Worship Musician December 2017 | Page 32

WORSHIP PRODUCTION [ PREVENTING 5 CLASSIC WORSHIP & TECH TEAM FAILS, EPISODE 3 | Doug Doppler ] In the hustle and bustle of weekly worship recaps are the rails upon which your teams FAIL #2 NOT KEEPING YOUR TECH TEAM IN THE services, many churches miss the opportunity move forward together in unison. As we head ASSET LOOP to bring their worship and tech teams together into the new year, there is no time like the In Episode 2 of this column we talked about to address the ongoing “global” challenges that present to take your Sunday services to the having a production meeting before each these teams face together on a regular basis. next level, so here are some of the classic fails service to talk through key  audio cues. While Sunday morning is a great time for team leads that this “global” approach can easily fix. this is a great start, getting them on the same page happens long before Sunday. to bring everyone together in order to cast vision and set culture. A vision of unity breeds a FAIL #1 NOT IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING SOLUTION: Make it a practice to share audio harmonious culture where the worship and tech GLOBAL PROBLEMS  files, song forms, and lyrics to your tech peeps teams work together, free from the divisive “us Whether it is a drummer who plays too loud or at the same time you share them with the team. vs. them” mentality that far too many churches a cranky sound person, these global problems It will make them feel included and also means face. Setting goals around global challenges affect everyone. they are accountable for knowing the material. like drum volume allow us to come together SOLUTION: Getting your worship and tech team in unity to address the chronic problems that leads together to identify these global problems FAIL #3 NO SUNDAY RECAP don’t go away without real teamwork. Pre- is a great way to set a global approach for Immediately after service is one of the few service production meetings and post-service addressing and fixing them! times that everyone who is rostered on a given Sunday are in the same place at the same time.  SOLUTION: Spend five minutes talking about what worked and what didn’t work across the entire production spectrum with the goal of making continuous improvement each week.  FAIL #4 CHANGING THE KEY SUNDAY MORNING  As Ricardo Sanchez points out in this issue, preparation happens before and not during rehearsal. Changing the key on the worship team on Sunday morning is totally preventable, as are resulting train wrecks like capo’ing at the wrong fret. SOLUTION: Planning Center Online makes it easy to transpose charts and audio files, so you can find and document the perfect key for each singer. FAIL #5 CAPO’ING AT THE WRONG FRET Speaking of capo’ing at the wrong fret, how many times have we seen this happen even if the key of the song didn’t get changed at the last minute? SOLUTION: Before Sunday morning practice cycling through the first chord of each song, moving the capo to the appropriate fret (if used), in the order in which they’ll be played. 32 December 2017 WorshipMusician.com