Guide to live worship recordings
- Wale Adenuga
 

Over the past one year, I have been inundated with several requests for appointments with respect to advising on how to do a successful live recording. I do feel like a big boy! We now have the experience, right?! Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying “experience is the name we give our mistakes” That’s just it. I will like to share our experience in that light so that you won’t make the mistakes we made if you intend to go on that route.

It’s easy for me to say now that doing live recordings are not a big deal. I recall the goings-on at Hope Hall, Surulere in December 2000 when we were recording  Of a truth. But four live recordings later, I can say that with God on one’s side and with knowledge of the basics, recording live can be a glorious experience

Why do you want to record live?

Our answer to the above question was based on the kind of songs we wrote and our worship experience in our local assembly. The songs we wrote and continue to write even now were of the praise and worship genre.  And since the late eighties, most of the music I have listened to has been from Integrity, Maranatha and Vineyard Music. That was a major influence for me and people like Dehumo Bickersteth [our producer] and my friend Theophilus Emmanuel with whom I constantly bounced ideas back and forth in the mid nineties.

We had done two studio recordings Surely as my God lives [1997, out of print] and Hosanna [1999]. Both of these recordings were great but we felt it didn’t adequately express the potential and passion of our songs and style.

What have you got?

Songs. But it’s got to be more than that! In line with Matt Redman’s song Heart of worship, it should be a situation that is reminiscent of bringing God more than a song. We aim to make every recording an experience. Dehumo, who has been our producer from the start is always particular about presenting the songs in such a way that will not intimidate anyone.

I have always been responsible for which songs end up on all our recordings ultimately. In so doing, I liked to include confessions, testimonies, prayers and recitations to accentuate our expression of worship. A live worship recording in my opinion should be an aggregate of expressions of worship that have adequately worked in church, that is in terms of providing a refreshing to people.

I have noticed that most loved live recordings have an evergreen nature about them. It almost seems to never go out of fashion. Left to me, Of a truth would never have been released. And that’s because till today, I hear all the mistakes we made. But the truth is, we’ve sold hundreds of thousands of this recording [not counting the ones the pirates have sold] and it’s still selling fast. I can tell you this, it’s not selling that much because the music is tight, there’s just a God factor involved.

Who have you got?

The thing with doing a live recording is that you have to get a lot of things right on the day of the recording. You can’t do another take like you would do in the studio. Of course you can do over dubs, but then it becomes tricky when you are also doing a video recording of the concert. Everything must be in sync otherwise, it would seem fake. So it requires lots of rehearsals so that even if you do overdubs it will be for things like backing vocals, bass lines and the like.

Good singers. Don’t let your girlfriend sing on the recording if she can’t sing. Go for the best that’s available. We’ve worked with other church choirs and even groups like Lagos Unity Mass choir. The musicians must be tight but must also have a heart of worship. Tosin Odumosu and Bimbo Olatunji who have become a standard feature on our recordings are not members of our choir.

All said and done, the key person you need is a producer. Current hit Songs like Lagi mo, Igwe, Mo fe ran Jesu gan are a reflection of the quality of producers engaged by the artists that sang these songs. A producer is not just somebody who can sequence music on a keyboard. A producer according to Wikipedia is someone who can be compared to the film director, in that the producer's job is to create, shape and mold a piece of music in accordance with their vision for the album.

Once I gather the songs we need for a recording, I mail them to my producer, Dehumo who lives in faraway Singapore. He then molds each song. I don’t say to him "this is the way the song must be done because that’s the way God gave me!" I always tell people who say songs must be performed in the “very way God gave them” should prepare to sell just 3 copies of their album – and that will be to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If only they knew that God never gives us finished products!

Technical support

The company you choose to do your recording is very critical to the success of the recording. The know how, track record as well as the equipment they have is of paramount importance. That said, things can go wrong on the day of the recording. I recall when we were recording Of a truth, one of the ADAT recording machines stopped working. And the engineers were waving frantically from behind asking us to stop.  Our guest artists, Panam Percy Paul must have spent another half hour talking on what I can’t recall now. Everybody enjoyed it. They didn’t know something was going wrong. Of course we cut out that “speech” from the recording.

We’ve worked with two companies in terms of live recording and both are exceptional in the passion they bring to the table. These companies are Praise Foundation and Frontier Reelmix. We have meetings again and again going over how many singers, which instruments we need, stage layout and so on. And of course, the budget! We go over that a lot of times. We try and get the best price possible. What compromises can be made without discounting quality? What do I mean? Let me give you an example. Say Praise Foundation gives us a quote of N750,000 and that includes the cost of renting backline equipment – keyboards, bass guitar, congas etc. If you have these, the cost can be discounted and then you would provide these as long as they are great working condition.

Aside from You are the only one recording, we’ve always had our own recording engineer in place. That’s been Monday Williams and all he does is monitor the output from the sound guys and the input into the hard disk we are recording into. Monday has also been responsible for post production mixes of all our live recordings save You are the only one

Will you be doing video? That needs proper planning as well. Have you watched the video of Worship by Michael W. Smith? Or Blessed by Hillsong? We contracted Image Extenzion to handle video recording of You are the only One and I can say our expectations were met.  The resulting video must be the recording of an experience that inspires people to worship. This means the director knows what to look out for and when to look out for it.

Prayers

So many things to pray for. We always pray that God be present and that we will end up with a recording that will cause people to have encounters with their Redeemer. And that has happened and God has confirmed this with each recording with signs following. For example, recording Too much for me was a humbling experience for us all. We were all broken because of some traumatic things that happened days before the event. So we just abandoned ourselves into God’s hands. We were broken, depressed and in debt. But during that concert with a seemingly disappointing attendance, God healed someone of Pneumonia .

A gentleman called our office and remarked how he had listened to You are the Only One CD repeatedly for days. It had brought him the needed comfort, joy and strength while his wife had a stroke and was in coma for 2 weeks. Now she’s Ok and I’ve actually spoken with them a couple of times. For me if that’s the only reason we did the recording, that’s fine.

Everytime we have a recording, we have huge budgets and we always end up asking ourselves who asked us to venture into such tasks. But God meets those needs.

Well I do hope all I have shared will help you somehow in your quest in recording a worship experience that will bless people.

You can read Wale's blog
http://waleadenuga.wordpress.com/

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