So last night was a tough church music practice. Tough because of several factors, all of which point to the idea that I may opt NOT to participate with the band but instead will volunteer strictly for the sound team. We’ll see in the next couple weeks.
Working with this band has really made me come to appreciate how Christopher ran the band in NoNJ. While I may not have agreed with all of Christopher’s choices, I was ALWAYS appreciative of the fact that we would practice and perfect a song during at least two practice sessions before premiering a song on Sunday morning. He wanted us to be the best that we could be when a new song was introduced to the congregation.
And while we had a small cache of songs that we did, we did them all well. We had about 30+ songs and would mix them up and do about 4-5 songs on a Sunday morning. Yes, it got old doing the same songs after a while, but it made adding a new song that much more fun, AND allowed us to really groove as a band and do it RIGHT because we knew those 30+ songs front and back. It also made the one-offs really fun, because we knew we would NEVER do them again and even moreso wanted to get them right. The one-offs would be practiced three weeks before reaching Sunday morning, unless it was a last minute pick that needed to go with a particular sermon that next weekend. But that was rare, that I recall.
Cut to this new band. They have a LOT of songs in their cadre – most of which I’ve never heard of (Christopher was a big Matt Redman/Jeremy Camp/Chris Tomlin/Charlie Hall/David Crowder fan, whereas George is a big Lincoln Brewster/Paul Baloche/Michael Gungor fan. However, I’ve noticed that since November they haven’t repeated a single song. And I think that’s a detriment because the band is introducing so many new songs that the congregation doesn’t get a chance to really fall in love with a song and know it well. We did a lovely song a few weeks ago that probably won’t see the light of day again for a good 6-7 months – if not longer. By then the band will have to relearn the song, and the congregation will have forgotten it completely. Also, by not repeating any songs, it doesn’t give the band any time to really hone in and perfect a song.
And it all became glaringly obvious during last night’s rehearsal. All four songs were new, and one of them (the Michael Gungor song) is really musically complex (“You Are Good”). I mean really complex. And yet after four runthroughs, George called it a day. I would have felt better about that if I knew that we’d be practicing the song one more week before presenting it on a Sunday morning. But no, we’re doing it this Sunday. And frankly, it wasn’t that good. It is nowhere good enough for a Sunday morning yet.
The third thing I don’t like is working with charts. I much prefer having the actual music in front of me. It helps me pick out harmonies more easily because I can see my choices and seeing the music also helps me learn the song more quickly. I also think that sometimes this church has too many vocalists. Last night there were four singers there. And since George is a high alto singer, he basically sung “my” part, leaving Greg and I to find other harmonies. Greg was able to do that easily enough, but I had a tough time with it because I didn’t have music in front of me AND I didn’t know the songs. At some point I alternated between quietly singing the melody or not singing at all. Greg whispered to me, “You don’t need to find a fourth harmony – you can double a singer if you want.”
But what’s the point? I mean, why have one singing lead, one singing the low harmony and two singing the middle harmony? That’s overkill. Christopher and I were the main singers in NoNJ, and it worked well. And on some songs we’d give our guitarist Dave a mike and have him sing a third part if the song was particularly in need of it. But here? I’m NOT going to double a really strong harmony singer (George) because it’ll drown out the lead.
So as you can see I’m more than a little frustrated about various issues with this band. But I am willing to keep on for a couple more weeks and see how things go, and whether they’ll get any better. While I’m only singing this week, next Sunday I’m going to be playing keyboard and singing, and as practice ended last night, I moaned, “Please can we do songs that I know next week?” and George laughed. We’ll see happens.