YOUR TIME TO SHINE! - 22-06-2009Back to list

More like, just hang in there and hope you get through it with minimal mistakes!

I was on music team duty yesterday, as I am roughly once every 4 weeks, and after a couple of years of doing it, it's no biggie, even though I have good days and very bad days with it.

I turned up yesterday knowing full well that my co-guitarist (and team leader) was away but that one of the ministers was standing in on acoustic, so again, no worries there. I set up and waited for the other musicians to arrive, and as our viola player arrived she said she would be standing in for one of the singers as well, so only one female singer. The flautist's husband arrived and gave his apologies on his wifes behalf, so no flute. The pianist is on "maternity leave" if you like, so no piano. The drummer is a teenager who sleeps in on sunday mornings, so no drummer. The bass player is the absent team leader's son, so no bass. Finally another singer arrived. But he was on sound desk duty, so no male vocals!

Thanks to an accident on the M25 people were having trouble even reaching the church so there was little opportunity to pluck any other team's musicians from the congregation so we would have to do with the two guitars, Emma alternating between viola and vocals, and Charlie leading the singing on accoustic (which thankfully he is more than happy to do). Meanwhile little old me just has to try and stay in time and in tune.

The only song that was going to cause me a headache was the last one, because I often find myself doing the fast chord change section too fast because I panic I'm not going to make them at all. In the event there was another almost hiccup that thankfully I spotted whilst Charlie was doing the intro - he left the capo off - a musical nightmare had Emma been playing viola in that song or if we'd had a piano! Once I'd established that he was definately playing in D I joined in and all was fine.

I did foul up on the quick section of the last song but hey, we played it three times and I messed up once so that's not too bad. People were singing plenty loud enough. I really enjoyed hearing the congregation singing for themselves when Charlie and Emma weren't singing at certain points, after all it's not about the band.

Some people would say that an experience like that helps build confidence for next time, but I'm not sure that it does, not for me anyway. Maybe I should just stop worrying about perfection!