Sardonicus

We rehearse every Friday from 8pm-10pm, this time is usually peppered by one or more of the following;

• People turning up late.
• People trying to leave early.
• People turning up late AND THEN trying to leave early.
• People not turning up at all because they forgot they were playing.
• People asking "What songs are we playing?" because they haven't listened to them.
• Someone asking "What instrument am I playing?"....could it be the same one you always play?
• Finding out that the Tech Team aren't coming so us musicians spend the first 40-50 minutes wrestling with the PA.
• Being interrupted by church members that are passing by and ringing the doorbell because they think they're missing out on a sneaky prayer meeting.
• Someone not paying attention to what they're doing because they had to bring the kids, and the kids "....are booooored!!!"
• Someone asking me if I printed off the songs, despite the fact that I only ever use a tablet.
• Me being asked to start every song and always being astounded by the fact that no-one ever wants to start a song, even though it's their instrument that STARTS THE SONG !!!
• Someone arriving to open up with no keys.
• Someone spending all the time on their phone and holding up the entire rehearsal.
• Someone saying "Shall we pray?" before we start and then thinking that it's Sunday morning and 25 minutes later they're still going on.

Lets see which of the above I can cross off my `Rehearsal Bingo' card tonight.

Our church agreed that we should get the list of songs on a Wednesday, on the Monday the person leading the following Sunday, is to ask the Pastor what the sermon direction is so they can fit the songs around that.....it's now 12:48pm on Wednesday afternoon and they haven't even chosen who's singing yet.   

No chance of getting the songs in time to actually learn them yet again.

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.

32 minutes ago, Bobo_08 said:

I found that when we practice....

I feel your pain.

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.

NOW SOLD.

I have flats on my Jazz and I love feel and the sound.

I have 2 Hercules Guitar/Bass Wall Hangers for sale, in perfect condition and working order.  Selling because I’ve recently thinned the herd.  The £10 is for both hangers.

Will despatch by FedEx for no extra cost.

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 🙏 

A lot of the between song banter on UFO's Strangers In The Night album always tickles me 😁

@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 🤣

I found this corker on Youtube, the more I watch it, the more I like it.

I also found it on iTunes....it's the best 0.79p I've ever spent 😁

I found this corker on Youtube, the more I watch it, the more I love it.  I found it on iTunes and it's the best 0.79p I've ever spent 😁

@xgsjx I wish we got the songs a week before, I'm playing this Sunday in church and I know that I won't get the songs until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

Referring back to our many posts about poor sound in church, last Sunday our tech guy had the hump and literally threw the levels together in 30 seconds....it was the best it's ever sounded in both church and on Youtube 🤣

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 😁

Here's some pics of me through the ages....

I bought my first bass from Allan Gordons in 1989, it was an Ibanez `Ricky' copy.

@Richard R We had a similar setup ourselves yesterday, we only had a bass player, a singer and myself on acoustic guitar.  It was nice to work with a stripped down band and it gave us a chance to work on 3-part vocal harmonies.  It sounded great in church on the day but yet again, the livestream sound was APPALLING !!  For the entire livestream you couldn't hear a single note of the bass nor any of my vocals (this annoyed me because I sang the lead vocal on the last song).

The last song was "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High" and the singer went on drums, I sang the lead vocals and the bass player sang backing vocals, thanks to the livestream sound being awful, all that was transmitted was my guitar and the backing vocals....I bet it sounded terrible and really confusing 😂.

I don't bother making any constructive comments to the tech team anymore as last time I did, I got accused of bullying. 

I've been a fan of Maiden since 82' when `Number of The Beast' was released, I've met a few members of Maiden over the years; Paul Dianno, Clive Burr, Nicko McBrain and Dave Murray, all of them were a real pleasure to meet.  I prefer early Maiden, circa `Killers' and in my view, the `Maiden Japan' live album is the best thing they ever released. 

They say you should never meet your idols and Steve Harris proved this to be very true, I met him when Queensryche played the Town & County Club, Kentish Town back in the 90's, to say that Steve was a bass hero of mine at the time was an understatement, for some reason he was a miserable pain in the derrière and signing an autograph for me was clearly the most demanding experience of his life....and he's a lot shorter in real life.

After that fateful meeting I went right of him and I have never bought a Maiden record since.

@LukeFRC No, they're in their 50's.  I might start a new thread just to list the questions I get asked each week.

Once I started to explain to them about harmonics and ghost notes, I thought their head was going to explode like in the film SCANNERS 😖.

On Sunday, the beginner bassist pointed to their bass and said to me; "I don't even know what these knobs do" with no embarassment whatsoever, I calmly told them that 1 was the neck volume, 1 was the bridge volume and the other was for tone, their expression was one of total bemusement, I had to explain to them the different sounds that the neck and bridge pups make and what tone did.

They then stood in front of the bass combo with a lead in their hand and after a painful couple of minutes staring at it in silence, they turned to me and asked if the guitar lead goes into the input jack on the amp....they've been playing for 2 years.

During one song they said to me that they weren't sure what notes to play during a part of one song, despite it being clearly listed on the chord chart; A E Bm D, I went through the chord progression with them, pointing where they needed to put their fingers and in the end they chose......to play nothing, no bass for at least 2 minutes of the song, 3 of the 4 notes can be played on open strings FFS.

@TrevorR Trust me, I have been but I don’t think their passion is there, I won’t back down though and I’m going to continue helping them.  They’ve been playing for a couple of years and they’ve never used the D or G strings 

@Richard R I can play 8 weeks running and not play with the same lineup twice, it's making me a better musician as I'm learning to play with different people and that can be anyone from a seasoned worship team campaigner to a bass beginner playing one note per bar (to use your words).

I must admit that after playing bass for 32 years, having to play acoustic guitar whilst someone murders the bassline with out of time, out of tune and over plucked `booms' is becoming more than I can handle, I've actually started to incorporate bass lines into my acoustic guitar playing to try to rescue the song.  I would love to hear what they hear in their head 🤣

@Richard R Suggest a rota, that's what we have in our church and it works. Our worship team has;

• 3 lead singers
• 2 guitarists
• 4 keys players
• 5 drummers
• 5 bass players
• 2 Flutes
• 1 Violin
• 6 backing vocalists
• 5 on the PA Team  

That way everyone gets to play, either by taking it turns or playing when they are available.  Some people fall into several roles, I'm one of the bass players, one of the guitarists and one of the backing vocalists.  I'm a bass player first and foremost but I'm happy to play 6 Sundays of acoustic guitar to 2 on bass because I play where I'm needed, it's not about me, it's about Christ.  I'm just a vessel to be used to spread His word.