What if I told you there was one simple thing you could do to make your whole band sound better from the first note?

A quick story – I used to play at a church and with a worship leader who liked a lot of Steven Curtis Chapman songs. Typically the set list included one. However, the sound engineer would also play Steven Curtis Chapman CDs as intro music. Of course that music sounded fantastic. It’s got a great mix, it’s played by a tight band, and it’s nicely compressed. How were we going compare with that? Answer: only poorly. Sometimes, the very song we were playing in that service would be used for the intro music!

I can’t think of anything more unfair to a band than to do that to them. There is simply no way to compete! This leads us to a better way to do things.

The simplest thing you can do to make your band sound better is to play intro music decidedly different than what your band will be playing for their set. Preferably something that sounds worse, or lower fidelity. If you don’t have something that sounds worse, you can make it sound lo-fi by rolling off the lows and highs and not sending it to your subs. Finally, if you don’t play it so loud, then psychoacoustically it won’t sound as good.

The kind of thing I am suggesting for intro music for a traditional CCM service is something like Rivertribe. These are melodies that are familiar, but use a completely different instrumentation. They have enough energy to feel positive, but they also let people talk. And they have a great electronica and world vibe to them. Most importantly, they set your band up for success from the first note!

What do you use for intro music?