Worship Musician Magazine January 2023

[ Scott ] I was able to keep my cool by just reverting mentally to what life was like before I started using click .

The best thing to do in cases like that is to always check with your monitor engineer before the experience even begins . we managed to play and sing against a click that seemed to feel like it doubled or skipped in our ears .

I ’ ve been playing keys for a long time . So there have been more years of me not using click than having it , in my career . I also trusted the fact that I was prepared through rehearsals and trusting everyone I was on stage with at the time . In my head , we were all in this together .

“ The use of a click track is an interesting thing … on one hand , it has dramatically helped our team through the years play tight and stay very synced . And of course , having the ability to use supporting tracks for our songs has added a lot to our sets . But on the other hand , you can become a slave to it if you ’ re not careful , and it can become a crutch . As a musician , you should stay in the driver ’ s seat and make sure the click is serving your team ’ s ultimate purpose .” - Chris Brown

[ MT ] What typically causes something like this and how do you avoid it happening ?

[ Scott ] In this case , there was a simple switch up with my IEM pack . I was given the wrong one before going down to front center stage for the acoustic set .

[ MT ] Do you recommend a redundancy setup for things like this ? What would that look like ?

[ Scott ] I believe that having something as simple as a talkback mic would have been more than enough to help with the problem . There was just no way to communicate to anyone that I had no click at the time .

[ MT ] Would you mind sharing your biggest live production fail moment ?

[ Scott ] It ’ s kind of hard to top the biggest fail for me outside the San Antonio stop , but one that comes to mind happened during our Easter season this year .

We celebrated Good Friday with a beautiful experience curated by the Elevation team . One of the songs that we sung for this experience was “ Communion ” by Brooke Ligertwood , amazing song . If you ’ ve ever heard or played this song you know the time signature in the chorus can be a little tricky .

For some reason , something happened with the session and the click just went off the rails during the biggest part of the song . Somehow ,

[ MT ] What lessons did you learn from this experience that you think would be of help to worship leaders who may end up in a similar situation ?

I think the biggest take away anyone can learn from a situation like that is to trust your entire team and the preparation you put into something like this .

Click is absolutely a necessity but it ’ s also a privilege .

If I only relied on click and not trusted the team that I had the honor of sharing such a stage with every night for this tour , I might not have gotten through it as easily .

Worship Musician Magazine January 2023 | Page 38