Playing in Church.

[Sardonicus]

@Richard R The `Coconut' song is a winner 👍.  I'm jealous that you actually appear on screen, because a couple of our worship team don't want to appear on camera, NOBODY gets to appear on camera.  All you see during our livestream is the lyrics (usually in the wrong order).

 

This week should prove interesting as out of our rosta of musicians, we only have available; a drummer, 1 singer and me (guitar/bass/backing vocals).  I might push for a Drum N Bass week 🤣

[LukeFRC]

18 minutes ago, Big Rich said:

 

This week should prove interesting as out of our rosta of musicians, we only have available; a drummer, 1 singer and me (guitar/bass/backing vocals).  I might push for a Drum N Bass week 🤣

Royal blood as inspiration?

[TrevorR]

On 14/09/2021 at 15:39, Big Rich said:

Can anybody recommend a decent bluetooth page turner that won't break the bank?  I'll be using it with a Lenovo Tab M10 as at the moment I'm using my pink-finger page turner 😁

 

 

I use one of these with an iPad… very good and easy to use. AirTurn BT200S

https://www.dawsons.co.uk/240877/airturn-bt200s-2-foot-switch-controller-atbt200s2?istCompanyId=f16c2387-744c-456f-941a-ef6c2f7c5239&istFeedId=55d15576-631e-4559-aefa-7460513112a8&istItemId=ialrwrlwx&istBid=t&gclid=Cj0KCQjw1ouKBhC5ARIsAHXNMI8JtPgLD5PrBxUiKUGDqGYKHyQY7HRHA_TMnFcS-CA_r6Z478_k8gYaArb9EALw_wcB

Edited September 17, 2021 by TrevorR

[Sardonicus]

We only played two songs this week but, I chose them and I sang them 😁.  The songs were for Communion so I went for `O Come To The Altar'  Elevation Worship and `No Longer Slaves',  for this one I went for the Zach Williams, Live from Harding Prison version as I love that.  My first full outing as lead vocalist and guitarist went down very well and I really enjoyed it, one of our singers has recently stood down so I'm looking forward to fully leading sung worship in the near future.

 

I'm on the bass for the next two weeks so I'm looking forward to that too, life is good and God is great 🙏 

[Baxlin]

Just returned from our church weekend away, (fantastic place, Highleigh, nr Hertford), I played in three of the four worship sessions, with three different worship leaders.  We were given some of the songs last week, the others were in the form of ‘they will be from these’.  One song was sung in two of the sets, but treated differently by the two leaders...

 

Re the discussion above, I have no problem with having an iPad in front of me with words and chords, even though much of the time they’re not needed.  We also have MEI mixers for the in-ears, which need stands anyway.

 

Question.  I now wear rather expensive hearing aids, with built-in Bluetooth, and I know (from buying a cheap transmitter and earphones a while ago) that Bluetooth has a slight delay, which is not ideal for a bassplayer(!).

But is there any chance of finding a Bluetooth transmitter with little or no delay, so I don’t have to faff about taking the hearing aids out each set?

[xgsjx]

3 minutes ago, Baxlin said:

Question.  I now wear rather expensive hearing aids, with built-in Bluetooth, and I know (from buying a cheap transmitter and earphones a while ago) that Bluetooth has a slight delay, which is not ideal for a bassplayer(!).

But is there any chance of finding a Bluetooth transmitter with little or no delay, so I don’t have to faff about taking the hearing aids out each set?

I’m interested in this too.  There’s a couple out there, but no idea if they’re any good. You’d think wit he today’s tech, it would be easily achieved. 
 

[Richard R]

Bluetooth was not originally designed or specced to be low latency. Bluetooth 5, under ideal conditions, can noow manage 20ms, 40 is more likely. The aptX codec aims to keep under 40ms.

If you're just listening to music then 100ms might be OK, as there is no reference visual clue to give you problems. For direct speech then 40ms is regarded as the max most people find acceptable. 

If this is OK for you and your playing, and your hearing aids support this, then inbtheory you're good to go. 

But bear in mind there will be another 20-40-80ms delay from whatever is encoding the signal from the sound desk, and that will  cause the problem.

[joseb84]

Hello all, a while since I've posted on this thread as my family have been moving 200 miles north over the summer. Hence we are in a new church!

