So yesterday was my debut singing with the church worship band. All in all it went really well and I was quite pleased. Their equipment is much more state-of-the-art than the setup we had in NoNJ – including in-ear monitors for all vocalists. That was weird but a nice upgrade since I was able to personalize my level to my comfort (read: I had it CRANKED).
After the service, George (the main worship leader) asked if I’d be up for piano and singing on the 25th, to which I said yes. Then the soundboard manager asked me if I wanted to start training on their board after that, to which I said yes. So looks like I’m going to be on-call at church at least two times a month – once as a performer, and once as a tech. Should be fun!
I love the in-ear monitors.
Funny story from one of our band practices… One of the vocalists is good but inconsistent. There was one night when I was singing with her and I could not get a good harmony going with her because she either wasn’t singing in key or she was singing something that didn’t work. At one point I stopped singing to try to listen to what she was singing when I heard the sound dude’s voice in my ear, “Jen, can you hear me? No one else can hear me. [he paused to make sure I was with him] I’ve turned down [name withheld to protect the innocent]; you just sing what you’ve been singing.”
I talked to the sound dude’s wife a week or so later. Apparently, he does that a lot with that singer so that we don’t sound terrible. Yikes.
That is FUNNY. We have that capability as well with our sound system, with the sound tech’s talking in our ears, but since Amy and I share the box we’d BOTH hear the guy talking to us.
Wouldn’t it be better if the Worship leaders just talked to these mediocre singers and told them it just wasn’t working out? There must be some tactful way to break the news and spare everyone at the service. I’m not Mr. Tact so I don’t know how to say it.
Well, in our case, she’s been on the team since the early days of this worship leader. Her husband plays in the band as well. I think that in the beginning there weren’t many people available and she was good enough to have on the team. She does have a good voice it’s just weird that she’s so inconsistent with pitch – it’s a hit or miss thing. Anyway, far too much time has passed for him to dump her at this point.