Coping With Unexpected Moments - Part 3
"The key to this is being as prepared as you can for what might be the worst outcome. However, there are also certain things you just can’t anticipate, and in those situations it’s best to stay calm, do what you can, and keep the mood light."
Have you ever heard of an "H" chord?
Well, that's the next unexpected moment I want to share with you. It happened one time when I was playing in a worship team; I think it was with some visiting musicians from another church, and I was using their music. I knew the song reasonably well and was playing with all my might, but was totally taken by surprise when I went to play the next chord on the sheet music, and it was... "H"!
I'd never heard of an "H" chord before - probably because it doesn't exist! Granted, in Germany
"H" was used in music for B natural for many years, but that stopped in 1994 - and we were in New Zealand anyway.
It threw me so much I think I just played any old chord, and then bumbled my way back into the song, desperately looking ahead to make sure there were no more H’s or T’s or S’s that I really didn’t know how to play.
How did this happen then? Well, in a rush to get things ready for their trip, the visiting musicians had an admin lady put together some of their music. However, the admin lady wasn’t musical, so she thought she was copying an H, when it was probably something like a poorly written A or it may just have been a typo!
Either way, the lesson here is to make sure you have looked through any music that you use from someone else before you play it. Also, don’t delegate musical tasks like typing up music, unless the person doing it at least knows there’s no such chord as an "H".
Another experience I had was back in New Zealand many years ago. I was leading a worship team at a large meeting for a visiting speaker. There were over 1200 people in the audience (it was a large venue) and I started to lead everyone in the National Anthem. Then, within about 10 seconds, all my monitors went out! Because it was such a large room, as I played a chord on my electronic keyboard, I only heard it about 1.5 seconds after that, as the sound reflected off the back wall. This meant that within a very short period of time, what I was playing was not syncing with what I was hearing. It was impossible to continue! Thankfully, as it was the national anthem and known so well, the crowd carried it fine, but that certainly was an anxious moment.
So what can you do to avoid that then? Well, make sure your power cables to monitors are connected properly, in case they're only just in and can easily fall out. Also don’t leave cables laying in such a way that someone could easily trip over it and take your monitors out.
Other than that, there wasn’t anything I could do to avoid it - but I wanted to share that so you could have a laugh at my expense!
I had another situation at a guest speaker event (people who didn’t usually come to our church) where a guy decided he would sing out on his own, improvising with his voice inbetween every verse and chorus. It was such a distraction! The only way I could prevent it was by holding the last note I sang in the verse until I could quickly take a breath and start the first note of the next verse or chorus. That way, he had no gap to interrupt!
Another time, I arrived at a venue to play, and there was no pedal for the keyboard because the person organising things didn’t think that was essential. So I spent the whole time playing without a pedal, trying to make everything as legato (which means smoothly flowing) as I could but it was extremely difficult.
That affected me so much that I would then carry my own spare pedal to any future events I played at, just in case!
So that's a few stories I hope give you some preventative ideas - so you can avoid going through these kind of things in your role as a church piano player.
The key to this is being as prepared as you can for what might be the worst outcome. However, there are also certain things you just can’t anticipate, and in those situations it’s best to stay calm, do what you can, and keep the mood light.
I hope this blog post series has been of some benefit to you, to help us all deal with unexpected moments.Lastly, if you want to see the best example EVER of dealing with an unexpected moment, check out this video - enjoy!
[Return to The Church Piano Player Website]
This blog post was written by pastor and pianist Kris Baines, from The Church Piano Player. Kris lives in the UK with his family, having recently moved back from New Zealand where he worked as a pastor for the past 26 years (also leading worship/worship teams). Kris has also spent over 35 years writing, recording, and performing music and is now bringing all that combined experience together to help equip church piano/keyboard players.
Check out the church piano player website for more information on online courses by Kris Baines.
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