Sunday Service Set I: I Play Through A Verse and Now It's Time to... START SINGING!!! There we go.
The whole "Organ Service I" thing is actually sort of a misnomer... there are actually two services, and I play the same thing twice. That said, everything went about as well as could possibly be expected. There were a few registration mishaps, but I followed Rule Number 1 and kept playing and no one called me on it afterwards. If they had, well, then I meant to do that. Maybe it wasn't a good idea, but whatever. It was actually a bit anticlimactic after all the practice... a well-played service draws little attention to the organist, and no one bothered to stay and listen to the postlude except my parents and one of the other organists, who wasn't out of town after all. And attendance was light, which meant I had to cut off the offertory early and I didn't need most of my communion filler. Better to have too much than too little.
A few lessons learned...
Ignore the congregation. This flies in the face of 10 years of orchestra experience, but trying to actually accompany anyone gets you nowhere. It's an accoustic thing... they sing to your echo, and you hear the echo of them singing, and there's about a sixteenth note of time delay. If you attempt to play with them, it gets slower and slower. Which is what happened first service. By second service, having been warned that everything was slow, I kept my own tempo and all was well.
Also, it is necessary to obtain a donut between services. By second service, it was my third time through everything counting last night, and there was a major space-out factor. Not to the point where I missed any entrances or did anything flagrantly stupid, but the danger was there. So, sugar between services is good. I'm not about to touch coffee just yet. Then they wouldn't be able to keep up.
4 weeks until Organ Service II. No communion next time, and I think I have just enough lesson music lying around to cover the prelude and postlude. I assume there will be a new setting of the liturgy to learn, and hymns, of course. It will be a bit of a rush. The second one is always the real test.
3 more weeks of internship. 5 weeks until school starts. Busy=good.
A few lessons learned...
Ignore the congregation. This flies in the face of 10 years of orchestra experience, but trying to actually accompany anyone gets you nowhere. It's an accoustic thing... they sing to your echo, and you hear the echo of them singing, and there's about a sixteenth note of time delay. If you attempt to play with them, it gets slower and slower. Which is what happened first service. By second service, having been warned that everything was slow, I kept my own tempo and all was well.
Also, it is necessary to obtain a donut between services. By second service, it was my third time through everything counting last night, and there was a major space-out factor. Not to the point where I missed any entrances or did anything flagrantly stupid, but the danger was there. So, sugar between services is good. I'm not about to touch coffee just yet. Then they wouldn't be able to keep up.
4 weeks until Organ Service II. No communion next time, and I think I have just enough lesson music lying around to cover the prelude and postlude. I assume there will be a new setting of the liturgy to learn, and hymns, of course. It will be a bit of a rush. The second one is always the real test.
3 more weeks of internship. 5 weeks until school starts. Busy=good.
posted by Kevin H | 4:59 PM
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