound check is for. Please,
folks, write this down someplace: A SOUND CHECK IS SUPPOSED TO
BE LOUD. At the sound check, I am adjusting my levels and my EQ
for the specific dynamics of the room I am in. I need to find
upper and lower limits and I need to BLAST the music on occasion
while I am making these adjustments. The emissary nodded and
vanished, and then, mere moments before we began, the host
herself, walking down an aisle away from me, barked at me from
across the room, “Priest, I'm not gonna tell you again, it's too
LOUD.”
First of all, in the sanctuary, I am REVEREND Priest. Musicians,
typically, are the least respected ministers in town, with some
folks showing us a kind of selective and seasonal respect.
Yelling at me, from halfway across the church, with your back
to me, without acknowledging my calling (as is proper etiquette in
the black church— hey, I didn't make the rules) is extremely
offensive. So much so that my first instinct was to pull the
plug and tow my rig out into the parking lot. I stayed as a
favor to people I was performing with but, otherwise, I'd have
left immediately.
Second: the host was flat WRONG. Not only was I not “too loud,”
but, having readjusted my levels based on her complaints, the
music was overwhelmed by the singers, and I had to keep making
sound adjustments on the fly, while playing two keyboards,
singing and triggering my drum machine. What the host failed to
realize was, a sound check typically occurs inside an EMPTY
auditorium. Once you fill the room with bodies, those bodies
tend to absorb the sound. What sounds tremendously loud in sound
check is, likely, adequate for the actual performance.
I've found I need to do a lot of lecturing to the non-musicians
whenever I'm out gigging somewhere, because they know absolutely
nothing about what I'm doing over in the corner, and they tend
to treat me poorly, pay me nothing, and, on this occasion, I
didn't get so much as a thank-you from any of the groups (and
there were several) who came up and used my equipment. I was not
hired to do the sound for this event, I'd just brought my own
rig for my group. Once my group was done, I was going to pull
the rig down, but other groups, hearing the quality of my rig as
opposed to the cheesy house system, and asked me to leave it
up. Not one of them said thank-you or offered to help carry my
gear out after the service.
Music in church is, typically, performed live. Live music,
almost by definition, is going to be louder than recorded music
because live music is, typically, uncompressed. CD's and tapes
and other recordings have gone through an equalization process
that is similar to homogenizing milk. Milk straight from the cow
is not something most of us would likely enjoy. It needs to be
processed into something more palatable. Live music, likewise,
cannot and should not be compared to recorded music or thought
of in the same comparative way. Older congregants typically
complain about the volume of the music when it is, in fact, the
content of the music they object to. I've yet to meet an older
person who complained about the volume of music they liked.
“Nobody would be complaining if y'all were blasting Old Ship of
Zion,” Joy jokes. We could likely blast Ave Maria as loud as we
want, and nobody has ever told us to quiet down Handel's
Messiah.
Live music needs to have a certain presence. Presence is not
necessarily volume, though the two go hand in hand. Any time you
have human beings playing real instruments, there is going to be
a certain amount of sound coming from them. The task of sound
engineers is to work against nature, taking this live
experience and processing it so it is more palatable to the old
folks. No, I'm not kidding, this is basically what church
engineers do: make the old folks happy. In many white churches
I've visited here, the trend seems to be to draw vampirically all
of the life out of the music until it sounds exactly like it
would in the kitchen of a senior citizen. I don't want to play
in the kitchen of a senior citizen. Younger people, and by that
I mean under 55 or so, tend to have less of an objection to the
volume, per se, though they will tend to complain more about
music they don't like than music they do.
But since old folk tend to give more money than young folk,
keeping the old folk happy becomes a prime concern in many
congregations, typically going overboard to the extent where the
needs and concerns and likes and tastes of the older congregants
becomes the preemptive, injunctive demand, and the younger folks
tend to get passed over and disregarded. Some congregations have
taken to offering both a contemporary service and a traditional
service. I'm of two minds about that: on the one hand, yeah,
it's be good to be able to do my thing in an atmosphere that
works with me and not against what I do. But I don't like the
idea of them and us. I don't think there should ever be them and
us in Christ, and splitting services along those kinds of
lines seems more divisive than we should be. Reverend Cherry's
approach seems to be a well-orchestrated melting pot of
traditional and contemporary styles within the same service.
Most Trinity congregants will suffer through a song they don't
like, knowing that a song they will like is somewhere in Reverend
Cherry's queue.
Thou Shall Kiss The Cook
Many people in the church, of any ethnic group, think musicians
are, in fact, magicians. I've even heard someone slip in he
pulpit, “and we'd like to thank the magicians.” They think
playing music is simple or easy, and that we can, magically,
play any song in any key at any time. Joy asks us to, “Please be
respectful of musicians. At least give us a hint of what you
intend to sing and, even better, an idea of what key you want it
in. Don't just wander up and start singing any old thing, 'Can
you play this now?' I've had people just wander up and hand me
sheet music to some song I've never heard of and expect me to be
perfect. If they have the sheet music, chances are they've known
for a while what they wanted to sing, and just didn't think to
tell me so I could prepare. That's awfully disrespectful of what
I do.”
