Making a Contribution - Fix It In The Mix?

Originally published in Worship Musician - Jan 2025

I remember back in my early college days as a jazz performance major when I had the opportunity to check out a small group lesson with the jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval. Sitting around in a small room with about 12 other students (mostly trumpeters), Sandoval would talk about a particular jazz solo or trumpet performance technique and demonstrate on his bespoke (and very expensive) trumpet.

At one point he played a scale entirely with his embouchure (without the use of the trumpet valves) — a seemingly impossible feat well beyond the reach of most trumpeters. One of the students asked if this sort of pitch control was possible because of Sandoval’s fancy trumpet design. To all of our amazement, he grabbed a regular ol’ trumpet from one of the students and played the scale sans valves once again. It didn’t matter much to Sandoval which trumpet he was using, 95% of his sound was in his technique and ‘in his lips’ so to speak.

I would bet that most top-tier guitarists could grab a $99 guitar and perform a similar feat. Bill Frisell will sound like Bill Frisell no matter what guitar he is playing. Jaco Pastorius could have gotten ‘his’ sound on a cheap-o bass. What might this tell us about how we approach optimising the sound our own worship band and the overall mix?

If we are to be the best stewards of church resources that we can be, it will be important to get our head around where we might prioritise upgrading source instruments and microphones and in-console or outboard live sound gear.

Start at the source?

‘Garbage in, garbage out’ is a common refrain when it comes to many domains. I think that this rule of thumb fails to hold (consistently) in the realm of live sound. Almost running in reverse of the Arturo Sandoval experience, I’ve heard great sounding bass drum PA sounds that were horrible acoustically up on the stage. The same goes for tiny guitar amps that ended up sounding (and feeling) like a row of Marshall stacks by the time they were miked up well and mixed and coming out of the PA. Perhaps for some instruments in some cases more of the sound quality is determined by mic selection, mic placement, EQ, compression, the actual PA, etc.

Of course there are examples where the source sound quality does matter. It is difficult to imagine an acoustic guitar with buzzing frets and dead strings resulting in a crisp and well-defined sound in the mix. A vocalist with bad technique and intonation may be beyond saving even with the snazziest of mics and post-processing. If we are to be the best stewards of church resources that we can be, it will be important to get our head around where we might prioritise upgrading source instruments and microphones and in-console or outboard live sound gear.

Drum roll, please…

In my experience, most of the issues with live worship sound reinforcement tend to relate to the drum kit. Or at least the worst sonic gremlins spawn from the drums. As I noted earlier, some of the source drum components may not need to be the most perfect sonic specimens right at the source. Bass drums often exhibit the greatest difference between the acoustic signature on stage (un-amplified) and the end result that is desired in the PA mix. That often means that as long as we’re ‘close enough for jazz’ we can get a workable bass drum sound.

One thing to watch out for is an overly ‘live’ kick drum that lacks definition and may tend to bleed into other elements of the kit. I’d tend to err on the side of being too muffled vs. too open.

If I was forced to present an equation of sonic quality contribution for bass drums between the acoustic source, the mic, the mic placement and console processing, I’d probably go with something like 20%, 40%, 10%, 30%. Using a tiny mic three feet away from the batter head is not going to be a good result no matter how good the drum sounds itself. But even a somewhat wacky sounding acoustic drum with a bass drum mic in an optimal position and with good EQ will work.

Toms are a similar story in most cases. Unless you are Dave Weckl or you have a very specific style in mind, super live and resonant toms are usually a recipe for disaster. Shoot for a good fundamental and use gels or some sort of muffling to remove any strange ring or overtones at the source. Then use EQ and compression and maybe even a light gate at the console to bring things into focus. For toms the acoustic source, the mic, the mic placement and console processing contribution split is roughly 30%, 30%, 20%, 20%.

VIDEO: Dave Weckl. Very ‘live’ toms can work well in some contexts! This is probably a little too wide open for most contemporary worship environments at the source.

As we move to the snare drum things get tricky. Rather than the 20% or 30% portion of a good sound that the raw bass drum or toms contribute, snare drums probably jump up to 60% or so. A dull snare with overly rattly snares or strange overtones is never going to get close to the studio sort of sound we desire. A 13” piccolo snare isn’t going to be a good fit for the mellow 80’s ballad sound we need for the mellow call to worship hymn. In other words, the choice of snare drum and its tuning is going to be a bit of a make or break for the overall quality of your worship band mix — no matter what console and fancy digital PA gear you have.

… maybe ‘garbage snare in, garbage drum kit sound out’ is not too much of a stretch.

Of course these are just rough percentages and I’m keeping my ‘all things considered’ sort of caveat in place for these claims. But if you at least somewhat follow the math it should also follow that the drum overheads are really only helping to pass along drums that already sound good in the optimal cases. Where the unfortunate ripple effect starts to creep in is where the snare is just horrible and the snare mic is in the wrong place and the drum overheads are a pair of knock-off SM58s. Again, there isn’t a console in existence that will be able to turn that scenario into a slick Nashville-ready polished drum sound. But given a good snare source sound and an appropriate mic, the overhead mics won’t need to be as carefully positioned and futzed with to produce a good cohesion of the drum submix. So maybe ‘garbage snare in, garbage drum kit sound out’ is not too much of a stretch.

So before suggesting the church spends extra money on upgrades to the bass drum perhaps think first about the snare. Before reaching for the credit card to grab a new audio console, how about scoping out a couple more affordable mic upgrades? It would cost even less to invest in a drum key and some time spent replacing the snare drum head with a hole in it! All of this is to say that we need to really think about all of the contributing factors to the sound that reaches the congregation — from source to mic to mic placement to the PA. Not all components contribute in the same proportion from source to source and you may find that there are cost savings to be had via a more strategic approach. Happy mixing!

Originally published in Worship Musician - Jan 2025

By Jeff Hawley

Jeff Hawley currently heads up the marketing for Allen & Heath USA. He is pursuing a PhD in philosophy at York St. John University and serves as the Communications Officer for the British Postgraduate Philosophy Association (BPPA). Jeff has a diverse background as a musician, engineer, and trendsetting industry executive. In addition to performing and producing everything from noise music to disco and Afro-Cuban jazz to avant-garde klezmer, Jeff has designed award-winning music industry products and accessories and directed the branding and marketing functions for several top musical instrument and pro audio brands. He enjoys making bespoke coffee blends, collecting George Jones records, and publishing articles about Philosophy of Sound.

Connect with him at?www.dhirubhai.net/in/audiohawley