The Ultimate Guide to Worship Tech Part 1 | Audio

The Ultimate Guide to Worship Audio Tech Pt. 1

This is a three-part series where I’ll show you the tools you need for seamless audio, video, lighting and automation during your church service without needing a huge budget or team.

In part one, I’m covering audio and going over:

• Digital mixing consoles

• Digital stage boxes

• In-ear monitors

• Digital audio networking

After reading this guide to worship tech and the other two below, you'll have a strong foundation for your growing worship ministry.

Part 2: Lighting and Display

Part 3: Automation and broadcast

Audio System

First off, I want to stress the importance of having a robust and functioning audio system which is critical to the entire service. Any interruptions or errors during service can distract the congregation or even hinder them from participating. If you only look into one of the tools we recommend today, check out the audio system–it’ll go a long way in improving your service and allowing your congregation to worship fully.

Digital Mixing Console

Our first recommendation is the digital mixing console. It’s the heart of your church’s sound system, allowing you to process, route, mix and record audio. Old analog mixers can still get the job done, but you’re missing out on so many features that could enhance the sound of your worship. 

Most digital mixers come with EEQ, reverb, and delays all built into the internal computer so you don’t have a bunch of separate pieces of equipment laying around. Having all of those abilities at your finger-tips makes it easy to create high-quality mixes.

Another great thing about going digital is that most of them can record to USB drive or SD card, so you can plug in your computer with a digital audio workstation (DAW) and produce an entire worship album. For all of the built-in capability and ease-of-use, you’d expect these pieces of tech to go for over $10,000. While you used to pay that much, you can get some great quality digital mixers for less than $2,000!

Some of our favorite consoles here at Churchfront include the:

• Behringer X32

• Midas M32

• Allen & Heath SQ

• PreSonus’ StudioLive Series

While each of these options have their pros and cons, you really can't go wrong with any of them. Implementing a digital mixing console will help you lay a great foundation for you to build on.

Digital Stage Box

Our next recommendation is the digital stage box. It’s the next step in building your audio tech once you have a digital mixing console. 

These stage boxes typically have 8-32 input channels, and 8-16 outputs; your musicians plug in their mics or instruments and can set up their own in-ear monitoring all on their own. Everything gets routed back to the mixing console via an ethernet cable, so you don’t have to use bulky, unreliable analog snakes anymore. Put 2 on either side of the stage and your musicians plugin and are good to go.

In-Ear Monitors

Once you’ve got your digital mixing console and stage box, you can now fully harness in-ear monitors for your team. While floor wedges work fine, in-ear monitors reduce stage noise, making it easier for the engineer to mix and protects the hearing of your musicians.  

Implementing in-ear monitors is a sure way to boost the excellence of your worship band because you can play click tracks, keeping everyone in-time and grooving. 

With your digital console and stage box in place, there are a few options on how to equip your team with in-ears. For a really in-depth look, check out Churchfront’s Ultimate Guide to In-Ear Monitors. 

Here are a few recommendations for setting up in-ear monitors

Option 1: Headphone amp

A super cheap and easy way to go is purchasing a headphone amp. These small boxes convert the XLR cable from the stage box output to a headphone cable for your musicians. This option is really affordable, around $20 to $50, and works great for stationary musicians like drummers or guitarists. Most of the digital mixing consoles come with apps so your musicians can EQ their own mix as well.

Option 2: Wireless in-ear monitor system

If you’ve got money to spend, you can buy a wireless in-ear monitor system.  Of course, how much you spend will translate to how much quality you receive, but you can purchase systems anywhere from $200 to $700 a person–it all depends on the needs of your specific team.

Option 3: Combine the options

You can use the headphone amps for your stationary, backline musicians and invest in the more expensive wireless systems for your leaders and singers. I love this method because it allows you to tailor your setup to the exact needs of your team and congregation. That’s the benefit of building your audio setup this way–you start with the foundation and build up from there.

Digital Audio Networking

After implementing a digital mixer, stage box and in-ear monitors, you’d already ahead of most local churches. You could stop there, but if you want to go further, here’s the rundown on digital audio networking.

Since you’ve got your in-ear monitors set up and ready to go, you’d probably want to run a click track over a DAW (our favorite is Ableton Live) for your musicians. But you’d quickly find that it’s difficult sending multiple channels of audio from the laptop into the mixing console.

