church . Each of them may only take a minute , like having to re-connect your keyboard to your software every time you plugin or having to make sure you select the right bank of sounds on your hardware keyboard before you dive into your rehearsal , but some of them may not be as necessary as you think .
The reality is those annoying little things can cause a cascade of wasted time or worse , potential points of failure . But when they ’ re each just a tiny little paper cut , it ’ s tempting to ignore them .
Here ’ s a practical way to break that habit : if you typically spend an hour practicing at home , give yourself just ten minutes at the beginning to setup and tear down your practice setup one or two extra times . Note what works , what doesn ’ t , and what feels clunky .
The same thing for your setup times at church . Put in the effort to get to church ten minutes earlier than usual one Sunday and use that extra time to analyze how you ’ re starting that time off . Is it relaxed , fluid , and reliable , or stressful , frantic , and prone to last minute troubleshooting ?
LEVERAGE TECH
Another practical tip for making this shift from prep to performance feel smoother is to simply stop and read the user manual for the hardware and software you ’ re using .
All the popular options for worship keys software have some capability to allow you to save configurations of your commonly used hardware connections and the ability to organize your custom sounds into a library . You can even manage to pass things back and forth via the cloud , depending on what you use .
In the same way , modern hardware workstations at the least can be organized with software editors and have some support for storing your work to a flash drive or computer over USB .
If you never stop to investigate what that keyboard or software can do besides just make noise , you just might be costing yourself a ton of time in the long run .
All it takes is a conscious decision to focus on improving your worship keys quality of life and you ’ ll find ways to level up .
EMBRACE THE CHAOS
The truth is you ’ ll never be able to cut out all the mess . You ’ ll always be practicing at home without your bandmates , designing sounds in a different room or with headphones on , and then to some extent at the mercy of any service ’ s assortment of musicians , congregants , and often especially the audio engineer .
Just because there are elements outside of your control doesn ’ t have to mean you don ’ t work to gain better control over what you can .
If you can find it in yourself to slow down , give yourself time to evaluate what ’ s working , and make an effort to gain better control over the variables you can , you ’ ll end up better equipped to deal with the occasional chaos , taking it all in stride .
David Pfaltzgraff Founder and Lead Sound Designer at SundaySounds . com , a site that resources worship keys players and guitarists around the world . David currently resides in Des Moines , IA with his wife and two boys . He enjoys volunteering in his church ’ s worship ministry , old synthesizers , and a good super-hero movie .
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