MixFix Painkillers Podcast: Tackling Church Production Pains
In 2015, born from a deep-seated desire to empower, guide, and mentor members of church production and tech teams, MixFix was originally conceived as a tailored training resource for congregations. As the pandemic thrust us into a new reality, the MixFix Painkillers Podcast emerged as a beacon of solutions, responding to the surge of inquiries from churches across the United States. Alongside a cadre of experts, Bryan Ramsey delved into the multifaceted challenges posed by the "new normal" of virtual church services. Helping many launch streaming in their church that never had a camera before was a huge focus of those earlier episodes.
Now, as we step into 2023, while the grip of COVID has begun to loosen, a new crisis looms large – the well-being and mental health of our church staff and teams. Alarming statistics paint a grim picture, with individuals departing ministry roles in every U.S. state and burnout rates reaching unprecedented heights. As staff members grapple with these challenges, volunteers are left to pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps. It seems like nearly every staff team is searching to hire and fill positions.
In the face of these trials, MixFix remains resolute in its commitment to explore technology and gear. However, our approach is more deliberate than ever before. We are not just focused on overcoming team-related hurdles but are dedicated to fostering personal growth, addressing concerns related to mental health, and navigating the ever-evolving landscape of church leadership. We are determined to confront burnout head-on and encourage conversations that balance family life and maintaining a fruitful ministry.
As we relaunch the MixFix Painkillers podcast, come along with us as we embark on this transformative journey, where we focus not only on enhancing your technical abilities but also on nurturing your personal growth and spiritual development. Throughout this experience, we promise moments of enjoyment to lighten the load of these substantial endeavors.
MixFix Painkillers Podcast: Tackling Church Production Pains
Mix Fix: A Journey Into the World of Technical Arts in Church
Ever wondered how a seven-year-old could get hooked on technical arts, touring, and audio work? That's my story, and I can't wait to share how this passion has shaped my life and infused a sense of purpose in the church. My journey was a testament to the power of teamwork, an element that is crucial for the technical arts to thrive - be it in audio, video, lighting, or whatever comes under the tech arts umbrella. Welcome to Mix Fix, where we aim to empower church volunteers with the knowledge and skills they need to perform their best in these roles.
Looking to the future, we have exciting plans for the church. Beyond MixFix, we are planning a series of free events, seminars, and travel opportunities that will further connect our community. And as we strive to shine a light on the profound impact tech arts can have on personal lives and families, we will be delving into topics such as leadership principles, the art of mixing, and the importance of camaraderie within a team - all within the firm foundation and purpose of our church. So, come along and join us on this journey, as we strive for excellence in the world of technical arts.
Hey guys, welcome to Mix Fix. It's our first ever podcast. For those of you who've been around some of our seminars, you know a little bit about who we are, but I thought it would take a moment just to kind of explain in this very early episode and kind of lay the groundwork for the things that are to come. So what is Mix Fix? Our church essentially has come to the realization, as most churches do over the course of time, that we have a lot of volunteers running around, some at a professional level or semi-professional, some that are literally just starting off barely knowing how to turn on any of the gear, really trying to develop and learn and know what is this thing called tech arts, how do we execute? What does that look like? How does that function in my life, my family's life, how am I impacted by signing up to volunteer on this team? So with Mix Fix we saw the real need to really train our people, not just in how to fix their mixes, not just in how to do AVL or video or lighting or any of those kind of areas, but really and truly how to be a team and how to function. And so with that we started a whole bunch of seminars and trainings that we do here for free for anyone that wants to come, whether they be part of our church or not, part of association churches that are around us as well, anyone can come, and we've had literally people show up that are in our church, people are not in our church, people in other churches, people that don't even go to church, and so with that, we've had several people ask, over the course of the last couple of years at least, how can we get some weekly input? And so that's part of where this podcast comes from.
Speaker 0:And so, while we call it Mix Fix and we referenced a lot of what we do towards fixing the painkillers meaning fixing a lot of them apart, fixing the things that painfully hurt your mix, like some some of the techniques to get over Tom's not right or no punch in the kick drum or however, whatever those things are what are the things that you're doing that are creating pains for your mix that you may or may not even realize? And then how do we walk you out of that? And so so we've referenced that a lot, we've walked through that a lot, and in that terminology in lingo, there's painkillers really and truly for everything, whether it be for audio or for video? For lighting, how do you deal with your lighting angles when the angle is not right? What do you do with the shadow effects that are created by improper angles and mounting positions and all the different things that you encounter in the world of tech arts? But also, how do you handle life's painkillers when it in in well, in how it revolves around a team, especially serving on a team in a church weekly for most of our guys, or for sure, at least every couple of weeks. How do you do life? How does that affect your family? How do you walk all those things out?
