Glive – creating bkgd tracks
During Glive we often need karaoke versions of songs or find a way to eliminate vocals in a song to create a background track of our own. Here’s a link to Audacity’s wiki that gives a few pointers. Not all songs are created equal and you’ll notice that you can’t do this for every song out there.
Volume Levels
If you’re not comfortable with how your mix sounds or the volume level, etc… you should ask for feedback or walk around the room to see if it’s loud enough. That will help you get an idea of how the speaker sounds and the audience’s experience.
Here are some pointers:
* For praise, you want to make sure you can always hear the person leading when they’re addressing the crowd – like a prayer. That might mean you need to turn others down a bit or watch the compressor during the run-through to see if it’s compressing too much.
* Use the decibel meter we have and make sure the praise doesn’t go over 92 at the sound booth in Willard. It can go up to 97 in the middle of the auditorium b/c that is a strong peak and you have a lot of voices/clapping around you.
* For the speaker, this is the most important. You always want to hear him/her very well and clear. They should be loud but not overpowering. You shouldn’t have to struggle to hear them. This is a tough one to gauge, but if you’re not sure then you need to ask for feedback or do a walkaround to make sure you can hear them.
Here are two articles from Willow Creek sound person Chris Gille, whom I’ve met at conferences and has a lot of experience:
http://www.churchproduction.com/go.php/article/3342