Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

Peter James | Clashing With Every Single Person

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We’re joined by legendary Hillsong keyboardist and sound designer Peter James. Peter has been playing piano/keys for the last 25+ years, and has been heavily involved with Hillsong Church as a volunteer on the weekends, as well as being employed by Hillsong United and Hillsong International Leadership College as a lecturer for the past 13 years. Additionally, he has played on 40+ Hillsong albums.

In this episode, we get inside Peter James headspace on everything from Sound Design -> Writing Parts -> Arranging -> Synth Bass. We hear how he pushes himself to continually try something new, the relationship of keyboard parts to sounds, a trick for coming up with parts, and how to incorporate synth base into your band. We hear about the influence of Hillsong producer, Joel Houston, and the reference material he pushed out ahead of tracking, such as: M83, Passion Pit, & Radiohead, that influence modern worship music today.

Go to Peter James Productions, check out his stuff at Multitracks (including his sounds for Oceans), don’t miss his Youtube Channel, and follow him on Facebook, and Twitter.

Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and support the show by rating us and leaving a comment. Have a question or thought? Leave a comment below or connect directly with us!

Chris Green, ‘What They Enjoy To Do’

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Chris Green

Chris Green

Drummer and Audio Installation Engineer Chris Green talks to us about production from a plethora of perspectives.

Connect with Chris at 703 300 0300 or avchrisg at yahoo

If you liked this episode, also check out Bassist Aron “Teo” Lee’s episode “All In”.

Subscribe to iTunes

Subscribe on iTunes

Chris uses: K Custom Zildjian Cymbals | Hot Rods | Nylon Brushes

Edit: if you liked this episode, you may also like All About Worship’s Episode #159 on Drums with Mike Murray.

Sound – Feedback

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Microphones (and pickups) are sources of feedback

Microphones (and pickups) are sources of feedback

Seemingly one of the great mysteries of running sound is the source and cause of feedback. Perhaps the greatest sin one can commit behind the sound board is allowing feedback. Running sound truly is a thankless job. If everything is going right, no one takes notice. So thank your soundman today!

Since we paid attention at math in school, can we use math to understand feedback? The answer, to all of our relief, is a resounding “yes”. Incredibly, the language of mixing and sound is entirely one of engineering (as is perhaps all of reality), which makes me happy.

Feedback implies the idea of a loop. All the math we need to understand feedback is multiplication and the concept of “unity“, or 1, meaning if you multiply this number by itself, you get this number back again.

But, if you multiply this number by a number smaller than itself, you get a smaller number, and if you keep multiplying, the numbers keep getting smaller. Similarly, if you multiply this number by a number larger than itself you get a larger number, and if you keep multiplying, the numbers keep getting larger. This is the essence of a feedback loop and why it can seem to hang on a knife’s edge – because it does.

To be clear, the loop we are talking about is sound that goes into a microphone, then into a mixing board where it might get EQ’d, then over to an amplifier, and then out via main and/or monitor speaker.

The loop occurs when some of that sound leaks back into the microphone. If the amount of sound that leaks in is greater than 1x what it was originally, by even a tiny little bit like 1.001 x bigger, that sound will start feeding back on itself and continue getting louder. If it’s smaller, like .9999, that sound may ring momentarily, but it will die out.

Knowing what we know then about the nature of sound, that the atoms of sound are sine waves, this feedback could occur at any frequency that our sound system is capable of making, which is another reason we cut and try not to boost gain at a specific frequency using EQ.

Furthermore, the acoustics of the room will come into play as every room will have a bunch of resonant frequencies (just like a coke bottle or flute) that will be more prone to build gain. And even the angle of the microphone with respect to the speakers will have a role, as some mics reject on the side purposefully for this reason.

Positive feedback like we discussed above is ultimately unstable and applied socially can be unhealthy. Positive feedback can make a diva or a spoiled child. Negative feedback is required for stability.

The simplest thing

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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?

