CHURCH TECH
THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG | Bill Gibson
I ’ m always looking for something to share from my background or experiences that will substantively help many people . I ’ m praying that this will accomplish that goal - but I admit that the premise is a little out there .
So , how did I come up with “ The Chicken or the Egg ,” you might ask . It ’ s because music , sound , audio recording , live sound , performance , and worship are all very interconnected and complex activities , and it ’ s best when things happen in a certain order , way , and method - but which comes first ? Where do you start ?! You can ’ t have a chicken without an egg , but you need a chicken to lay an egg !
I ’ ve heard worship leaders complain about a congregation that wasn ’ t into worship on a particular day , but if the worship leader would have worshipped like no one was around , maybe the congregation would have been moved to a greater place of worship . Or , if the congregation had worshipped with all of their heart , maybe that would have fed the leader ’ s passion and fire and the entire room might have burst into undeniably heartfelt worship ! Who ’ s the chicken and who ’ s the egg ?
APPLY TO SOUND There are a lot of ingredients in sound and worship . It ’ s possible to be inspired anywhere along the creative pathway , but in the world of live sound and recorded audio there are somethings that simply need to be in order for everything else to go well .
“ ONE THING ” AT A TIME In the church , we know that the chicken was created by God … uhhh … unless He created the egg to grow the chicken … Ahhh …
Question : What came first , the chicken or the egg ? Answer : God !
So , we can learn from this analogy that there ’ s an order to the way things work best and we ’ ll get better results if we take things in that order . I ’ m not much of a movie scene whiz kid . Okay , I have a few scenes permanently etched in my memory , like the guy in the outhouse being eaten in one bite by a dinosaur in the first Jurassic Park , or the first time Jody Foster went down the worm hole in Contact , or … I guess I have a few . But , the movie scene that really applies to sound operating and recording in a room is from City Slickers .
At the end of City Slickers , Billy Crystal ’ s character , Mitch ( the definitive city slicker ), and Jack Palance ’ s character , Curly ( definitive rugged cowboy ), are riding off into the sunset when Curly , with his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth , says , “ Do you know what the secret to life is ?” Crystal responds , “ No . what ?” The cowboy holds up one finger and says , “ One thing . Just one thing . You stick to that and everything else don ’ t mean …” I ’ ll stop there . I think you get the point . Find the one thing in life that gives you true happiness and stick with it - don ’ t dilute it with a bunch of silly stuff . That ’ s a great life analogy but it ’ s also a great approach to working with audio .
After a little mental deliberation about defining which is the chicken and which is the egg , we should figure out what the most important thing at hand is and focus on that “ one thing ” until it ’ s great . Then if we move on to the next thing , we ’ ll have something worth working on until it ’ s great so we can move on the next thing .
Too often we try to attack too many things at once instead of sequentially perfecting things as we move through the process . Our brain can ’ t go that many directions without maxing out . Trying to focus on too many things at once results in none of them getting done well . One of the rules of musical arranging is that listeners can ’ t hear and understand more than three things at once , so there ’ s no upside to bombarding them with ten key ingredients happening at once . Our brain functions better when it can focus on bite-sized chunks of stimulation . Audio works best when you perfect