 

To my surprise I'm playing bass tomorrow morning. I met the worship pastor on Thursday evening for a catch up and trial, thinking I'd slowly be integrated into things over the next few months. But no, straight in!

 

A few things will be quite different what I'm used to:

* Playing to a click track

* Proper length rehearsal before the service

* Using the church's 34" bass, as all my kit including my short-scale are locked deep in a storage unit

* No music/chord charts allowed on stage (or, at least, heavily discouraged)

* Less 'open worship' space

 

Some of these things I'm very happy about, others will take a bit of getting used to. But overall just really looking forward to worshipping in church with bass playing again.

 

Joe

 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by joseb84
Grammar

[Bobo_08]

15 minutes ago, joseb84 said:

Hello all, a while since I've posted on this thread as my family have been moving 200 miles north over the summer. Hence we are in a new church!

 

To my surprise I'm playing bass tomorrow morning. I met the worship pastor on Thursday evening for a catch up and trial, thinking I'd slowly be integrated into things over the next few months. But no, straight in!

 

A few things will be quite different what I'm used to:

* Playing to a click track

* Proper length rehearsal before the service

* Using the church's 34" bass, as all my kit including my short-scale are locked deep in a storage unit

* No music/chord charts allowed on stage (or, at least, heavily discouraged)

* Less 'open worship' space

 

Some of these things I'm very happy about, others will take a bit of getting used to. But overall just really looking forward to worshipping in church with bass playing again.

 

Joe

 

 

 

Sounds like they have a pretty Pro worship team of they are playing to clicks (needing IEM if guess) and preferring no sheet music or chord charts on stage. 

Edited October 9, 2021 by Bobo_08

[joseb84]

1 hour ago, Bobo_08 said:

Sounds like they have a pretty Pro worship team of they are playing to clicks (needing IEM if guess) and preferring no sheet music or chord charts on stage. 

 

Yep from what I've seen so far big emphasis on quality (and yes IEMs)

[bass_dinger]

On 09/10/2021 at 16:31, joseb84 said:

Hello all, a while since I've posted on this thread as my family have been moving 200 miles north over the summer. Hence we are in a new church!

 

To my surprise I'm playing bass tomorrow morning. I met the worship pastor on Thursday evening for a catch up and trial, thinking I'd slowly be integrated into things over the next few months. But no, straight in!

 

 

How did it go? 

[xgsjx]

There's a small group of us in the creative team that have started songwriting.  We've written (or at least made a good start on) about 8 songs and focusing on finishing 2 of them to bring to church.

Our Worship pastor arranged a zoom meeting with Ray Badham from Hillsongs for 8pm tonight (I think that was about 6am in Oz for him).

 

It was really good, as he spent time going over the 2 songs, listening to them, breaking them down & coming up with ideas to improve them even further.  He spoke about what makes a good chorus, how to use lyrical rhythm to maintain interest and how to make a strong contrast between Verse & Chorus.

For the chorus, he suggested using lots of repetition for the melody & even bringing back any memorable/meaningful phrases into the chorus more.  Things that the congregation are going to latch onto.  Also to think of how the rhythm of those lyrics are.  Putting the melody of the 1st & 3rd lines the same, but having an interesting/catchy rhythm on the 3rd & 4th that differs from the others.  It's also a similar thing for the verses.

 

Really good of him to take a couple of hours out of his morning to meet with us & help us with our songwriting.

[joseb84]

On 18/10/2021 at 17:28, bass_dinger said:

 

How did it go? 

All good thanks 😊. I valued the process of committing my parts to memory ahead of Sunday. Only slight hiccup was forgetting to turn my IEM back on after a break and wondering where the click track had disappeared to!

[bass_dinger]

Are we all back playing at church?  Are we preparing for Christmas?  Working on the basslines for the hymns?  Working out how to see the sheet music when Carols by Candlelight really does mean, candles! 

 

 

[bass_dinger]

Recently, the Under-Pastor and sound team have been working on the sound in the room.  They have realised that all of the sound comes from the stage, and they can't turn the band down in the room. 

 

They start the process about 10 minutes before the service starts - 80 minutes after the rehearsal began.  The sound has been like this since August 2020.  

 

So far, their experiments have not interfered with how and what we play.  We have managed to smile and nod during their 10 minute "Window of Puzzlement".  10 minutes is not enough time to even explain stage monitoring, and sound leakage.  I am hopeful that they will find other things to occupy themselves prior to the service.  

