Musical Nightmares

One time I had taken a trip with a church group to Ukraine. While there, one church asked our group to sing. We chose to sing What a Friend we have in Jesus.

I swear we all couldn't get on any key, let alone the same key. We were all sliding back and forth trying to find commonality.

Never again...

 

I was in choir one time and we were rehearsing a cool a cappella arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner". The arrangement had a rest between the phrase "land of the free" and the word "brave" at the end. Well, I wasn't paying attention to the director or my music and I barreled through into the last note. The whole choir burst out laughing.

I'm also in an 11 member ensemble at church in addition to the choir. I sing second tenor in the choir and bass in the ensemble (baritone if there's a divisi part in the bass section). Well, we were working on this a cappella arrangement of the hymn "To God Be the Glory". It had a large amount of polyphony and it starts out with just the basses for this long section. The other two basses were absent from rehearsal that day. Once I know a part, I can hold it down independently, but doing it on an a cappella song before the other sections come in with absolutely no pitch reference was just too much. I would slowly drift off key on that long part where I was singing by myself and end up flat. That was a very uncomfortable rehearsal.

 

About two weeks ago, I sat in with a friend's band and we did a song that I haven't sung in about twenty years. I remembered how to play it, I just couldn't remember the words. The bass player said, "No problem. I'll just stand next to you and feed you the words. It will all come back to you and you'll remember it like it was yesterday!"

So we launched into the song and he starts screaming the words in my ear and throwing me off, not to mention that I forgot that the song has a really high note that I can't hit anymore. I know people in the audience thought I was high or an idiot or something because I would get two words out and I would just start to remember the words when the bass player, who really thought he was helping, would start screaming in my ear and throwing me off.

That was one of the worst disasters I've ever had on stage. Well, that and the time I strained so hard to hit a really high note that I passed gas on stage.

So far, thank God, it hasn't turned up on YouTube.

The good news is that I got a new guitar out of the deal. A Guild D-55. Sweet guitar.