Managing Creatives is Tricky...

May 17, 2013/ Mike Sessler

Creative people can be a hard lot to manage. And I say that as a creative person who has also had to manage other creatives. Part of the problem is that most of us tend to assume that other people are like us. So, if you’re a left-brained analytical person, you tend to assume that everyone else is similar. As such, walking into the tech booth and saying, “It’s too loud,” or, “Can we kill the haze,” or “I don’t like that background for the second song,” seems like a perfectly logical and non-offensive thing to do. And it would be; if your tech booth was populated by left-brained analytical people. But it’s not. So your words have far more meaning than you think they do.

I was reading an article in Fast Company a few weeks ago. They were doing a feature story on the head of J. Crew. Now, even though I’m normally pretty fashionable in my tech standard-issue black t-shirt and blue jeans, I normally don’t pay much mind to J. Crew. But the article caught my eye so I started reading. One quote from the young president, Jenna Lyons, really resonated with what we do in the technical arts. She says:

“When someone creates something and puts it in front of you, that thing came from inside them, and if you make them feel bad, it’s going to be hard to fix, because you’ve actually crushed them.”

This simple, run-on sentence really helps clarify why we feel so hurt by a simple, “It’s too loud” comment. I think it perfectly illustrates the disconnect between most church leaders and their technical staff. Leadership tends to think that the tech people are left-brained analytical people who just happen to understand technology better and know how to push the right buttons at the right time.

To be sure, some of us are like that. But the best technical artists I know are just that; artists. Mixing a worship set isn’t just bring up the faders to unity and turning the pastor’s mic off. There is as much artistry going on behind the mixer as there is on the stage (sometimes more; but that’s another post). The best lighting guys don’t just turn on lights—they carefully choose colors, angles and intensity to appropriately convey the mood of the song. The presentation tech picks backgrounds that go with the lights and the song. It’s all art; varying degrees, but still art.

So what the left-brained person thinks is a totally neutral, fact-based comment is actually much more. Walking into the booth and saying, “It’s too loud,” or “Can you turn the guitar down?” and leaving is not at all unlike throwing a hand grenade into the booth, then leaving. You thought it was a statement of fact, but it’s more like tearing up your 4-year old’s painting in front of her.

Now to be sure, we artists need to develop thicker skin. We are in a service business and ultimately we need to serve our leadership and their vision of the church and service. It’s important for us to recognize that our leaders aren’t intending to crush us with their comments. They are pointing out a problem that they see needs to be solved. And as problem-solvers, we should be good at this.

But somehow, we need to develop better methods of communication between the artists and thinkers. Church leaders need to understand that we’re not picking values at random—a lot of our hearts and soul goes into whatever we’re doing. At least it should. The danger comes when the artist gets so beaten down that they give up and fall back to, “Whatever you want” mode.

And while the left-brained types think it would be much better for everyone if they didn’t have to deal with those “out there artists,” the reality is, they don’t want that. Because a purely intellectual expression of the Gospel is an incompletely expression. The church needs artists, desperately. God himself is the ultimate artist, and when we as artists express what is in us, we are all better off for it.

Somehow, we need to figure out how to get along, and how to better communicate with each other. Only then will the church be all it can be.

Easing the Easter Week Workload

May 01, 2013/ Mike Sessler

For those of us in the production department, Easter week (as defined as the week between Palm Sunday and Easter) is one of the toughest weeks of the year. Perhaps it’s because we typically have only 5 days to get everything ready (4 if you do Good Friday…), or perhaps because we pull out all the stops for the weekend, but it can be a killer for us. I’m not afraid of some hard work, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that A) I really don’t enjoy 80-hour weeks any more and B) I know I get cranky and irritable after about 60. The last thing I want to be on Easter morning is cranky and irritable, so I’m learning how to keep that from happening.

We did a similar helix last year, but this time we changed the twist, which made it much more dimensional. It's 3/4" EMT on top and bottom and vinyl flagging tape. Total cost, about $25.

Pre-Build Anything You Can

In year’s past, we really did try to pack everything into those four days after Palm Sunday. This year, we learned from our Christmas experience, and pre-built a lot more. Weeks before Palm Sunday, my show files were done for the SD5, SD8 and M-48s. All I had to do was load them and start working. We pre-built some of the set the week before, and even installed the SD5 at FOH and SD8 at monitors the weekend before Palm Sunday, getting everything full functioning and operational.

