Chan's Personal Blog

Well, tonight was the main event, the Worship & Praise Rally at North Douglas Church sponsored by Praise 106.5FM. The entire floor level of the church was packed with people, and a good part of the balcony as well. Two local bands came together to perform as one; they did a 20 song set together. It's amazing how quickly they could merge together and really gel with only two days rehersing together.

The time just before the show as the sound guy and stage manager is always the most stressful as there are a billion things to worry about. Are people going to show up? Will people complain the music is too loud? Is the stage equipment secure? Is the song list correct, or have the musicians modified the order.... again?

Another common pre-show ritual is the visitation by other sound guys. Sound guys from other churches will innevitably find the sound board, and scope out our sound and computer system. This evening, I had three different sound guys come through; so, I gave them a full tour of the system. They were pretty impressed.

I was also visited by a person that represents an important link to my past. A guy comes up to the sound board and starts asking me questions, and he looks really familiar. I ask him, is your last name Taal by any chance? Surely enough, it was Mr.Taal who was one of my substitute teachers in high school. This was quite surprising because last time I checked, he had moved to Ontario. Anyway, this is the man who helped my high school sound crew pull off major drama productions by giving us a hand in stage design, sound effects, sound setup, and lighting design. This was about 10 years ago, we're talking old school! So, it was really neat reconnecting with my past. Turns out he has moved back to Victoria, and he's the sound guy at Lambrick Park Church. We traded a few tips about sound and computer systems.

For those G2Kers, here's a tangent story about Mr. and Mrs. Taal. People who didn't go to high school with me can skip to the next paragraph. So one year, the sound crew was tasked to support a really complex play which involved a lot of actors, sound effects, and light cues. To deal with the sound effects, we had a midi keyboard programmed with a ton of different sound effects and such. This worked well because we could hit a key and the sound effect would play, this was way better than playing a bunch of tapes with sound effects. For this play, I was the manager who followed the script and gave orders to the lighting team, and the sound team. On opening night, we were a bit short handed, so Mrs. Taal volunteered to help out with the sound team. There was one scene where a doorbell is supposed to go off, and the actor is supposed to say, "Oh, someone's at the door." As we got to that scene, I cued my sound effects guy to ring the doorbell, but he missed the cue for some reason. I repeat the order and Mrs. Taal hears it, and realizes that they missed their cue, so she panics and hits the keyboard to do the doorbell sound effect. However, she hit the wrong one and we get a telephone ring instead. The confused actor says, "Oh, someone's at the door." Realizing that the wrong sound effect was played, Mrs. Taal panicks some more and hits the keyboard again, and a grandfather clock sound goes off. Laughter from the crowd ensues. Good times

Shortly afterwards, the worship service started. The whole venue felt really intimate and close, even though the church sanctuary is pretty big. We had the lights down really low so people wouldn't be distracted by looking around seeing who was there. People were able to just come in and focus on worshipping God a lot faster this way. Overall, the worship set had a good mix of traditional hymns and upbeat modern choruses.

My favourite song was Consuming Fire (by Hillsong United) as I really love the lyrics to that song:


Overall, it was a rocking evening of praise and worship. The band was great. Everyone loved the sound mix. In fact, this has never happened before, but someone actually gave me a tip for my sound services. Who tips a sound guy??? Mental note for future, keep a tip jar by the sound board.

Anyways, these sorts of services are my favourite as it's Christians from all over gathering, unified as one to worship God. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Alliance, Reform, etc. We put aside all our differences.

So, Chan Productions has been hired to do sound for the Praise 106.5FM Praise Rally that's happening this weekend at North Douglas Church. This could be the biggest gig for us yet for the year. Here's the information straight from their website:


It should be a packed venue. I've already received the song lists, and it looks pretty good. Hope to see some of you there. I'll either be at the sound booth, or frantically running around like a headless chicken.