lundi, mai 30, 2005 those beautiful stringed instruments It's been a while since I picked up the guitar on a regular basis. I used to handle the music for most of the youth bible study sessions, and that meant at least a 1/2 hour finger workout every week on a classical (read: less painful) guitar.Suddenly, I've been playing for two days almost non-stop - camp worship practices, and I was leading worship in the Sanctuary today. I was having fun planning the singing for the Sanctuary worship: I had a grand piano and three guitars: a 6-string acoustic, a 12-string acoustic, and a 6-string classical. The sounds that can be produced with a good rhythm and a beautiful chord: gorgeous! Plus I tried something which I wanted to do for a while - start a song on a higher octave, and continue the song using just simple arpeggios. For some very, very strange reason, it's very hard to get pianists to just play the arpeggios without "filling in" more notes in the middle of the silences (not just you, A., but referring to ALL that I've worked with.) I'm guessing it's a mixture of musical pride (you don't get your Grade 8 or higher just by playing chords!) and a fear of silence. Andy's got it right: the congregation especially fears silence, and always jumps the gun when it comes to the space between verses. Sometimes, whole beats are lost with the transitions! Anyhoo, the strings sounded great over the P.A. Poor TW had to set up all three monitors because I was so paranoid that Ade and I couldn't hear each other AGAIN, which would have been horrible (and would have been the last time I would ever lead worship again in the Sanctuary.) D. got to do the cool thing by switching over from the 12-string to the 6-string classical for the songs in E minor. Even though I wasn't switching guitars, I was pretty gleeful at FINALLY being able to use the double-headed guitar stand. I was having fun just with the preparations for this service, but I got an even higher kick when camp practice started: enter SX's TAMA drums, which were bought at a steal for S$200, and stashed (with permission, of course) in church. This practice had one bass guit, one electric guit, one acoustic guit, one keyboard, and drums. Talk about sounding awesome. It's the first time I've played with the drums, and oh man, now I know why some people get totally addicted to jamming: it's hypnotic, the state that you sometimes get into, just playing and playing and playing. And it gets more fun when people are more creative and just start playing ... stuff. Time just gets away from you like that, magically. This is totally, totally cool stuff. Except that I'm re-growing the calluses on my left fingers, and that, my friends, is never a painless (nor pretty) task. But damn! We sound pretty good! (At least, recorded on Ben's phone we do.) [those beautiful stringed instruments] |
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