Because of the work I was able to do with last year’s virtual soundcheck files, I pre-built all my vocal monitor mixes several weeks before as well. With a good 20-30 hours worth of work done before we even started the week, it was amazing how ahead we were.

Hit it Hard Up Front

This year, we were able to get a great team of helpers in on Palm Sunday afternoon to help with the set. In just two hours, the set was built, and we had already checked off half of Monday’s list. When Monday arrived, we started early, got all the lights in, set the band decks and fully wired and line-checked all audio before we went home. Granted, we didn’t go home until 11 PM, but we were essentially set for the whole week. Having all that work done by Monday night made the rest of the week go much more smoothly.

Take Time to Rest

Because we had rehearsal on Tuesday night, we decided not to come in until 12:30 that day. We spent the afternoon tweaking, checking and re-checking our set ups and doing some lighting programming. When we wrapped up at 9:30, we all still felt pretty good, having had a good night’s sleep, a quiet morning and only a 9 hour day.

Wednesday was even better. We came in for about 4 hours mid-day to run tracks from the previous night, and reset for Good Friday.

Thursday we again arrived at noon, so even when we left at 11 it was a long day, but it wasn’t 16 hours long. By the time we got to Friday, things were ready to go and we were reasonably rested.

Know Thyself

Granted, by the time I got to Saturday, it was day 12 in a row for me, and I’m learning if I don’t get a full day off every 10 or so, I get cranky. So next year, I’m going to figure out how to take Wednesday off next year. It may mean working a little longer Tuesday or Thursday, but I think it will be worth it.

Now, what works for me may not work for you. If you’re young and spry, working twenty 12-hour days in a row may not wear you out. But when you’re old like me, that is not nearly as much fun. Rather than being aggravated and cranky all the time, I’m working really hard to figure out how to pace myself so I can stay positive all week.

It’s a funny thing, though. When we left at 2 on Wednesday, my wonderful ATD Jon texted me saying, “I feel guilty leaving this early, like we’re doing something wrong.” I reminded him that his boss said it was OK. But I can relate. I too, felt a little guilty. But I remembered, we’re not being paid to work 80-90 hours a week during Easter. We’re paid to produce a memorable and powerful Easter weekend. If we can do that and take a day off during the week, then I’d say we are doing something right.

What about you? How was your Easter week?

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Successful Speaker Demos Pt. 3

March 29, 2013/ Mike Sessler

Photo credit, Duke Dejong

Over the last two posts, I’ve detailed how we ran our new PA demonstration in such a way so that our leadership go it. I want to reiterate a few things and point out some concepts that my be helpful to those of you lobbying for a similar upgrade.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

No. They don’t. Like I’ve said before, we tend to think everyone is like us. But they’re not. As technical artists, we are unique. We hear things that the average person—congregant or leader—doesn’t hear. That’s our job. But just because they can’t hear it doesn’t mean they’re not perceiving it. We’ll get to that in a moment.

But it’s important to realize that they won’t be able to hear a 3 dB dip at 4KHz. So don’t try to point it out. They have no idea what you’re talking about. Trying to explain that the new PA will make the music more awesome probably won’t win you the support you’re looking for, either.

Is It Clear?

Ask your pastor if they would like their message to be clear. The answer will of course be a resounding yes. Now, ask him if he wants the congregation to be able to hear him clearly. The answer will also be yes. However, if your PA makes it difficult or impossible for the congregation to clearly hear what he’s saying, you have a problem. It’s like this graphic above. On the left, we see clear, direct sound. On the right, we see some direct sound, and a lot of reflections. Which is easier to read? Which is going to be easier to hear.

You have to be able to demonstrate that concept clearly for your pastor. The best way is to design (or have designed) a system that will generate minimal reflections in your room, and have him try it. Once they get it, you then may have to explain some simple psycho-acoustic principles for them.

Reflections are Exhausting

Imagine trying to read an entire book typeset like the one on the right. You could probably do it, but your eyes would be sore and your head tired by the time you finished. The same is true of listening to a ton of reflections in a large room. And while we may not be able to eliminate all reflections, we want to minimize them.

There is a principle known as the Haas effect. The Haas effect states that a single reflection arriving between 5-30 milliseconds after the direct source can be up to 10 dB louder than the source and still not be heard as an echo. However, once you start exceeding 30 milliseconds, you start hearing echoes. In our room, for example, because our PA is pointed at the back wall (a bad, bad idea), our pastor gets a second copy of his voice about 180 msec. after he speaks, which is a distinct echo. As he teaches, his brain needs to filter that out. That’s exhausting.