Speaker 0:And so that's the large part with this podcast will be. We don't know exactly yet our schedule in terms of will this be weekly, will this be bi-weekly, will this be monthly? It's really and truly going to be on timing for us. We're very busy around here with multiple campuses and venues to support, as well as other churches that call us regularly in conferences, and you know you know the gamut of things that happen in church life, but our intention is to do at least once a month and probably more than that. We already have seven or eight nearly in the can and a few more slotted to be recorded in the coming few weeks. So there's a lot to come, but I really wanted to take this very first opportunity to kind of introduce to us a little bit of our history, my history specifically, and kind of work our way through through that today. And so with that, as many of you probably already know, my name is Brian Ames.
Speaker 0:I have been running audio now for a year or take, 39, 40 years. I started when I was seven and that's not a joke. A lot of people first look at me and go what in the world? But the reality of it is when I was seven I started singing and traveling and touring on a pretty fairly substantial basis and as such I really and truly begin to see the need for audio and excellence in audio and production. And we were dealing with a lot of weirdness in terms of speakers and things weren't the same in the real world of live audio versus what you hear in studio, because the speaker technology just wasn't there in those days. So just really try to figure out how do we get better.
Speaker 0:And with that, large part due to my dad, he kind of pushed me in the direction of figuring all those things out to do production stuff and we've contracted out and done production for years for different people and taking gear that we were using for concerts and other things, but then taking that over to help a church do whatever it might be. Back in those days it was probably an Easter pageant or cantatas or whatever they referred to back in those days. But with all of that I just have really fallen over the years in love with audio. And so now a days I tour and do audio for a lot of different groups, a lot of different events and organizations. I do some corporate work, I do a lot of freelance work, but I primarily mix here in the local church market, do a lot here for our church, our production. I essentially am the production director here at our church, which is Mid Cities Community Church in Midland Texas, and then I also do a lot of audio for varying different other things, whether it be corporate events, concerts, touring acts, whatever.
Speaker 0:So with all of that, my first love really and truly is the Capital C Church, making sure that production and technical arts are well supported, that things come out excellently for your services and just really and truly have a heart and a passion to see a technical artist execute cleanly and well. You know, we've for years had audition processes in a lot of our churches for our worship teams and we've rarely ever come to the point where we have a guitar player on stage that picked up their guitar last week and we said, hey, good luck, hope you can play. But for a large part in our churches for years we've had audio guys that literally just came in and said, hey, I think I can probably do that, let me try it. And that's all great, and it's certainly a place for that and there's a time for that.
Speaker 0:But one of the things I feel like we've needed to focus on more over the years is how do we teach our teams to be at the level that we typically want them to be at in a church? And it's a difficult process because the reality of it is is that it takes 10,000 hours, I believe people have said, to really become a subject matter expert on anything. 10,000 hours of mixing and that's really and truly mixing at any level is very hard to come by, especially if you're up once or twice a month and for an hour or two at a time. And so how do we exponentially improve ourselves as teams, as individuals, as mix engineers, as video technicians and lighting ops and all of those different things. How do we do that? And so, large and part, that's where this is all birthed and born from, and we around here believe in being what we consider one of our code values is irrationally generous. We give a lot of things away for free. We do some seminars that have a few fees associated, but it's typically around the fact that it costs money to rent boards for people to come in and mix on and to train into our folks and to have lunch and things like that. But, large and part, everything we do around here is free, barring the few events that we do that are longer day events or seminars or something like that. But we do a lot that kind of pours back into individuals and into teams, kind of like I've expressed already.
Speaker 0:So, as we roll into this podcast in the coming few days again, we hope that you'll gather some information, a few things coming up in that, or we're gonna have some discussions on decibel and what are volume and how does that impact worship if you're at a certain volume? Conversely, either way, either too loud or not loud enough, how did those things play into the church market. We're gonna be talking about some leadership principles. We're gonna be talking about just basic how do you mix tom's, how do you dive into those things. And then a few things that have just really come about lately that I feel really impassioned to speak on is camaraderie of a team.
