rebonn
Senior Member
It was brought up by a few of you in another thread about mics on church kits, or the lack thereof. I don't want to derail that thread so I started this one.
Mic'ing drums in church is a sore spot with me. The drums in my church are mic'ed, but I can't get the sound guy to turn me up in the monitors. They're barely in it, if at all. He always says that he can hear me just fine. But I sometimes get told by people in the congregation that the drums could hardly be heard. I've told this to the main current sound guy more than once, and he claims he will turn me up, but I never notice a difference. Then when they (usually a different sound person) do turn me up, I tend to get compliments. Not that I'm fishing for compliments. I just want the drums to be heard as clearly and as evenly as the other instruments. Plus I don't want to bash the drums in a relatively small room while playing hymns.
The other times that others have played the drums in my church (I play the majority of the time) and I'm in the congregation listening, I was ALWAYS disappointed in the drum volume and sound because they just weren't putting the drums in the monitors. All the other instruments were clearly heard, while the drums were being drowned out. And those guys play the drums louder than I do. I know it is usually the other way around with drum volume being too much. But not in this church building, because the acoustics are pretty poor. I'm a light player, and use mostly light sticks. I can play extremely softly with sticks. I learned to play that way decades ago. I can obviously play louder too, when appropriate. So there is no way the drums are too loud. In fact, when I first started playing in this church I sometimes got mocked (politely though) for playing too lightly. If someone said this to me, I would ask them to talk to the sound person, since they have the power to make me heard or not heard, no matter how hard I'm hitting.
I do realize that we don't have the best sound system. Sometimes they try to turn things up but get feedback or something. The sound team are also not professionals either. My frustration is that when I try to give constructive criticism to get a better mix, he'll say they'll do something about it, then usually don't. I think I'll be talking to the worship leader about this in hopes that she'll take the time to listen to the mix out in the sanctuary during practice, because she rarely does.
I'm confused. When you say the drums are not loud enough for people to hear in the audience because the drums aren't loud enough in the monitors , do you mean the PA when you say monitors?