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[Taylor Phillips]

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I went to a worship music festival and listened to about 20 worship bands. The only ones that sounded decent to me were the ones that used electronic drums. The leading problem with the group with acoustic drums was that they had to sing and play so loud to be balanced with the drums that they sounded strained.

Did they not have mics for the vocals and other instruments?  If all of the bands with acoustic drums were equally bad, I would think that problem was caused by an incompetent sound man.
 

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Run the numbers and you'll find that most people go to average-sized or smaller churches. The balance of the ministry is done under non-ideal conditions.

Ain't that the truth!  Across the six states and nine cities I've lived in, only a couple of the churches I've been a part of didn't meet in a school gym or warehouse, so you know my prejudices, preferences and suggestions I make are not made on the assumption of having 'ideal conditions.'

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My own experience and prejudices are that there are few good fits for acoustic drums in worship. Every time I see them sounding good, I also see massive investments in compensating technology.

My own experience and prejudices with electric drums is that they're a poor solution to a problem that shouldn't be there, and in some cases didn't even exist to begin with.  Most of the time I hear acoustic drums sounding good, in worship and other settings, they're unmic'd out in the open. People seem to forget that acoustic drum kits were designed to fill spaces with sound without the assistance mics and speakers.  

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Remember, I've done live sound for the Dave Brubeck quartet.

Did they use a drum aquarium?

[Jonathan Johnson]

The biggest problem a band faces is that the performers have no clue what they sound like to the audience. They must depend entirely on the audio engineer (who is a musician in his own right; he just plays an "instrument" that is worth 10 times theirs combined ) to provide a good mix for the audience.

Part of what the engineer must do is communicate with the performers what he needs from them in order to provide a good mix for the audience.

If one of the performers, such as your drummer, is playing in such a way that you can't get a good house mix, and no amount of constructive criticism helps, about the only thing left to do is to set up a stereo mic in the audience and record the performance from the ambient acoustics. Then play it back for the musicians after the show so they can hear what the audience hears. Maybe then they will realize the drums are drowning everything else out.

Nobody wants to listen to a drum solo all night long.

[ProSoundWeb Community]