Oblique Strategies
Have you ever wished you could “teach” your sound team to listen and mix more musically?
Ad Lib’s audio coach Tony Guyer and I were planning a breakout session for the Worship 4:24 conference. He mentioned “Oblique Strategies,” and I was like, “What?”
Merriam-Webster defines oblique as “not straightforward or indirect.” I think of it as sneaking in the backdoor of your audio team’s brain to help them think more musically.
He walked through 27 oblique strategies in his workshop to help us learn to listen. Check these out:
At the end of the day, write down the most beautiful and the most annoying sound you heard that day and why it affected you that way.
Take your spouse or significant other to an Indian or ethnic restaurant. Discuss the flavors you experienced and why you liked them or didn’t.
Sit on your porch or outside your house and list 10 sounds you heard.
Take your spouse or friend to a symphony orchestra. Do NOT talk about what you liked or didn’t like.
Ask the piano player on your worship team to stay after rehearsal and play you their favorite song. Communicate that they don’t have to play perfectly, but you want to listen to the sounds.
Listen to 1 complete musical album on headphones once a week for a month.
Ask your spouse or family member to borrow their car and go for a drive and listen to your favorite album. Notice what makes it a better or worse experience than listening in your vehicle.
Go into your church an hour before rehearsal alone and listen. List 10 sounds you hear.
Ask the drummer on your worship team what their favorite album is and listen to it before the next rehearsal/worship service.
If your worship leader will allow it, take a microphone from the drum kit and switch it with a vocal microphone for a rehearsal. See if you notice any differences.
Take your family to another church service that is significantly culturally or ethnically different than your church. Make a list of 10 things that were different.
Turn off all the Gates on your soundboard.
Ask the guitar player on your worship team why they picked the guitar instead of the drums to play.
Find a friend locally that does sound at their church and ask if you can switch with them for a Sunday or a rehearsal. List 10 things that were different from your church. Ask them to list 10 things that were different for them.
Ask your worship leader what their favorite concert was and why.
On a commute to work, turn off the radio for the entire commute. List 10 things you heard on the way.
Ask your worship leader to have a special all-acoustic rehearsal and just listen. No soundboard.
In a DAW, add 10 songs from various time periods and genres. Edit 20-second sections from each song and crossfade between them. Listen to the sonic differences.
Ask all the guitar players on your worship team to bring their guitars and separately play the same song for you.
Read a book by the Scottish author George MacDonald.
Wake up while it’s dark out and observe a sunrise.
With your smartphone, record a rehearsal from any seat in the house. Listen back through the week. What do you hear? What do you need to hear?
Turn the drums up in your mix 6db. Does it sound better or worse? Try another 6db.
Ask your children what their favorite album is and listen to it all the way through. Ask your parents what their favorite album is, and listen to it all the way through.
Invite as many members of your worship team and tech crew to your house and ask them to bring chips and a jar of salsa. Take a blind taste test and see which jar is the favorite.
Turn the radio off and take the long way home from church.
Turn the radio up loud and take the long way home from church.
(fascinating, no?)
These oblique strategies are my (Tony’s) best attempt at jump-starting my creative brain to think and see [hear] things differently than my default position would be. It is easy to get into habits of survival based on the tyranny of the urgent. To create something worthwhile, you must be purposeful. The average church sound tech may not see themselves as a creator or may downplay their ability to create or contribute. Often, they are heroically serving at the point where just showing up is as much as they can muster. I would love to see that change to the extent that more church sound technicians saw themselves as a vital component of creating and facilitating an atmosphere of worship. To serve their brothers and sisters, spouses and children, and to shine a spotlight on the greatest Creator of all: God, the Father, Who inhabits the praises of His people.
So you are not misled into over-assessing my creativity in suggesting oblique strategies, let me assure you that I am constantly seeking ways to dig deeper into my craft. In my quest, I came across this concept from the famed producer and musician Brian Eno. Together with artist Peter Schmidt, he created card-based oblique strategies geared toward producers and creators to give inspiration when stagnation creeps in. Their Oblique Strategies are available at Amazon and their websites for purchase.
My Oblique Strategies are geared toward church technicians and seek to encourage more profound discovery and connection with creative thinking. Meaningful creativity always comes down to something that connects with our emotions. In most simple terms, humans need to feel. We want to feel. To crack the code of what leads people to feel, we need to know what makes US feel.
The average sound curmudgeon could be a bit standoffish if you insisted on talking about their feelings and encouraging them to discover them. But is this really so intimidating? When my favorite sports ball team scores points, I feel something. When I first met my wife, I felt something. When I eat a good steak, I feel something. Music, the medium we operate in, is deeply rooted in emotions. To use it, we must know how to tap into those emotions. Let these oblique strategies awaken and activate your ability to hear in new ways.
(thanks, Tony, for expanding our thinking!!)
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
Oblique Strategies (Nº 365)
