I’ve got to say, this has been a wild past few days. I started my internship at Journey Christian Church as a tech intern, and it’s honestly been kind of amazing. There’s a large auditorium where the main services are, a kid’s theater called the Adventureland Theater, and a Student Center that all have their own unique tech set up. One of my supervisors gave me a quick run down on all of the different systems, and I definitely got a little overwhelmed at first. There’s so much to learn! We use Vista for our lighting, ProPresenter for all of our visual projections, and we have 2 DiGiCo sound boards and an Avid Venue Profile. 

This week I started in the Student Center. The middle schoolers were having their own weekend service and I was able to help run sound for the band. I got familiarized with the DiGiCo board (which is awesome, by the way) and learned a lot of the basic set up routine for the room. I set up mic stands, learned how to check and change batteries in the microphones and packs, and learned how to mix everyone’s in-ears. During rehearsal, I got to experiment with the board a little bit and learned how to EQ each channel and eventually find a good mix that suited the room. I definitely had a few hiccups and missed some cues with making sure everyone’s mic was on and unmuted, but I think for my first try it went well. My favorite part was learning to adjust everyone’s in-ear mix, and also learning how to solo each channel in my own headphones to be able to hear a specific instrument. 

During the actual service I ran the TelePrompter, which displayed all of the lyrics and chords for the band to follow along to on a tv against the back wall. This was done through ProPresenter, and it’s definitely one the easier features of the program. This required pretty much no training, as it’s just pressing left and right arrows to advance to the next or previous slide. The only hard part about this was making sure I was following along with the band and not getting distracted. Interestingly enough, it’s harder than it sounds! 

For my first week, I think things went pretty well. I get along well with everyone on the team and I really like what I’m doing so far. I’ve learned so much already and already feel so much more comfortable with a lot of the equipment than I did when I first walked in. I’m excited for what’s to come!