Musicians practice. They practice more than choirs, more than
most soloists, more than most preachers. Music leaders not only
practice but they have to select music, sifting through dozens
and hundreds of songs to find music appropriate to your specific
congregation. Then they have to learn how to play it and then
re-score it for the instruments and voices that are available to
them in your church. They spend hours creating individual parts,
sometimes making tapes or burning CD's for the song leaders,
rehearsing the soloists off-line and sometimes the individual
musicians on a part. By the time the choir arrives for choir
rehearsal, a typical minister of music has invested a full
working day or more in preparing for that rehearsal. It's not
magic. They don't just sit down and play. They don't pull this
stuff out of thin air. These people work and work diligently
almost every single day of every single week.
As a result, musicians are, typically, the most spiritually
starved demographic in your church. They are, in typical worship
services, always working. They work more, put in more hours in
the aggregate, than even the ministers or pastor. From the
opening moments to beyond the benediction, these people are
working. So much so that, often, they are not spiritually fed.
Like a wife who spends all night and all day cooking and
preparing the house for guests, they practice and plan and sweat
the details and prepare for your Sunday service. Then, like this
wife who then serves the meal but is often too exhausted to eat
or even to enjoy the occasion, the musicians can often become
isolated from worship itself. They are making it possible for
you to worship, often at the expense of their own worship.
By treating them with indifference, almost like cattle, and
isolating them from the very meal they have worked all week long
to prepare for you, you can cause musicians to become
spiritually starved. This creates an opportunistic environment
for Satan to gain a foothold in your music department, as your
music staff becomes increasingly isolated from God and worn out
by the foolish ambivalence of the church staff.
Of the many demographic groups within your congregation,
musicians are the smallest and most easily ignored. But they are
the tip of the sword. Their role in worship is so broad, so very
important, that it is ridiculous that most churches routinely
dismiss and ignore them. These people need to be fed, too. They
need to be encouraged, and they need to be able to have a meal
of their own. You've got to kiss the cook every now and then.
You've got to make sure their spiritual needs are being met and
that they have encouragement and growth opportunities.
Kiss The Cook
There will, likely, never be a complete meeting of the minds
between musicians and church members. However, if you really
want peace in your church, the musicians cannot lose every
battle every time. Accepting the fact you are not a musician and
that musicians think and behave differently than normal, regular
people, it's important to recognize them as a threatened
minority group and not just step on them at every opportunity.
Before you harshly demand they turn the music down, ask yourself
if it's the volume or the song selection you're objecting to.
And then remember this is a person who has prepared all week to
come and serve you. Someone who has practiced and practiced and
dragged equipment up flights of steps and, likely, arrived
earlier than you to set up. This is someone who is hard at work
for God, certainly, but just as certainly they are working for
you. Please show them some respect.
And, please understand, before you open your mouth, that they
disagree with you. If the musicians thought the music was too
loud, they'd turn it down without being asked. If they are
wailing away and having a great time, they obviously have no
idea they are bothering you. Snapping at them rudely is simply
not acceptable. It totally works against their enthusiasm, takes
them out of worship, and derails the worship service itself.
Don't be selfish. Don't treat us like dogs, barking at us. At 41
years of age, I am still, routinely, snapped at like I'm some
grade-school kid. Please think before you speak, and then speak
only if it's an Earth-threatening emergency. If the issue can
wait, let it wait. If it isn't a big enough issue to disturb the
pastor with in the middle of his sermon, then please sit on it
until later.
If you wouldn't disturb the pastor, please don't disturb the
music minister. He is in worship. He is invoking God's presence.
He is not a taxi driver or a security guard. When a minister of
music is working, which is 80% of there service— more than even
the pastor— he should be treated exactly the same way the pastor
in the pulpit preaching is treated. You would never dream of
walking up to the pastor, mid-sermon, and barking complaints at
him. When I'm on the floor, my ax in my hand, laying it down, I
am in my pulpit. I am preaching. Please respect me. If you can't
respect me, please respect the God who sent me. Let me work.
Worry about the trifling stuff later.
Losing every battle, every time, is demoralizing to the
musician. Being taken for granted and forced to beg for his
check, being worked to death, barked at or ignored— these are
common complaints of musicians in the black church, and account
for the high burnout rate. The majority of the black churches
I've experienced do not place nearly as high a value on a
qualified minister of music as they should. When they lose one,
a church can go years trying to replace him, only to then begin
the cycle of neglect and abuse again that inevitably leads to a
musician's exit from the church. These are people with
specialized skills, like marine biologists. There are only so
many of them, and only so many of the so many are actually any
good at it, and only so many of the so many of the so many are
actually called by God and anointed and ordained to that work.
When you have a minister, a true minister of music, he or she is
like the Levite priests mentioned in 2 Chronicles above. These
priests were a unique group set apart from the other priests.
They were respected, fed, and yes paid— their needs met so they
could concentrate on the work they were ordained to do: invoke
the presence of God through music and praise. Mistreating these
people, taking them for granted, is simply wrong. It is not
scriptural. And it inevitably leads to your church singing a
capella and suffering drops in attendance while you execute a
time-consuming and expensive search for a replacement for the
guy you took for granted.
Probably the best way to make peace or keep peace with your
musicians is to talk to them. More than that, to listen to them.
Pray with them. Go eat with them. Try to appreciate the work
they do and the gifts they've been given and the special calling
on their lives.
Christopher J. Priest
18 November 2002
editor@praisenet.org
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