“Is there, like, a specific place I’m supposed to be looking?”

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Grand Piano (Pete Bulanow)

Grand Pianos are heavy (Pete Bulanow)

New Zealander Lorde recently made history by being the first female and first solo artist to win the best rock video award at the VMAs. In her short time on stage, somewhat bewildered by it all, she asked the question: “Is there, like, a specific place I’m supposed to be looking?”

This is a telling question. If we don’t want people to be bewildered on Sunday morning, we need to have an answer to this question. The visual “melody” of the song if you will, must be clear. Lights can help create this focal point, but at a minimum, the worship leader must be visible. More than once, I’ve seen a worship leader sitting at a piano on the ground level with an unidentified voice coming from the sound system. If that worship leader needs to play a grand, get that piano on stage, or get them playing a big sample-playback keyboard on the stage. We have to get this right.

Let’s talk about sound for a moment.

Reality is generally coherent. For example when a twig snaps in the forest behind you, that means something is behind you. With artificial environments, sight and sound can be decoupled (become incoherent), to the detriment of the experience and the bewilderment of the observer.

Certainly, at a bare minimum, have your speakers up front where things are happening. Similarly, more than once I’ve actually seen speakers in the middle or even back of the church. The point is not just to make sound louder, it’s to make it all make sense. Disembodied voices are disorienting.

Now if you have a nice stereo setup, it makes sense to align the audio with your visuals. If backing vocals are slightly to the left, it may improve coherence to mix them that way. But if your drum kit is off to one side, I would still recommend panning it to the center of your mix (same with the bass), or if panning something off to one side means you will hear a different mix depending on where you sit in the house, then keep everything centered.

The goal is to make it easy for people to understand what is going on and minimize the artificiality of technology.

The most important musician

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Who do you think is the most important musician?

This is not a question I have heard posed a lot, but I am very confident about how I would answer this question, and it may not be who you have in mind.

  • It’s not the drummer, although this person is critical for keeping steady time.
  • It’s not the bassist, although this person is critical for how chords move in the song.
  • It’s not the guitarist, although this person is often the most notable in a band.
  • It’s not the keyboardist, although this person can add so much color and depth to the sound.
  • It’s not the lead vocalist, although the front man can make or break how a band connects with the audience.

The most important musician, if you ask me, is the sound engineer.

The sound engineer is a musician. Their instrument is the mixing board, and they need to be able to play that thing like a Stradivarius. They need to love, and I mean really love, music. If they don’t love music, that will become very apparent in the mix. It will sound clinical and boring. I call this the NPR mix.

Onyx 1640i by Pete Bulanow

Onyx 1640i by Pete Bulanow

Their role as gatekeeper is clear: Everything goes through the sound engineer. What is muted or un-muted is totally in their hands, and a band is helpless against a sound engineer who isn’t paying attention.  The sound engineer controls the stage volume, and what the band hears is largely in the hands of that person. The band has very little control over the house mix, and while a sound engineer can’t “polish a turd” as the saying goes (even if they can mute a pitchy vocalist), they very much can make or break how a band comes across in the house, which translates to how the audience responds, which translates to how the band plays. This person couldn’t be more critical.

The rookie mistake I hear (see) engineers make is when they “mix with their eyes”. What I mean is if they set levels the same (to include gain) e.g. for all the backing vocalists, the sound comes out at the same volume. True, each channel could be producing the same amount of gain, but vocalists sing at really different volumes. You have no choice but to mix with your ears.

Or you think because you push a channel up a little louder that it got a little louder. But if you didn’t hear it get louder, it doesn’t matter if you pushed the fader up. Perhaps you pushed the wrong fader up!

You can actually walk by a mixing board and see an engineer who mixes with their eyes vice their ears.

And yet, when everything is going great, the sound tech goes largely unnoticed. The only time the engineer gets any attention is if there is feedback. It’s a thankless job to all but those who know the real deal, to those who really hear a mix.

So musicians, thank your engineer for a great mix!!!!