Speaker 0:I feel like as technical artists, we tend to drift apart a little more because we're a little more reclusive In our venue. We literally are in our main broadcast campus. We have several venues, people literally across all of those venues, sometimes only in a certain venue. They don't flow between venue to venue, and so our team is very large. We have around 160 people or so a weekend serving in our campuses and in our church structure positionally that we need, and so if they're literally always over in the kids area and they never come over to the main sanctuary, those two sides of the team very rarely know each other, and so another heart and passion I've had is just to try to unify our teams. What does that look like? How do we lead our teams to be passionately together in terms of team and camaraderie and purpose and a sense of passion and how we do, and excellence and the code values that we strive to live by as a team, and so we'll be talking a lot about those kind of things. We'll have a lot of people on from various different churches, various different backgrounds, some from churches and some from not. We're going to have an entire, probably two hour, podcast, when it's all said and done, just on RF by one of the guys that's out touring right now with a couple of different groups and handling RF in large spaces, and so I feel like there's a lot to come. There's will be a lot of information to delve into, not to take away from anyone else that's out there.
Speaker 0:We have several friends over at MXU. We go and hang out with those guys a lot, and that's a great resource. If you haven't bought into using MXU Now stuff or go into the MXU live events or all access events. I've been to all of it. It is all amazing. Jeff and Lee are some of the best in there are when it comes to that, and that's one of the things that I'm most encouraged about is that for the longest part of our history as an industry, there hasn't been just a ton of training when it comes to so what we do is terms of technical artists, in terms of mixing audio.
Speaker 0:We have people teaching private lessons for piano, we have people teaching private lessons for drums and for guitars and all those things, but there's really nobody doing private lessons that you can start taking at any point in life to learn how to mix, and that has been unfortunate. But it's also now starting to shift back to a reality of hey, if we really want our skills to develop, we need to train towards those future generations coming up behind us, and I think that that's something we've seen over the last few years kind of shift. We've always had people that for some reason, have managed to find their way into something that got them connected with someone, that they sort of mentored them and helped them, but there's never been a really purposefully dedicated plan for how do you get people serving and learning in your teams, and so I feel like that's what our biggest passion is right now around here for all of these things that we're doing in terms of the Mixed Fixed Pain Killers is to help train and lead up to these guys that we are one in charge of first off, informal, spiritually, as guys that are leading tech teams and also just as individuals that basically say you know what I've learned audio how I learned it, and very rarely can we come back and 100% say, hey, I've learned this all on my own. No one ever poured into me, I never understood anything, I just figured it out, and I know that there are people that are in that category. They never had a lot of help, they just had to work it out.
Speaker 0:Large in part, I was probably like that because there wasn't anybody with me. I mean, I had a couple of guys, but it was basically me trying to figure it out and I still figure stuff out every day. It's a learning process every day and you never fully arrive. And the minute that you think you fully arrived in this stuff, I think is the minute that you've pretty much opened yourself up for to just centrally fall away, cause it's going to be a while before you can really come back and say, hey, I've learned it all.
Speaker 0:In the minute that you do know it all if that ever was to come is the next day that something else gets dropped that completely changes the entire Boloax. Everything goes from what you thought it was to something new and something else to now learn again, and so I feel like, as we continue, to really focus in over these next few podcasts and seminars that are coming up. We actually have a Mix Fix seminar here at the church on March 7th. That is a pay event, but it's 50 bucks and it's basically a big old, massive lunch and we rent a mixer and you actually get to sit in and mix your own tracks if you bring them, or you can mix our tracks if you don't have them, right here, and we help you build your files and work out your show files and fix things that might be going on with your mix. So it's a great time for those kind of things.
Speaker 0:And then we'll have way more things coming up in terms of podcasts, in terms of free events and seminars as well here in the church, and we're looking at a couple other options of a couple places that we're gonna travel into as well, mostly in the region, but we'll be doing a few more things in short order. So, anyways, thanks for joining in with us. I just wanted to take a few minutes to kind of give you the basics and the premise and the foundational lunch pad of where we're going with this, and then we will see you all soon. Thanks.
