Deef's Net

(You get bonus points if you know what these headings reference.)

The Initial Plunge

Until I went to Dartmouth College, I had had no experience with sound systems whatsoever. The first time I even saw one up close was during my sophomore year, with Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). That year, the group had become large enough to warrant the use of a small sound system, so the people who know about such things got a couple of speakers and some cables, and one of the seniors brought in a small Mackie mixer (VLZ-1202).

Since he would be graduating at the end of the year, I asked if he would show me how to run the system, so that we wouldn’t be stuck when he graduated. He was fine with that, and showed me the basics of how everything worked. I supplemented that by reading the manuals, until I was comfortable using the system.

I proceeded to run the sound system nearly every week for the next two years, until I graduated, which involved 1-3 guitars, a bass, three vocals, and the occasional CD player.

Some time around my senior year, I also started running the sound board at Valley Bible Church (VBC). The church at the time usually had one or two guitars, four or five vocals, a piano, a lavalier mic for the pastor, and an electronic drum kit (on two channels of the mixer). There were many more channels there than with CCC, but I had a couple of people who were already very familiar with the board, and they were both helpful and forgiving of mistakes. I was willing to run the board, and wouldn’t have been particularly helpful up front, so they didn’t have much to lose. :-)

The Soused Period

When I graduated (and got married), my wife and I decided to stay in the area to work, so we continued to go to VBC. At that point I really made a commitment to be a good sound tech (there’s only so much you can do while a student), and determined to learn as much as I possibly could about running sound.

It was around then that I discovered the Church Sound Check web site, with its E-Mail list for church sound techs and worship leaders. That has been tremendously helpful, both for education and for finding other sources of information. It has also been tremendously time-consuming — as someone recently put it, a day with fewer than 50 messages is considered to be a slow day, and it has a signal-to-noise ratio well above 90%. As of this writing, I have a backlog of about 4,200 messages to go through.

Contrition

A little over a year, and 30,000 messages later (you think I’m kidding! Guess what I generally did — and still do — while eating lunch!), I came to the realization that what I most needed now was not more reading about sound systems (shock, horror!), but actual experience.

I was still the only sound tech at VBC, and therefore was running sound weekly there, but it was a fairly consistent setup. I wanted to try a variety of different setups, and get some broader experience. This presented me with three problems:

1. I had to start deleting some messages from the CSC list without reading them. :-(

2. I had to find events with sound that needed reinforcing. Central Vermont and New Hampshire aren’t exactly on most people’s touring circuits, and I’m primarily interested in events hosted by Christian organizations or friends of such. I have very little interest in reinforcing your typical garage band.

3. Those events that I could find generally either had no sound equipment, or what they had left something to be desired in terms of quality or quantity.

Well, I am able to get by without reading all of the CSC messages, and I have been able to find some folks who want a good sound tech (or, at least, who will settle for me). And, I’ve been fortunate to have a job that could support the assembling over time of a portable sound system, assisted by the fees and honorariums I’ve received from those I reinforce.

You can find out more by looking through other pages in this section of my web site.