You could go the traditional route and purchase a large audio interface which plugs into the computer via USB, sending your analog outputs to the sound console via digital snake, but why go through all that trouble after you just modernized your audio tech?  

With digital audio networking, you can send multiple tracks of audio from the laptop right into the mixing console over one, simple ethernet cable. It’s honestly a no brainer: you eliminate a bunch of connections, the sound quality is better and you have greater audio routing flexibility.

There are a number of popular networking protocols such as Waves’ SoundGrid and AVB, but we recommend Dante by Audinate.  

How to get set up with Dante

• To get up-and-running with Dante, you’ll need to purchase the Dante sound card for the mixing console, this comes in at about $600.

• Then, you’ll need to install the $30 Dante sound card app for each computer you plan on using in the Dante network. With the sound card app, you’ll have access to, essentially, a virtual audio interface for your computer with 64 inputs and outputs of audio.

• Plug in your Dante-enabled devices to your local network over an ethernet cable, and you’re ready to go–instant flexibility and ease-of-use for your musicians and sound team.

Recap

As you grow your worship ministry and as you implement more of the latest worship ministry tech, a sound system that includes these parts will be more than ready to accommodate your team’s growth and provide an incredible worship service for your congregation.  

To jumpstart this process and discover how to grow as a worship leader and team, fill out this form and schedule a call with me or someone else on the Churchfront team.

We’d love to connect, learn more about your ministry and talk about what it would look like to work together. 

Feel free to reach out to us to get started.

OnSong vs. Music Stand | Which app is best for worship bands?

There are a ton of digital chord charts for you to choose from, but the OnSong and Music Stand apps are the two best options for worship leaders. In this article, I'll weigh some of the pros and cons of using each one so that you can make the best decision for your ministry team. 

Music Stand

The Music Stand app is an add-on to your Planning Center Services subscription which makes it really easy to stay in their ecosystem.

I've been using them for a very long time to:

• Plan out my worship gatherings every single weekend

• Schedule musicians

• Resource my musicians with charts as well as MP3 files

• Build out my song library

Music Stand Features

1. Sync with Planning Center

   Since this app was developed with Planning Center, it automatically syncs with your Planning Center account. You'll be able to view your weekly set list, plans and click on a song to pull up the chord charts. 

2. Play MP3 files while using your digital chord chart

In Planning Center, you can link the MP3 file of the song to the chord chart and play it while you go through, and it’s a great way for your other musicians to practice the songs at home. 

3. Annotate songs 

There are lots of great annotation features built into this app. 

• Highlight sections of the song with different colors

• Jot down notes 

• Save all your annotations and access them whenever

Pricing 

Planning Center is a subscription-based software and you can select the plans and services that fits your church.

I’ve included some of the pricing breakdowns below:

• Free: If you only have five members, then this will work for you.

• Just Music Stand App: $5 a month. 

• Planning Center + Music Stand: $16

OnSong

There are a lot of similarities between OnSong and Music Stand, but I think OnSong has an edge over Music Stand because creating a chord chart is its main thing. Not just an add-on feature.

Features

1. Organize your songs

   You can get to a greater level of organizing your song assets by arranging them into sets and books.

2. Import set lists

   If you create a grouping of songs on Planning Center, you can sync it with OnSong.

   Select Planning Center > Select what service I want > Import > Update

3. Reformat your chord chart for easy readability

   This is where I think OnSong starts to shine brighter than Music Stand. You can turn the font size and brightness, bold the chords and change the text color.

4. Send messages to your band through the app

   It also has a really strong communication feature for talking to the rest of your band members. If you’re on the same wifi network, you can send them commands like “Start” and “Stop.” I think this is a great way to communicate with them in the middle of a service.

5. Add midi functions 

OnSong has some cool features when it comes to being able to use midi communication to change the song that you're seeing in your app. Using Ableton Live, you could put a midi queue at the beginning of each song that then maps to the appropriate song within OnSong. 

• Musicians would never have to touch their iPad throughout worship 

• The app would automatically flip to the right song

• You could even get it to scroll to the right section of a song.  

This is a really powerful feature, and I think it gets a little crazy. Personally, I think that instead of setting up the midi automation, you could just memorize the chords and lyrics to your music. 

Recap

At the end of the day, both are great apps..

• If you’re just looking for a simple cord chart, go with Music Stand (like I do)

• If you’re interested in an app with more technical capabilities, try out Onstage. 

