I’ll give you a little hint behind this one.\u00a0 This post comes directly out of personal experience.\u00a0 Keep that in mind as your reading. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
There are probably going to be times when something is out of tune.\u00a0 Badly out of tune.\u00a0 It could be your own instrument.\u00a0 It could be the instrument of an inexpereinced player.\u00a0 Regardless of whose instrument it is, something that’s out of tune is a major disctration that keeps us from focusing on Jesus.\u00a0 If something is slightly out of tune it will distract any skilled musicians in the congregation because they can pick it out.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If something is badly out of tune, everyone notices and everyone is distracted.\u00a0 So what do you to when this happens?<\/p>\n
Like yesterday’s post on screen projection, it is so important to plan ahead.\u00a0 If you are the guitar player – make sure you have fresh strings and you are in tune.\u00a0 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.)\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Ask your church to be able to budget for new strings for the guitar players.\u00a0 Buy your guitar players tuners if they don’t have them.<\/p>\n
These things seem fairly obvious to most of us, but let my share a story that happened when I was a bit more inexperienced.<\/p>\n
We made plans to bring Arlen Salte<\/a> from Break Forth Ministries<\/a> to do a worship team workshop<\/a> at our church.\u00a0 We had planned well and there were about 300 people from different states coming.\u00a0 It was an exciting time for us.\u00a0 Our worship team agreed that we would do a worship set in the afternoon and them let him critique us.\u00a0 Unfortunately, in my excitement about the workshop, I forgot to plan ahead so that I would have new strings that weekend.\u00a0 My strings were old.\u00a0 Ancient.\u00a0 It was bad.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We started our set with “Blessed Be Your Name” with a driving acoustic guitar part.\u00a0 After about two measures I thought, “Uh-oh.\u00a0 This is bad.\u00a0 Really bad.”\u00a0 What did I do?<\/p>\n I could have kept going and played through the whole song with a badly out-of-tune guitar.\u00a0 But I knew it was a major disctraction – especially in a room full of musicians.\u00a0 So, I stopped the band, addressed the problem, admitted that I was out of tune and had the band restart the song without me.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 They’re the only place open at 10:30pm that sold guitar strings!)\u00a0 What I probably should have done is just let the band keep going without the guitar.\u00a0 At the time, they relied heavily on the guitar leading things, so sometimes if I would stop, the whole band would stop.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If you can’t tune, be able to communicate to other musicians that they need to lead the music.<\/p>\n 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!).\u00a0 Find a subtle gesture that says “sit out” to someone.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Being in tune is so important in music and is a skill that we should always take care to remember.\u00a0 Do you have any suggestions for a situation like this or any stories of your own experience?<\/p>\nWhat To Do If It Happens<\/h3>\n
But, what if it’s not you that’s out of tune?<\/h3>\n