Second Week of My Internship with The Church Next Door

So far, this internship has been full of experiences and strategies of how we can work with audio in live aspect while streaming to vimeo/facebook. With the way technology is advancing, the ways we are able to use it to our advantage is beyond our belief! I think that it is so cool how we are able to control what’s being sent to the live stream with using a bus mix, while the in the house it may have a different mix! That’s my favorite part of the internship so far, being able to learn different ways of mixing and how to have a good balance between live in person, or live in stream.

This past week we talked about prepping and preparing for an outdoor service our first week back in person. So I was given the task to take notes on the property and to see acoustically and power wise which side would probably best fit our interest. I mainly took pros and cons notes of the sounds I was hearing and things that stood out to me visually. I learned that listening and checking out the area before you decide on what you want is definitely a necessity! It really helped me to train my ears to listen to the environment and see the direction of the wind, sun, and if traffic would affect the service.

My next task was to listen to the previously mixed service and take notes on it. Overall the mix was good, I would have changed a couple of levels. But one thing you have to realize as a sound engineer is that we all have different ears and different things we like to hear. If you like guitars, you will most likely ride the guitars all of the performance. But in a church environment, the vocals have to be out in front of everything! That is a very important thing to remember if you are going to ever run sound for a church environment!

On Wednesday, we had another recorded interview, so the videographer gave me the audio to cut, mix, EQ, and master. I enjoy having the opportunity to use things I learned in the studio in my internship because then it shows them that I am flexible and can do more than run live sound. That shows me that I could make a good impression of my talents, I just don’t want to take it too far where I come off as a know it all. After I completed the audio, I prepared the stage for this weekend’s rehearsal: took down unnecessary cables, cleaned mics, gaffed some cables down, charged batteries, and prepared the X32 scene.

I look forward to next week because I will have a lot more to work on and prepare with the outdoor service closing in fast. It will be a good challenge for me because I strive to be the best at my job, so to run a service outside puts a lot of pressure on my ability to see what we will need PA wise and power distribution. Go check out my Instagram for pictures from my internship! Look at this time for another Blog post on what I did at my internship.