Yourself

Taking care of yourself is so important. Its so true that you should, as the saying goes, "remove the plank from your own eye so you can see clear to remove the speck from someone else's eye."

In particular, lately I've been at odds with the band I play with on Saturday nights in this big nice church. We have all this stuff and its good stuff, although, for our particular personell configuratin on stage, we're not set up to sound good to ourselves. Yes, however, it sounds good in the ears of the people who are on the side of the speakers where the sound man is, but on stage, we have our own special sound system and noone to run it with a sympathetic ear, and on top of that, we have like 15 people on stage... and each of them has specific needs...

Here's the problem... We are opressed by the powers that be, in that we are contrrolled on stage so as not to offend the audience out there off the front of the stage watching us, listening, etc. We're set up to play on electronically triggered drums that emit an electronic analog signal that is reproduced by speakers on stage and in the auditorium, much like an electronic keyboard works but with the sounds of prerecorded drums that are triggered at different levels of intensity depending on how much the electronic trigger is disturbed. Now here the problem is, we can not hear the drums unless we have a nice big fat speaker right near by us, or else we use headphones, which can't give us the feeling of the drums shaking the air and hitting our bodies. Well, this is usually the way they do it in the studio so i shoulnd't complain, but I for one, do not use headphones on stage. This seppartes us from the audience and I think its really bad. So i depend on the sound and acoustics of the air around me. If I'm to be happy, I have several requirements to request of the powers that be in this department. Chances are, I may face opposition. But in order for me to hear, i need a nice big speaker. right under me, and it needs to be mixed in a way in which i can be convined I am having a creative interactive, fun, fullfilling useful experience.

Now, the concensus is that its better to sound good out front than to the actual performers of the music. My problem with that, is that music is a spiritual gift from God, that can be abused and cheapened and ultimately, the life which it is supposed to represent is not present at all in its delivery, causeing people who witness it to be disheartened and hopeless. The solution is for us to make every effort to have a spiritual experience on stage so that once the music reaches the targeted listeners, it is containing the life, as fully intact as possible, which gave birth to it on stage and furthurmore, withing our very souls at that very moment.

When there are sound problems, i have personal problems, altho i make efforts to not let it show. But at this point, I'm making every effort to communicate my needs to the powers that be.