One of the ways I mentioned before, about how churches can use technology, was to add digital musicians to your worship team. I wanted to go into a little more detail, and share how we’re doing that at Journey now.
First a few key things to understand:
Generally speaking, I’m not in favor of replacing key instruments digitally. Our normal team consists of drums, bass, electric guitar, and keyboard. Even if one of them were missing, I wouldn’t be comfortable replacing any of them with digital musicians because they’re too important. However, this does depend largely on your circumstances. If you’re just starting out and you have only a guitar player, and vocalist (and they’re both you), then you’re going to have to find a way to enhance your sound. There are options for this such as Worship Backing Band.
Also, to do this well will require you to spend some money, though not as much as you might think. Yes, in an ideal world we would use in-ear wireless monitors, a variety of software, and other expensive equipment to make it work. But it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars. In fact, it shouldn’t cost a lot unless you just can’t get where you want to go without spending more money.
Our Setup at Journey
Part 1: Keeping Everyone Together
The most important thing about adding digital musicians to your team is that you have to play perfectly in sync with them. Usually this involves playing to a click track (like a metronome). While this series of high-pitched “beeps” keeps the team playing in time with each other, it’s distracting for the congregation. This means having some method of getting the sound directly into the team’s ears. Wireless in-ear monitors are great, but if you don’t have a few thousand dollars lying around to outfit your team with them, pick up a headphone amplifier for around $20. I picked up this four channel amp for under $20 on Amazon. Add a few 20-foot headphone extension cables, and some cheap headphones, and you can send the click to up to four individuals, each with their own level control.
A note about the headphones: Spend the extra $.50 and get headphones that hook over your ears instead of the simple ear-bud style. The first time I used the ear-buds while playing, I spent half the song keeping them from falling out.
Cost for all the pieces: under $50.
