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Why I love Church gigs...
- Thread starter Dave R
- Start date
I love playing in churches.
Obviously, first to be able to worship with my instrument, but for the musical part, it's great to play with different musicians every week, with sometimes great musicians, sometimes not...
And a think it's great school to have a new set list every week with really short time to rehearse which teach to get efficient.
I really enjoy the thing to "own" the place which makes it really easy to have endless jam sessions after service.
But it definitely can be totally different from one church to another.
my church in France : great groovy musicians, at least for the rhythm section. Really serious an efficient way to work. I'm usually playing saturday after-noon for youth group, plus 2 services on sunday and an always automatic jam on sunday nights so plenty of time to play. Only regret, always keep the volume down...(about 250 people)
1 semester in Chile : from far the smallest church I played in, about 40 people on a good sunday and about 10 of those 40 playing ! Completely unorganized way to deal with it. During the 2 hours practice 90% of the time, some members of the worship team weren't practicing (late, eating, discussing, on the phone, leaving earlier...) almost never music sheet, and when no one knew the tune we would listen to it once or twice (never more) on a crapy cd player. A lot of fun
1 semester in Rhode Island in a Baptist Church : That's right, no dancing, but pretty usual pop rock hillsongish stuff with a volume always REALLY low with no amp on stage... completely frustrating for the sound part... but also regular great jam sessions
my current semester in Virginia : really good quality Jesus Culture/Hillsong style, never any technical difficulty for the bass player, but it feel so nice to play full drive, w/out volume limitation, w/out any need of music sheet, just enjoying playing and worshiping. And it worship band rotation so we have 2 practice per service which makes it really comfortable.
wow I wrote a useless novel, my bad.
Obviously, first to be able to worship with my instrument, but for the musical part, it's great to play with different musicians every week, with sometimes great musicians, sometimes not...
And a think it's great school to have a new set list every week with really short time to rehearse which teach to get efficient.
I really enjoy the thing to "own" the place which makes it really easy to have endless jam sessions after service.
But it definitely can be totally different from one church to another.
my church in France : great groovy musicians, at least for the rhythm section. Really serious an efficient way to work. I'm usually playing saturday after-noon for youth group, plus 2 services on sunday and an always automatic jam on sunday nights so plenty of time to play. Only regret, always keep the volume down...(about 250 people)
1 semester in Chile : from far the smallest church I played in, about 40 people on a good sunday and about 10 of those 40 playing ! Completely unorganized way to deal with it. During the 2 hours practice 90% of the time, some members of the worship team weren't practicing (late, eating, discussing, on the phone, leaving earlier...) almost never music sheet, and when no one knew the tune we would listen to it once or twice (never more) on a crapy cd player. A lot of fun
1 semester in Rhode Island in a Baptist Church : That's right, no dancing, but pretty usual pop rock hillsongish stuff with a volume always REALLY low with no amp on stage... completely frustrating for the sound part... but also regular great jam sessions
my current semester in Virginia : really good quality Jesus Culture/Hillsong style, never any technical difficulty for the bass player, but it feel so nice to play full drive, w/out volume limitation, w/out any need of music sheet, just enjoying playing and worshiping. And it worship band rotation so we have 2 practice per service which makes it really comfortable.
wow I wrote a useless novel, my bad.
I'll check by wearing a scarlet "A" on my forehead next week!
I was recruited by a high school friend a few years ago for the church's jazz band, about 18 pieces plus singers. They typically have to reach out to fill in each section.
Last year, after a practice break, the leader looked me in the eye and asked "were you smoking in the bathroom?" Laughing, I said "no sir, I am a rare non-smoking bassist!" knowing full well it had nothing to do with my religion! But I did appreciate that he would think I was the trouble maker and maintaining my image in front of the ladies and all.
I always felt uncomfortable about the fact that I also played "regular" music in bars and other places, like that wasn't accepted---and it wasn't. Since I don't agree with the usual congregation about such things, whether it's right or wrong, I don't play church gigs anymore. Matter of fact I don't even go anymore. Not that I don't believe, but just that I see things differently. There was a gospel group I played with for awhile that was rewarding, though, until it got to issues like that. I don't believe that all my other playing is a sin.
Some churches are willing to contract all of the musicians; sometimes they'll contract just one if you can site read and sometimes help the choir director teach some music theory to the choir members. That one contracted musician will then get volunteers to join him/her, which is quite easy as it turns out, there may be a lot of musicians in the congregation just waiting for a chance to play in front of people.
