i am an offering | blog tips for worship leaders in the local church

I’ll give you a little hint behind this one.  This post comes directly out of personal experience.  Keep that in mind as your reading.

There are probably going to be times when something is out of tune.  Badly out of tune.  It could be your own instrument.  It could be the instrument of an inexpereinced player.  Regardless of whose instrument it is, something that’s out of tune is a major disctration that keeps us from focusing on Jesus.  If something is slightly out of tune it will distract any skilled musicians in the congregation because they can pick it out.  It will distract average non-musical people in the congregation as well because they know something is wrong but can’t quite figure out what it is.  If something is badly out of tune, everyone notices and everyone is distracted.  So what do you to when this happens?

Plan Ahead

Like yesterday’s post on screen projection, it is so important to plan ahead.  If you are the guitar player - make sure you have fresh strings and you are in tune.  Get a tuner or ask the church to buy you one (preferably a pedal tuner that you can use during the worship time to always make sure you’re in tune.)  If you are the piano player know how to tell when the piano is out of tune and make sure the church is on top of getting it tuned.

If you are overseeing guitar players always make sure that they tune before rehearsal, before soundcheck, before the worship time and during the worship time.  Ask your church to be able to budget for new strings for the guitar players.  Buy your guitar players tuners if they don’t have them.

A Personal Account

These things seem fairly obvious to most of us, but let my share a story that happened when I was a bit more inexperienced.

We made plans to bring Arlen Salte from Break Forth Ministries to do a worship team workshop at our church.  We had planned well and there were about 300 people from different states coming.  It was an exciting time for us.  Our worship team agreed that we would do a worship set in the afternoon and them let him critique us.  Unfortunately, in my excitement about the workshop, I forgot to plan ahead so that I would have new strings that weekend.  My strings were old.  Ancient.  It was bad.  In my rush to make sure all of the logistics were worked out for the weekend, I completely forgot about the fact that my strings were not going to stay in tune.  We started our set with “Blessed Be Your Name” with a driving acoustic guitar part.  After about two measures I thought, “Uh-oh.  This is bad.  Really bad.”  What did I do?

What To Do If It Happens

I could have kept going and played through the whole song with a badly out-of-tune guitar.  But I knew it was a major disctraction - especially in a room full of musicians.  So, I stopped the band, addressed the problem, admitted that I was out of tune and had the band restart the song without me.  Things went well and Arlen mentioned that it was better that I took a couple minutes to address the distraction and then move on, rather than letting the disctration keep going.  That night, I bought new strings and restringed my guitar as Sunday morning worship was the next morning. (Although, I hate to admit it - I bought strings from Wal-Mart.  They’re the only place open at 10:30pm that sold guitar strings!)  What I probably should have done is just let the band keep going without the guitar.  At the time, they relied heavily on the guitar leading things, so sometimes if I would stop, the whole band would stop.  So, if you’re the one out of tune, drop out in a non-distracting way, tune if you can and then come back in.  If you can’t tune, be able to communicate to other musicians that they need to lead the music.

But, what if it’s not you that’s out of tune?

Work out a signal before hand that might be able to let your guitar players know that they are out of tune and they need to drop out (hint, don’t use the hand cutting through the throat signal!).  Find a subtle gesture that says “sit out” to someone.  If you have an opportunity to lean over and talk to them quickly (during a prayer time or instrumental interlude) tell them that they need to retune and ask for a thumbs up or some sort of signal that lets you know they’re back in tune.

Being in tune is so important in music and is a skill that we should always take care to remember.  Do you have any suggestions for a situation like this or any stories of your own experience?