 

 

[Sardonicus]

Isn't it fun when the singer that picked the songs for Sunday and gave us the order of the songs, decides to go rogue as we finish the first song, forgets the order of the songs and announces song No.4.

 

The sound guy then decides to put my guitar through my monitor slightly delayed to the sound coming from my combo, so I've now got a mad slap-back sound for the rest of the service, if you've ever wanted to hear `Beautiful Saviour' with a heavy Rockabilly flavour, I can tell you that it's quite painful.

[Bobo_08]

I found that when we practice, someone decides that we will repeat the chorus x2 or whatever in a certain part. So I make notes on my chord chart and then in the actual service... they change their mind and go straight to the next verse... 😆

Edited November 15, 2021 by Bobo_08

[Sardonicus]

32 minutes ago, Bobo_08 said:

I found that when we practice....

 

I feel your pain.

[LukeFRC]

I used to go to a church where there would be a pile of songs we would "probably" play and the leader would just pick and choose as we went led by whatever was happening in the meeting and what other ppl were bringing. 
Musically you could either get grumpy and annoyed by a lack of structure... or embrace it and get a really good musical workout and enjoy having to write baselines on the fly. 

[bass_dinger]

On Sunday, the service included participation from the girls' and boys' brigade.  One minute prior to the start, one of the singers realised that their ceremonial flag needed to slot into a bracket, which was behind my amplifier.

 

So, I needed to move my kit, and so did not realise that the leader, and the whole congregation, were waiting for me to respond to his question "are we all ready?".     
 

Five years ago, I would have been mortified by this issue.  25 years ago, my hands would be sweating even before I started playing!  Now, I am less bothered by this sort of hiccup - and, indeed, was able to chat to the Flag Bearer as he walked onto the stage, while I played bass.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[xgsjx]

A week ago on Sunday we held church in the town hall. Set list of 3 songs plus an item for communion. 
All was going well, but then the media team couldn’t get the words up for the congregation, so we replaced the 3 songs with 3 that the congregation might know the words to. No thought went into asking the band if they knew the songs, but we jammed them reasonably well. 
Thankfully, the communion item (Mercy) was unaffected. 

[bass_dinger]

40 minutes ago, Bobo_08 said:

I found that when we practice, someone decides that we will repeat the chorus x2 or whatever in a certain part. So I make notes on my chord chart and then in the actual service... they change their mind and go straight to the next verse... 😆

 

Ha!  My Leader is more honest (and more random) in rehearsals: "we might do the chorus twice here, depends how we feel".  And it is not uncommon to only play the first verse and chorus in the run-through. "Is the key okay?  Yes?  Onto the next one . . . "

 

I treat the practice as a warm-up, rather than a definitive guide.  Faster?  Slower? Extra repeats?  Start on the chorus rather than the verse?  Miss out the whole of the last three bridges in The Blessing, and instead sing the chorus six times? Change key in the service (with a misplaced capo).

 

Different leaders have different requirements - from music, play by ear, follow the leader.   It used to make me very grumpy, as it used to spotlight my lack of ability.   Now, I can manage a little better, and realised that most of the congregation can't hear my bum notes.   I am more relaxed about my own short-comings.     

 

Playing with different leaders with different styles, is akin to a musical work out - it makes one sweat at the time, but one gets stronger for subsequent sessions!

 

 

 

  

[Bobo_08]

I agree that in may case it's frustrating due to my lack of ability right now.... i'm still learning so find it hard to adapt on the fly... something that only comes with practice. 

[xgsjx]

I find if you know the key of the song, the progression is gonna be a variant of 1, 4, 5, 6.  So something like G, C, Am, F.

the problem I have with worship songs is how poorly written the music is, but I suppose it’s the product of the unorganised mess that most church worship teams seem to have.

I know a couple of Christians who are great musicians, but refuse to play in the worship team because the worship leadership is disorganised.  You get given the songs to learn about 2-3 days before the service, songs get changed right before service & the song at the end of service gets picked during the service. 

[Sardonicus]

20 hours ago, xgsjx said:

I know a couple of Christians who are great musicians, but refuse to play in the worship team because the worship leadership is disorganised.  

 

Spot on, I've played in bands all my life and being in a Worship Team is the most frustrating and annoying venture I have ever undertook.