Acts20.com

Re: How loud is TOO LOUD

Pretty much the opinion of anyone in the church over 40 years of age is now irrelevant, though they give the majority of the offerings

If you can't hear the singing of the people around you, it's too loud. The purpose of the band is to lead the church in congregational singing.

A church I attended had a container of earplugs at the welcome desk. Really? The pastor actually suggested the “older folks” sit in a certain section where they had decreased the speaker volume slightly just for them. SMHAs a musician myself I cannot stand music that is too loud. There is so much more to music than volume, yet I see far too many church musicians who do not understand this principle.And to answer a previous question: absolutely the anointing has been replaced by volume in many of our churches “Hell will be filled with people that didn’t cuss, didn’t drink, and may even have been baptized. Why? Because none of those things makes someone a Christian.”

Being a musician, I know what it is like to practice with a near-perfect mix and volume. But the acoustics change when the auditorium has more people in it. What was plenty loud an hour ago will typically need boosting.Further, live music feeds on itself. If a song is really nailing it, it is very easy to play with greater intensity/volume. This serves to throw off the mix. Thus, if the bass player gets too strong (perhaps from just really getting into the music), the guitars may turn up in an attempt to reclaim the appropriate mix. The sound man, assuming he has good ears, now realizes that the vocals are getting drowned out by the music, so he ups the vocals! And we're off to the races!Lastly, few Church of God sound men (I use the term advisedly) know very much about mixing sound. I knew of one guy who came from a reserved, Baptist background who was put in the sound booth of a Pentecostal church. DISASTER! Pentecostal worship IS more exuberant--or should be!--than the worship in other churches. It will almost CERTAINLY be louder due to the greater enthusiasm that is often exhibited. This guy, the ONLY thing he knew about sound was to TURN IT DOWN! Everything seemed too loud for him.This demoralized the band. We were practicing and doing our best, only to later be told that the, say, drums could barely be heard (and the drummer was by far the most accomplished musician on the stage!).Run it all through the board, you say? Yeah, and what if Mr. I-Want-Us-To-Be-More-Like-the-Baptists is in the sound booth? Long and short of it, I didn't practice with the singers, hone my skills, and make the effort to turn up...only to not be heard. If I'm not heard, I'm not playing. Not because I'm some great musician, but because it's foolish to prepare for no reason. No one is blessed or benefited from seeing silent musicians.With an Aviom system and headphones, I can make sure I hear myself. But I didn't come to just hear myself. I came to be a part of the performance. If I find that the music is poorly mixed, instruments cannot be heard half the time, etc., yeah, I'm out. I know of one church that has a guy attending that used to mix sound for Clint Brown. Do they use him? Nope. Instead, they use people who have NO background of mixing sound. They simply do not care about their sound. They have a sizable church that has a good spirit, but as for excellence in sound, they don't have any drive in the direction.Yes, they could just turn everything down, but then the mix is lost, people can't be heard, and so it goes.Only those churches that have high-caliber sound men and instruments through the system (coupled with an in-ear monitor or such) usually get the sound right.

Aaron, you make many excellent points about the difficulty that churches experience trying to mix sound effectively.

The average church soundman is in an impossible situation. Most churches have a volunteer in place that has little or no real training in how to mix music. If you’ve got several big egos on the platform, their mics are never hot enough and they always need more monitor. Musicians with amplifiers on the platform overriding the soundman’s control over the mix. If you’ve got a good sound person, treat them well. They have a thankless job.

People endeavor to create a concert atmosphere rather than a worship atmosphere? Just throwing this into the mix. Pun intende

I hear you, friend. But it has too often been my experience that there are simply people with very sensitive ears (often older people) that pretty much will be uncomfortable with much over acoustic volume. That is, you can be playing at a perfectly legit level--one that SHOULD, I think, work well with our Pentecostal culture--yet be considered too loud by some.Ideally, a sound man should have a decibel meter (you can get these on cell phones, although the app I have is absolutely worthless, since it thinks that pretty much everything is whisper level), using it to ensure that the total volume never goes above that.If you're going to have a band, then it needs to sound like a band. And that is going to include volume. No, it shouldn't be too loud, but neither should it be too quiet. Either will make the work of practice and performance vain.Indeed, as one poster put it, if you have a good sound man, he would be almost as important as the worship leader, in my opinion. A good worship leader with bad sound is not going to be successful.

As I know you too are a musician, I was there before my hearing went completely, and I enjoyed the level of music, I could hear singing and instruments.But to your comment quote: