FRONT OF HOUSE
DO VOCALS STILL ALWAYS WIN IN A MIX? | Kent Morris
Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash
Recently, the video of a class I taught at a church conference last year has found new life and is garnering significant praise and some lessthan-praise comments for one of the points I made, namely: in a mix for livestream broadcast of a worship service, vocals always win in the hierarchy of the mix. The back-and-forth of the comments led me to reconsider the position and reflect on outside variables and opinions, but I came back to the same conclusion. In a church service, everything in the mix matters, but the vocals matter more. Here’ s why.
There is one aspect of worship music that sets it apart from any other genre: the lyrical content. While the musical content source of church music is as varied as pub songs and classical scores, the lyrics have one source: the Bible. Theology is key to crafting a worship song. If the theology is missing or heretical, it fails the litmus test of worship. Once a song is seated as a worship song, its message becomes its core. In contrast, a secular song may or may not have a theme or directed focus. For example,“ I Am the Walrus” by The Beatles was intentionally designed by John Lennon to have no meaning and to simply confuse. Novelty songs from Cozy Powell’ s“ Na Na Na” and The Steve Miller Band’ s catchy“ Abracadabra” are built to entertain, not change. Secular songs can have strong intentionality and deep meaning, like the aforementioned John Lennon with“ Imagine” and“ Hurricane” by Bob Dylan, but it is not a requirement and its meaning is not essential to the song’ s existence.
Music and the lyrics play symbiotic roles within a worship song. One without the other is incomplete in environments outside acapella only settings. As an analogy, consider lyrics the train and music the track. The train( lyrics) are the point of the railroad enterprise but they aren’ t going anywhere without the track( music). Each needs the other in order to function as designed.
When mixing a congregational worship service, the key to success in both the spiritual and physical sense is clean, clear vocal reproduction. Musical clarity is obviously important, but a slightly buzzy guitar will lend less detriment to the proceedings than a buried lead vocal. Vocals create the reference for the congregation to sing with confidence and they deliver the contextual elements behind the thrust and tenor of the song. Divergent takes on vocal preeminence come into play when the vocals are below par, either in pitch or timbre. It then falls to either a manual fix such as blending back the offending vocal in favor of one less flat or an automated fix in the form of pitch correction plug-ins. Some churches are blessed with amazing vocalists who deliver stellar renderings every Sunday,
but most churches have volunteer singers with wonderful hearts and mediocre voices. One helpful option is to bring in a vocal coach and raise the performance level at its source. With the church signaling the importance of vocal quality by resourcing its improvement, the issue can be made to disappear through training. Using a plug-in, on the other hand, is faster, cheaper, and less intrusive on fragile egos, but, like all technology, it will likely fail when called upon, with the result posted for all to see on WorshipFails. But it is a viable option and will work the majority of the time. If the engineer can program each song as a scene and lay in the correct parameters, the chances of a failure are greatly reduced.
Finally, while vocals always win, it is vital to remember they don’ t win by much. The music plays a vital role through chord progressions eliciting joy or somber moods. Likewise, the skill of the musician is a reflection of God’ s gifting, and the sheer exhilaration of music performed well is itself a form of worship. It all boils down to taking and using music and lyrics together to honor God with the very best of our efforts for He deserves nothing less.
Kent Morris Kent Morris is a 45-year veteran of the AVL arena driven by passion for excellence tempered by the knowledge all technology is in a temporal state.
114 October 2025 Subscribe for Free...