Everyone in the audience also hears that echo, and it’s coming at them somewhere between 120-180 msec. as well. Again, exhausting to listen to. People may not be able to articulate it, but they do perceive it.

Another issue with reflections is that they make the room feel bigger than it is. A very live room will feel cavernous, and when you’re trying to create a more intimate worship and teaching experience, the room is working against you. Minimize reflections with a properly designed PA and the room feels better. Our office manager said it best, “With that new system, the room feels like an intimate jazz club, not an empty aircraft hanger.”

Who wants to invite friends to an empty aircraft hanger? A proper PA will help your church grow. And remember, the best time to explain these principles is when you have both a good example (your demo of a proper PA) and a bad example (your old, lousy PA) in the room so you can switch between them. Even if your leadership can’t explain the difference between direct and reflected sound, they can feel it, and that will make all the difference.

Now, one last thing to clarify before someone writes to me telling me we shouldn’t eliminate all reflected sound. You’re right; we shouldn’t. Having church in an anechoic chamber would be very uncomfortable. However, we want to control the reflections, and we really want to keep sound from the speakers off the walls if at all possible. If you do that, the walls will be energized with the congregation singing, which will encourage them to sing louder and more engagingly. That’s what we want. Hopefully, that’s clear.

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Successful Speaker Demos Pt. 2

March 27, 2013/ Mike Sessler

Photo credit, Duke Dejong

Last time, we talked about how to demonstrate complex audio challenges in a way that the layman could understand. Today, we’ll take it a step further. Because we know that simply pointing out a problem is generally not enough motivation for solving it. We have to dig deeper and find out what is causing pain for our leaders. And once we find the pain, we can provide the solution. And, realize that they may not be aware of the pain—indeed, many of my leaders thought our system was just "normal." They didn't realize it could be so very much better.

Find the Pain Points

The message is the most important part of our service (not everyone’s service, our service). And I know speech in our room is terrible. But we have to remember that most everyone’s point of reference is our room. They don’t know any different, and figure this is just how it is. Of course as trained engineers, we can hear exactly what the problems are, but how to do we explain it? Again, we demonstrate.

I played some tracks of our pastor teaching through our PA, then switched to the proposed system. Because of the increased focus, almost everyone went, “Ah ha!” You could almost see the room getting brighter as the lightbulbs went on. But it wasn’t enough to make the sale.

Based on our room, I know it is really hard for our pastor to preach in there. He hears himself four times, which is exhausting. He may not know it, but as I talked about last week in my review of the Bose demo, having to filter out that many reflections wears one out. I knew if we were going to get a chance at funding this project, he needed to be on board.

So I had him come up, put on his mic and stand on the platform. I had him start a message on our PA, then switched the Bose. Within about 6 words, he stopped and said, “OK, yeah, I hear that. That’s a big difference. No wonder I’m so exhausted on Sundays!” He put it together on his own. To be sure he was clear, I explained what he was experiencing. I also explained that it’s just as exhausting for our congregation to have to filter our 3 extraneous copies of his voice for 40 minutes. He got that.

I also brought up our Executive Pastor, who will sometimes do announcements. Even though he’s had three surgeries on his ears and didn’t get any of the other demonstrations, when he talked into the mic and I switched between systems, it took about 4 words before he said, “Oh wow…I hear that. I didn’t think I would, but I can really tell a difference.”

Finally, our least technical, least critical listener heard the difference. I then proceeded to work with some musicians to demonstrate what they needed to hear, and answer questions. The one question that didn’t come up was, “How much.” And that’s just what I wanted.

Is It Sold?

When I originally wrote this post, the answer was no. However, now that I'm getting ready to post it, I can report back that the elders have voted unanimously to move forward with the project. So it looks like we'll not only be hanging a new PA this summer, we'll also be moving the tech booth to the floor and out of the balcony.

I really believe all the effort we put into creating a demo that everyone would get paid off. Each of our senior leaders has thanked me for the time and effort we put in, and acknowledged that there is a pretty big difference. All were grateful that I took the time to educate them on the problems we faced with our current system and how the new one would dramatically improve the feel in the room.

And that’s what I wanted. If you ever have the opportunity to do a speaker demo, try to get it brought in to your room so you can do a direct A/B comparison, and figure out what you need to do so your leadership will unequivocally hear the difference. They need to know it’s not just you and I complaining about some esoteric, subtle sound differences that only trained engineers can hear. A proper PA will help your church grow; they just need help to understand why. And it’s our job to help them get it.