Sax on stage

Maxdaddy’s comment on my about page inspired me to write about my experiences with a saxophone player. Unfortunately it hasn’t come up too often.

My most recent experience was with a small church that had an interesting worship team. The main problem was that they didn’t take the time to organize musical arrangements. What happened was that the worship leader would send the musicians recordings of the songs, and they’d play them together for the first time on that Sunday morning. It was a musical free for all where everyone complained about not hearing themselves and never arranged which instrument would carry lead at any time. (So I tried to compensate for that myself by turning down instruments or bringing up the volume on someone to highlight their part). The sax, I tried my best, but it’s only mic was an SM58 on a stand, and usually it was never heard over the other mesh of instruments. I couldn’t hear it myself unless I put on the headphones. I tried highlighting it every once in a while, but with no practice and prior knowledge of the arrangement (the band practiced a couple of hours before the service started, but I was helping another church at the same time period and could only arrive in time for the service itself), it was hard to pick the right times.

Needless to say, the above is how not to integrate a saxophone into your worship set. My only other experience was with a well arranged and rehearsed group, and I got the strongest results by taking a wireless lavaliere mic and clipping it right to the horn. I’m not a mic expert and certainly not a recording expert, so I’m sure there are better ways to mic a sax for recording. But the wireless mic in a live environment works great. The musician gets the freedom of movement without having to worry about whether or not he’s pointing the instrument close enough to the mic.