10 Essential Tips for Volunteer Audio Mixers

Are you a volunteer sound tech at your church who has never professionally mixed live sound but wants to improve your skills? Here are ten practical tips that can help. These simple steps for your audio mixer can take your mix to the next level on your journey to becoming a better audio engineer.

1. BUILD STRONG RELATIONSHIPS

Establishing strong relationships within the worship and tech teams can create significant benefits, especially when it comes to communication. For instance, imagine a situation where a guitar player or drummer, whom you don’t know very well, plays louder than usual. If you were to simply tell them to turn down their amp, their response might not be very friendly. However, if you’ve taken the time to connect with them on a personal level and learned more about their interests, hobbies, profession and music preferences, it can help solve a technical problem more effectively and positively. You begin to trust one another and start to serve and help each other. Read Philippians 2:1-11, which emphasizes the importance of unity, humility and considering others before ourselves.

2. TRAIN YOUR EAR

Improve your mixing skills by training your ears. Your church may have great sound gear, but that doesn’t guarantee the best results. Mixing music requires both artistic sense and technical acumen. For this reason, I firmly believe that musicians make the best techs. Why? Because they listen to music often.

I know there are fantastic audio engineers who don’t play or sing, but they love music, and that’s the difference. To develop your skills, listen to music regularly, especially the same type of music as your worship leader.

Learn how to use EQ. Knowing when and where to equalize an instrument, a vocal or the loudspeakers in a room can make or break the mix. You can use affordable apps like Quiztones or HearEQ to discern the differences between pitch/frequency, tone/timbre and level. When adjusting frequencies, it’s generally recommended that you cut them before boosting. Cut or turn down in a narrow range (Q) and boost a little wider swath to achieve the best sound.

Spend an hour or two each week to develop your critical listening skills, and you’ll be able to distinguish a good mix from a bad one. Turn off the TV and develop your ears.