If you need some more training for how to use apps like Planning Center, how to prepare chord charts and other practice resources for your worship ministry, then check out Worship Leader School. 

We've got a large set of online courses library to teach you:

✅How to create efficient systems and processes

✅How to resource your band well

✅How to improve in your pastoral responsibilities

✅You’ll even get access to my team for real time support and coaching

We have the resources, classes and community to help you reach your fullest potential as a worship leader. So check out Worship Leader School so you can grow yourself and your ministry. 

How to setup worship and production gear at a church plant

I’m a worship leader at a church plant. Every Sunday I wake up at 5 AM, shower, get dressed, head to my office where I pick up my gear, grab McDonald's breakfast, and make the 20-minute drive to Green Mountain High School where Mission Lakewood gathers for Sunday Worship. There’s a lot of work that happens between 7 AM and 9:30 AM to set up our worship space. I’ll walk you through it all in this article.

One of the best parts of planting a church is you get to start from scratch. In all aspects of ministry, you have the opportunity to build everything from the ground up. No existing traditions, systems, equipment, and the headaches that come along with them. I’m an entrepreneur. The challenge of starting things from scratch energizes me. That is why I was pumped to join Mission Lakewood as the worship pastor.

One of the worst parts of planting a church is you start from scratch. You have no building or existing equipment to use for worship. All of it has to be set up and torn down.

Every...single...week.

My friend Kevin was in charge of selecting and purchasing the production gear for our church plant. When he sent along the gear list for Mission Lakewood, I could not wait to get my hands on it and start using it every Sunday. I geek out over this stuff, and I’m super fussy about using gear that is high quality (but not overpriced) and creating efficient systems for setup and teardown.

We are a month into our church plant, and I couldn’t be happier with where we are at with our set up process. Last Sunday, setup took only an hour and a half, which allows our worship band a full hour to run through and tidy up our five song set list. The first few weeks were not easy. One Sunday we had so many production issues to troubleshoot that we only had about 15 minutes to rehearse our music. Barely enough time to run the whole set.

I thought it would be fun to walk you through exactly what a Sunday morning looks like at Mission Lakewood before the worship service begins. Our production gear would work great for anyone considering a church plant or leading worship at a church plant. To access a document containing links and pricing to all of the gear I’m about to cover, download the worship toolkit.

I will break the remainder of this article into the various steps of set up for worship and production at our church plant.

Step 1 - Scope out the auditorium and make sure there are no obstructions.

We meet at a high school. We do not always know what the auditorium will look like upon arrival because the theater department also uses the space for their musicals and plays. So far, they have done a fantastic job at keeping the central part of the stage clear. They have background set piece for the musical, The Adam’s Family, but once our trusses and screen are up, you cannot tell it’s there.

When I arrive at the school, I scope out the sides of the stage to ensure there aren’t other random set pieces in the way of where we need to move in our flight cases containing gear. It is a small detail, but half the battle of setup is making sure you don’t make the process harder for yourself. We want to have our cases in the same spot with space around them every week, so we have easy and quick access to it.

Step 2 - Roll out the carpet

Our stage has a shiny wood floor. I have no clue what they thought when they designed it that way. Reflective, light-colored floors are horrible for stages. When in doubt, pain your stage floor matte black. Since we cannot paint the floor, we purchased a large but inexpensive, dark-colored carpet. It drastically helps reduce the amount of light pollution on stage and makes it look sharp.

Step 3 - Assemble the wide-screen

The prominent feature of our stage design is the widescreen. We chose to go with a widescreen for many reasons. We wanted an efficient way to project lyrics on one screen. That meant it needed to be in the center and behind the band. We also wanted a quick way to cover up the background of the stage. This wide-screen is 18 ft wide by approximately 12 ft tall. No matter what the school theater department sets up behind us, you cannot see it.

From a stage design perspective, I highly prefer a widescreen over anything else. It’s the easiest way to transform the aesthetic and look of your stage. It’s minimalistic but allows you to cast whatever image, video, and background textures you want.

