This past weekend Steve, Adam, Carolyn, and I got to help lead 25 local pastors from the Beaverdam Baptist Association in worship during a 2 day retreat in downtown Greenville, SC. It was going to be a small crowd so we decided to do an acoustic setup with only a few backing tracks.
I took our amphitheater rig which consists of a pair of Mackie SR1530 powered speakers for mains along with a pair of Mackie SWA1501 powered subs. The Yamaha MG32/14FX mixer is a great, small format analog mixing board that gives you two on-board effects units along with four auxiliary busses for monitors. Perfect for these small setups.
Monitoring was taken care of by Rolls PM351 personal mixers. I gave each person their own “mix minus” feed and their mic and instrument passed through the personal mixer, then to me, giving them an easily customizable mix to their IEMs. A “mix minus” feed is exactly what it sounds like; a full mix minus that person’s inputs.
Adam brought the tracks rig from Brookwood to run the tracks. Ours has 26 outputs but yours could be a small or large as you need from as little as 2 outputs. All you need is a laptop running DAW software and an audio interface. We run Apple Logic on a Macbook Pro with a Motu 896mk3 interface, Glyph hard drive, and two Aphex 141 optical to line level adapters all packaged in a small rolling rack.
Using tracks allows you to add various instruments that you would otherwise be missing like bass guitar, drums, and synthesizers along with the all important click track and vocal cue. It also gives you the ability to program your worship flow so you don’t have the awkward pause between songs.
I typically don’t like to run a system without some kind of EQ on the main outputs but for small events with few inputs I can work without it. The only outboard gear I used for this event was a two channel DBX compressor from my personal rig at home, just for Steve and Carolyn’s vocals. Every input on stage was wired with exception to a headset for the speaker who didn’t even end using a microphone since it was such a small room and he is good at projecting.
When going on a retreat you don’t have to a huge rig and big band to have a rich, full sound. All you need is a few key pieces of gear and some good planning.