Microphone Placement and Technique Seminar

At Mars Hill we strive for excellence in everything we do, including th production of a Sunday service.  This means that we try to make sure that training is available to all of our volunteers, in all areas of production, from lighting, video, to audio.  I, and a team of others, have put together a training curriculum for the audio volunteers.  (More details about that training, and the content, can be found here.) This curriculum was originally written for classroom training sessions, so some of it may be hard to get through online.  We are looking at revamping this curriculum to be web based over the course of the next year. If you have any thoughts or suggestions to that process, feel free to let us know.

This last week a local Seattle vendor held a “Microphone Placement and Technique Seminar,” which I and a hand full of volunteers attended. The seminar covered a lot of what I cover in the Microphones section of our training.  They talked about the differences between Dynamic and Condenser Microphones, what Polar Patterns are and why they are useful to know, and then did a live demo of a couple of different microphones on different instruments.

Personally as I sat there, I realized how much God has blessed me with the knowledge I have.  Through this workshop, God has reignited the passion I have for training church technicians to be able to do their job well, so technology is not a distraction to the Gospel.  This past year I have not provided the level of training that I have a desire to be, and with God’s help will change that over the course of the next year.  My apologies to all who have been effected by that.  I also want to be able to help everyone, and not just people/volunteers at Mars Hill Church.

Here are some comments about the Seminar from some of the volunteers that attended.  The comments are just how they made them, except for minor editing for context.  Italic text are my additional notes.

• The presenters seemed to know their stuff, were comfortable with the material and were glad to answer questions.
• Condenser mics are snappier, that is they are better at picking up very quick, transient sounds as compared to dynamic mics.  This may suit them better to pick up things such as the snap of the kick.
• Hyper and super-cardioid mics have a much narrower pick up pattern than the standard cardioid mic, and should not be used if a vocalist will be moving his head much.
• Pointing monitor wedges directly at the stem (cable end) of an SM58 will reduce feedback by a lot because of the dead zone in that part of the cardioid pickup pattern.  (The null of the cardioid pattern allows for up to 25 dB difference in gain between the front and the back of a cardioid microphone.  This applies to all cardioid mics not just the Shure SM58.)
• Holding the windscreen of a mic (think of a Rapper) alters its pickup pattern and may turn a cardioid mic into an omni. (This will also increase the chances of feedback because of the pickup pattern change, see above comment) Solution: tell vocalist not to grab (or hold) mic windscreen.
• As you get closer in proximity to a mic (except omni) you get a stronger bass response.
• I learned that even though over head mics are set up on the drum set, most of the time they are turned down or not used. especially in a smaller venue.
• I learned that when someone is getting feed back they have a tendency to step away from the mic when they need to get closer and produce sound (Speak up).
• For multiple mics on the same source (think choir), try to keep each mic 3x distance to its source away from the other mic.  (So if the mics are 5 feet from the choir, there should be 15 feet between mics.  This will reduce phase cancellation due to comb filtering. (Comb filtering definitions: Wiki, Moulton Labs))
• Every open mic on stage reduces your max volume before feedback ~3dB (less open mics is better).
• The demo of the effect of phase inversion was *very* effective and would be a pretty good demo even for non-technical people, should the need arise.
• I also appreciated the demo involving mic placement relative to an instrument and the difference in sound that those mics can produce vs. a direct output.
• Mic placement can make a big difference, as explained and demonstrated in the mic getting moved around while music was being produced.
• Overall the best concept I got out of the presentation was that experts get better by experimenting.  There are some things that are always a bad idea, but once you know the basic physics behind sound and are aware of the pitfalls to avoid, the best way to improve is by trying new things.
• I’m glad I attended and am looking forward to trying some new things next time I’m mixing.

Mars Hill will continue to train and will open up training sessions to other churches.  The Production Technology Department is committed to seeing that our volunteers are trained, and if we can help other churches at the same time, it is an additional blessing.  Please keep checking in on this site for future events and training dates.

Our Approach to Audio Training

With the launch of this website, will also come the official launch of our online audio training.  Part of the joy of having standardized equipment across all campuses, is the ability to train centrally.  Training centrally means that all volunteers can attend the training that is most convenient to them, while it is still applicable to them, at their campus.

At Mars Hill Church we believe there are three levels of training, foundational, functional, and artistic.  This website will provide for the foundational level of training.  Foundational training is what functional training and artistic training all build on.  In my time at Mars Hill Church the majority of the troubleshooting questions I get are due to a lack of, or forgetting, the foundations of audio.  This forgetting of the foundations is what has driven me to write this curriculum and implement it.  I have taught this material live in a classroom twice (about every 6 months), which works for those that can drive to me.  However for those that can’t drive to our central offices, and still want the training, we want to make this available online.

We generally only do functional training at the time campus and system install/launch.  At this time we train all existing campus volunteers, and the staff member responsible at the campus.  We then will focus our training efforts on making sure the staff member responsible has a functional knowledge to be able to operate, and continually train any new campus volunteers.  (After they have gone through the foundational training curriculum.)  On this website we will also be posting quick start guides and campus manuals which will also help serve as online training for functional training.  From there the Worship department takes over the audio training, for any artistic training that may be required at the campus level.

We want to help out as many people as possible in our training efforts.  Of the material here on this site, some of it is taylored to the systems at Mars Hill Church and our campuses, but a lot of the content applies to any sound system.  In the coming months we will be figuring out how to put the classroom teaching of this content online.  We are also planning on creating short videos focusing in on different equipment and systems.  Feel free to ask us for any specific training and will try to add it to our training pages.