We purchased our screen from Carl’s Place (www.carlofet.com). Carl’s place creates DIY projection screens that give you a massive display on a small budget. Here’s how it works. When you order a DIY kit from Carl’s Place, you receive the screen material with grommets, bungee cords to mount the screen to the frame, steel corner/support fittings, and assembly instructions to go to a local hardware store and purchase 1” piping to complete the frame yourself. It saves a lot of money on shipping and a lot of money compared to purchasing the whole frame yourself. Setting up our screen takes about 10 minutes with 3 or 4 people helping assemble the frame and connecting the bungee cords.

Step 4 - Assemble the trusses and mount lights on the trusses.

While the screen is assembled, other volunteers work on building the four 11ft trusses. On the top of all four trusses, we mount two LED wash lights. The center trusses hold up the widescreen. The trusses remain on the floor while we mount the lights. When the screen and trusses are ready, we raise and secure the screen on the trusses.

Step 5 - Set up the audio equipment and band instruments.

Once the screen and trusses are up, our band members and one of the production volunteers begins assembling the sound system and instruments. Our sound system consists of the following equipment.

• Midas M32R - This is a fantastic sound console. It has the simple user interface of a Behringer X32 but with higher quality hardware and preamps. The M32 has wifi connectivity so it can be controlled by a tablet for total control or smartphones to control monitors.
• Behringer S32 - We use this as a digital stage snake that is rack mounted and positioned by the drum set. Everything is plugged into the S32 and networked back to the M32R over an ethercon cable.
• Powered Speakers - Our EV powered speakers pack a punch and sound fantastic. We have two 12 inch tops and two 18” subwoofers.
• Wireless Microphones - We use three Sennheiser wireless microphones. One for the worship leader. One for the preaching pastor. One for the hosting pastor.
• Wireless In-Ear Monitors - We have one wireless in-ear monitor transmitter paired with two wireless receivers. Each receiver receives a mono signal and is panned either to the left or right. It’s a handy hack to prevent the need to buy a second transmitter.
• Other - We also have an Audix drum mic kit, a bunch of microphone stands, cables, DI Boxes, and a few Behringer P16 monitors. I’m not a huge fan of the P16. I’m going to purchase an eight channel headphone amp that will be a much more straightforward setup (not having to deal with the mixers), and the musicians can control their mix wirelessly with their phones (using the M32 app).

Our church owns a Gretch Catalina Club drum set with DW hardware and Zildjian K-Custom cymbals. Our keyboard rig consists of an M-Audio midi controller and MacBook Air running Mainstage.

Step 6 - Set up lighting.

We use the American DJ MyDMX 3.0 lighting controller to run our LED lights and the school’s existing DMX system. From our media laptop (which runs MyDMX 3.0 and ProPresenter), we plug a USB cable into the MyDMX interface and out from the interface, the DMX cable goes into a splitter. We run a DMX back to the school’s media booth where we plug into their DMX system, and we run a DMX line to the stage for our LED lighting system.

Once the trusses and screen are up, a production volunteer connects the four truss warmer lights and top wash lights with DMX and power-con cables. Everything is daisy-chained which drastically reduces cabling.

Step 7 - Set up the widescreen projector and stage display projector.

Approximately 5ft behind the widescreen, we place our ultra-short throw projector for a rear-projected image. We have another rear-projection setup in the back of the auditorium for stage display lyrics.

Step 8 - Troubleshoot and fine tune

Every week we spend a few minutes troubleshooting or fine-tuning the setup. One crucial fine-tuning step is light placement. Our LED lights have to be positioned in the right place, so they do not blind the congregation and they do not wash out the widescreen.

By 8:30, the band starts rehearsal, so that is when the production team will troubleshoot or fine-tune any issues with the setup. I use Ableton Live to automate ProPresenter and lighting, so this frees up our production volunteers to focus on mixing sound and making sure everything is functioning correctly.

On a good day, the band is finished rehearsal at 9:30 AM and we have our production meeting where we talk through the order of service with the pastors, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Then we have about 20 minutes to chill before the service and greet people as they enter. Our five-minute countdown video begins at 9:57 AM and the service kicks off at 10:02 AM.

That’s how we set up our church plant.

At least that’s how we set up worship and production for our church plant. This articled covered nothing about setting up for kids ministry and first impressions, each of which deserves a lengthy description.

I mentioned a lot of gear in this post. You can access my detailed and comprehensive list of gear by downloading my Worship Toolkit. It contains pricing and links to everything we use at Mission Lakewood.

What questions do you have about our set up? Let me know in the comments! Or better, leave me a voice message question and it could be featured on my podcast!