Playing Your Part

Here at The Sunday Musician, I'm hoping to draw you out a little, hear your stories, compare notes, etc.  I can't be the only one who thinks being a church musician is both a privilege and a very, very odd thing.  I'll pass along what I've learned in the trenches, and we'll see where it gets us.

From my salad days as a music director:

I was listening to the pastor pray for the offering and tapping the tempo of the offertory song on my leg when Jim (15 yrs. old, bass player, already taller than me, and I’m 6’) leaned over to me and said, “Watch the podium guys.” We had a plexiglass podium, very cool, looked like glass, and it was somebody’s job ministry to Windex it before every service, which they did with great care. It lived on the auditorium floor during the first half of the service, then as the offertory played, two very serious and conscientious volunteers (God bless ‘em) would walk up to the podium, don the special soft cotton podium-hoisting gloves, and lift it into place.

We started the song, and I kept one eye on the ‘podium team’. They were having trouble getting started, it looked like.

“I switched the gloves,” Jim said, giggling. “Two rights and two lefts.”

Sure enough; confusion reined. That was Jim; eyes open, curious, always thinking. It was his constant thinking that always gave me trouble - which is where I’m going with this post:

So on a different day (or maybe it was the same day – after about 700 or so, I stopped carving notches in the grand piano) we’re rehearsing a very, very simple chorus. I loved it when we got songs like that, at least once in a while. For a few minutes I didn’t have to worry that someone was going to wander off the reservation, jump to the wrong spot on the page, misread a chord, etc. This one was G, Emi, C & D, and the chords changed only once per measure. My thoughts were drifting to lunch (which is where my mind often goes when it’s not under any great strain), and I realize something doesn’t feel right. There’s no bass.

I look over and see Jim rummaging around up past the 12^th fret on his bass, on the high

string, producing a sort of vague, pinging sound. I had no idea what his problem was. He was a good player, fast on the neck, played all that Dave Matthews stuff (maybe that was the problem, but that’s a different post – how Dave Matthews has ruined pop music), and here he was apparently lost during a simple little chorus. The song ended and I said, “Jim, if you’re having trouble, just give me one whole note per chord, on the root tone. So for the Emi, just give me an E for four counts.”

His eyes rolled far enough that it had to hurt.

“I know what the chords are,” he said, like I’d asked him if he could go to the bathroom by himself.

“So…I’ll bite,” I said. “What was all that pinging stuff?”

“I’m trying to play the fifth of every chord in harmonics.”

“Okay, then,” I said, “The trouble here is: you do that, I still need a bass player. You’re making noises that maybe whales in the North Atlantic can pick up, but that nobody in our band, let alone our congregation, can interpret.”

He made with more of the teenage eye-rolling, accompanied by just the tiniest exhalation through the nose.

“So Jim,” I continued, “I’m begging you: please play the bass part. You’re all I’ve got.”

The Point:

You gotta find the thing that only you can contribute to the song, you know? And then…contribute it. I love playing in a band where everyone ‘gets’ this – a band in which the parts fit together in such a way that were one of them removed, it would be immediately missed. This can be a little trickier when you’re playing second electric guitar, or there are three people playing keyboards, but you gotta try. Jim was violating that rule spectacularly, poking around two octaves up. The bottom end fell out, and there was no one left to play it.

Jim grew up and turned into a really good musician, and his band played all over the place. He teaches music privately now, and last I talked with him he was opening up a teaching studio near Chicago somewhere. I hope he’s teaching his students to play their part.

A kid shows up to take bass lessons, and at the first lesson his teacher shows him the notes on the E string and then sends him home to practice. Second lesson he shows the kid the notes on the A string, sends him home to practice. Third week, the kid doesn’t show. Fourth week he shows up again, and the teacher asks where he was the week before. The kid says, “I had a gig.”

Comments

[Jim]

I'm sorry Ed. I think I used that as too much of an outlet from my bass lessons. I think that might have been harmonic week. I think I learned my role as I began aging. (At least I encourage students not to get 6-string basses if they are doing anything with a band).

OK...back to molding minds...

[Ed Schief]

Thanks, Jim. If it makes you feel any better, I did that a lot too, when I was younger. A favorite memory from way before I did music directing for a living: me and the drummer lifting a whole section from the Doobies "What A Fool Believes" and using it in a praise song. I gotta admit - it was fun. Good to hear from you! Keep molding those minds.