Many of us rely on a certain amount of technology in our worship services, and
you can prepare as much as you want, you can put in as much redundancy as you can
afford, but there's always the risk that something could go wrong
that could cause a complete train wreck. There's always that one thing in the
back of your mind that could happen that if it did is your biggest fear. Well, we
had a moment just like that last weekend, and I thought it would be good to share
what happened and share some observations that I made after the fact,
because what could have been a train wreck
wasn't. Hey, it's Dave Dolphin at practicalworshipblog.com, sharing ideas,
tips and practical advice for the everyday worship leader. Like many of
you we run pre-recorded tracks with Ableton Live during every single one of
our services. We have live drums, electric guitar, keys and acoustic guitar along
with several singers. We add in tracks for bass guitar, rhythm electric
guitar, keyboard atmospheres like pads and organs, some percussion like shakers
and tambourines and even sometimes some additional gang vocals. Our Ableton rig
is pretty solid, and we very rarely even have the slightest hint of a problem
with it. It's a very easy thing for us to put our trust in. So here we are on a
typical Sunday morning in the middle of the second song and the click track
disappears in our ears right about... now.
I'm trying to figure out what on earth is going on while still trying to drive
this train, because I could still hear the tracks. I could still hear the
background keys and the bass guitar, so I knew that the computer didn't crash and
that Ableton was still going. You can hear the drummer start clicking on the
hi-hats, which is not normally in this arrangement. So I'm thinking maybe it's
just me. Maybe it's just my in-ear mix, and the drummer realizes something's
wrong, and so he's clicking the tempo for me and the rest of the band.
But once the arrangement builds back up again, I can tell we are not with the
track. We're about a quarter note off, so a million things are running through my
mind right now. I'm trying to think of the possible reasons that the click
disappeared and what are the possible quick solutions to those reasons while
still trying to sing the right words and play the right chords and look somewhat
engaged in worship.
At the end of the song, I make the call. I'm going to call an audible real fast.
Go ahead, yeah, let's give God praise.
I'm going to give a Will a second to
reset, and Travis I'm going give you this heads up too. Our click
disappeared, but this is a great opportunity. I was wondering if I
should share this or not and apparently God wants me to, because you guys don't
know this but we we play along with some pre-recorded stuff. There's a
metronome that goes
the whole time, the whole time.
One of these things we should
put that in the house, you guys can hear it. When that thing disappears
it's like the train goes off the tracks.
I'll explain at the end of the video
what actually happened, what actually broke, but now that I've had a chance to
look back, here's a few observations I've made about that situation from Sunday.
First off nobody freaked out. No one on the stage, no one in tech booths. In fact
several people told me after the service that had I not said anything they would
have never known that something was wrong. The reason why nobody freaked
out is because we all knew the plan so well. We rehearse these songs over and over
and over. We prepare the set over and over and over. The goal is that by
the time we get to Sunday morning, we're operating out of muscle memory.
We've found that it actually helps us to engage more in worship, because we're not
worried about are we going to the chorus next, are we going to the bridge next,
what's the next chord?! We still had two more songs to play, which we had to play
without tracks, so we all proceeded with a heightened sense of alertness.
But we had a plan, and there's a lot of comfort in knowing that there is a plan
that you can cling to. Two, it did make me think through my redundancy plans. Was
there anything I could have had in place that would have prevented this problem
from happening? We do have backstage backups to key pieces of gear. We even
since we run two computers for Ableton Live and for MainStage we have a plan in
place that if one of those computers crashes we can easily move both programs
over to the other computer. But all of that only protects you before the
service, if something breaks before the service. If you want to have a plan in
place where if something breaks during the service, what the big shows do is
they actually have two computers running the same set of tracks at the same
time running into an A/B switch that switch is smart enough to listen to the
A system. If it notices a loss in audio on that system, it seamlessly moves
everything over and switches over to the B system. Having something like that
in place might have solved our issue but that comes at a cost.
You always have to balance the cost and the risk, but the point is is that these
kinds of situations reveal your vulnerabilities. It's always good to
sit down and think through is there a cost-effective solution that can prevent
this kind of thing in the future. Three, it was a great opportunity to just be
real. We strive for excellence just
like a lot of churches do, but excellence isn't the goal. It's a means to an end,
but it's not the goal. Sometimes it's good for the church to see behind the
curtain, that things break and things don't always go to plan. But at the end
of the day it's not about any of that. It's about inspiring people to pursue
God. Four is the God factor. I really was wrestling with whether or not I should
share something. I had had a conversation with our senior pastor earlier in the
week about the song "O Come To The Altar," which was the next song in the set.
It was about Hebrews 13:10, how it talks about Jesus being our altar.
And there's a lot of things in our Christian faith whether it be baptism or
coming to the altar, whatever, there's a lot of things that symbolize something
else. It was a great conversation, and it was probably something I'd share at some
point in the future, but I had made the decision to not share it this particular
weekend. But I recognized that God seemed to think otherwise, so I went with it.
It actually was a neat opportunity to teach and lead the church in this truth.
Again, excellence and preparation are a means to an end.
They're not the goal. As far as what actually happened, a lot of things ran
through my mind Sunday morning. I thought maybe the click track channel got
muted on the mixer accidentally. Sometimes Ableton Live—this is really
rare, but it has happened to me where the audio doesn't buffer correctly for
whatever that sound is, the click track or whatever. So Ableton thinks it's
playing audio, but nothing's coming out. I actually thought when I was preparing
this video—it's in my script because I was so sure that this was going to be
the problem—was that the audio interface, that that particular channel, went bad.
The audio interface we use is a Behringer, and you are kind
of taking your life in your own hands when you're using a piece of gear that's
Behringer. Do you know what it was? We have these panels for inputs on the back
of our stage, and then those snake lines run to FOH. They come
right to the wall, and so sometimes we need these jumpers to get the input from
the connection of the snake to the mixer. We had a bad cable, and it wasn't
even at the connections. It was actually somewhere here in the middle. We
chopped off the end so that we're not tempted to put it back in
service, but it's always a cable. It's always a cable!
Well, if this is your first time on
the channel, welcome! We love sharing ideas and tips and practical advice for
the everyday worship leader with videos just like this one. If you haven't
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somebody an email. Ffor great practical advice check out
practicalworshipblog.com.
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