Alright I did promise that I would blog about how I would setup my bass for Sunday worship when I’m playing and I know its about 1 week late since I did last publish it only that I have been busy house hunting and all that and not to mention I have some sleeping issues that I needed to rectify. Anyway on towards the main topic.
First up we have the amp. Yeap thats the amp that I am plugged into. Its an amp that is left in the church by one of the other bassist since we have a new room in the “lock up” (our main church eq storage place) where he can just leave his amp there as our practices are now in the “lock up”.
Next the amp is liked to the output of the DIY by a lead cable. Its standing on the amp and yes I know the wording is upside down. the DIY is essentially a unit where I plug my bass into it, and it has 2 outputs, one to the amp and the other to main sound system input unit.
This is the main sound input/output unit. So from the DIY I have leads to the amp and a xlr (mic cable) to the input/output unit.
Before I plug my bass in, I have a tuner pedal between the DIY and the bass guitar. Its a BOSS tuner pedal and it cost me like £60 for it. Ain’t cheap I know.
Heres a shot of my tuner pedal.
Finally the tuner pedal to the bass guitar. Yeap that pretty sums up how I setup for the instrument part. So here its Bass -> Tuner pedal -> DIY -> Amp & Sound unit.
Then again I did mention its an input/output sound unit and why is there a need for so many cables on the I/O unit?
The answer,
In-ear monitors. Yeap on stage we have our own in-ears as we are unable to hear most of the sound produced, the main speakers and all our amps are facing away from the stage so we do not have any sound coming towards us at all hence we need the in-ears.
However how do we plug the in-ears in to the I/O? By means of a sound pack. Here is what it looks like, so its In-ears -> pack -> I/O unit. We have to use a xlr from the sound pack to the I/O unit. Hence all musicians have 2 cables one for the instruments and one for the in-ears that we have. This is sounding very complicated now.
Heres the pack hooked on to may jeans, I usually put it between the belt and jeans as when I do take off from the stage it won’t come out as it did happen once where the pack ejected from my belt as it was not secured properly and it fell to the stage and I didn’t have any more sound but I kept on playing as it was.
This is what it looks like finally on stage with all the gear good to go. The rest is sound check and service.
Well its not that simple after all as we need to have the system in order to hear ourselves and also to project the sound out. This is the actual reality in the sound system that Hillsongs churches use. Where the worship team has the same system, in-ear sound for each individual member on stage and a general PA for the rest of the congregation. The added bonus to this is that we also have a music director on stage, which is usually one of the band members giving out instructions and also any particular modifications to the songs and also what key notes to play during certain times. The worship leader gives hand signals from time to time but the MD is the main person monitoring the entire team and the music flow. So hence only us and the sound crew can hear what he says and there are times also when he does make jokes behind the lines where only the worship team can hear but not the rest of the congregation nor the pastor (uh oh).