A Week In The Life Of Henry Han
Published: WORSHIP
My name is Henry Han, I’m A/V ministry head at Aldersgate Methodist Church in Singapore. The church I attend is a family church comprising of members of all ages – seniors, adults, young adults, youths, children and infants are all substantially represented. Their expectations are therefore varied and we have different services to meet their needs.
The youths have their service on Saturdays in their own hall in the basement, while Sunday school uses the same hall on Sundays. In the main sanctuary, we have three different types of services on Sunday. The traditional service for more elderly members takes place at 8.30am, while the contemporary service for the adults and young adults takes place at 10.15am. Another service at 2.30pm takes place for the Mandarin speaking congregation.
This will be my typical schedule if I am on sound reinforcement duty for the week at both the 8.30am and 10.15am services in the main sanctuary.
Monday:
Monday’s are given over to personal devotion and other church activities not related to audio or video. Examples might be cell group meetings, or courses.
Tuesday:
Like Mondays, Tuesdays usually focus on non-A/V related activities such as personal devotion, cell group meetings, and courses.
Wednesday:
Alongside personal devotion time and meetings, Wednesdays see choir practice take place. However, sound reinforcement is not usually needed unless there is a special item of equipment being used.
Thursday:
Alongside the usual weekly activities, the worship leader will have selected songs for Sunday service by this part of the week. He also prepares a PowerPoint presentation.
Friday:
Before the busy weekend starts, Friday is once again given over to personal devotion and other church activities.
Saturday:
At 09.45 the sound crew arrives and sets up for band practice. The band itself arrives at 10.00, when it sound-checks and sets levels for later on. Rehearsal for Sunday worship then begins, while the worship leader finalises the songs and lyrics. At 12.00 the rehearsal ends and the sound crew shuts down the system.
Sunday:
At 08.00 the sound crew returns and gets ready for the traditional worship service at 08.30. The video crew arrives as well if it is needed, though mostly it is only the sound personnel on duty for the 8.30 service. The traditional worship setup normally includes the microphones for the worship leader, choir, organ and grand piano. Mainly hymns are sung. At 08.25, prayers are led by the pastor for the worship team and speakers. The traditional service begins at 08.30, ending at 09.45.
The sound crew then prepares for the 10.15 contemporary service. A brief sound check is normally conducted before the band runs through several songs to warm up. The crew for recording, video recording and projection arrives and sets up in the recording room. At 10.10 the pastor again leads prayers for the worship team and speakers, and the service begins at 10.15.
At 12.15 the contemporary service ends and the sound and video crews both pack up and turn off the system. The video team also burns their recording onto disc and sends the result to the communications team for uploading to the church’s website.
At 13.30 a different sound team arrives for the Chinese Ministry service, which will take place at 14.30. This team’s set-up is similar to the traditional worship service, and a short rehearsal takes place at 14.00 for the worship leader, musician and choir. At 14.30 the service begins, finally ending at 16.00.
There are some very specific challenges presented by this schedule. The band for the 10.15am contemporary service has a window of less than 25 minutes to do a quick sound check, practice and warm up before the service begins. The result is that the first few songs often tend to be a little off and rushed, but the performance gets better as the band settles down. It would be great if there was more time to warm up and settle down.
The team also has to mix for different types of services and sometimes the genre of songs may be unfamiliar to them. To overcome this we are encouraged to listen to both hymns and contemporary music, and appreciate the differences.
Finally, because of space constraints, the choir is positioned in front of the FOH loudspeakers. This gives us limited gain before feedback due to the unfavourable placement of microphones. Besides trying to EQ off the feedback frequencies without changing the sound quality too much, we have to place the microphones closer to the choir, which means we sometimes pick up individual voices. One solution we are considering is to install a pair of feedback exterminators for the choir microphones.
We also recently installed an Aviom IEM, and eliminated most of the unwanted stage noise bleeding into the audience, except for the drums. Currently we have the drum shields surrounding the sides of the drums and intend to purchase an overhead shield to reduce the bleeding. At the rear of the drums we also have some acoustic padding to absorb the sound waves.