a little night music
You know how, sometimes, you’re playing prelude music for a wedding, and the bride is running, like 20 minutes late, so you’ve played through all the rep you have prepared, and you start to get adventurous and play things by ear, from memory, and you get 2/3 of the way through “All I Ask Of You” from Phantom of the Opera, and you realize that you don’t actually know the song all that well, so instead you just accidently played the theme from a John Phillip Sousa march?
I hate that.
Sharolyn 12:40 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
Have you been drinking too much coffee lately? ;)
Melody 4:27 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
Well, legend has it that Sousa wrote “The Stars and Stripes” as a ballad, initially. Then his wife heard it and said it was really a march so I think you aren’t that far off. You may be a better musician than you are. Of course, we don’t know what Sousa had been drinking.
Sharolyn 6:56 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
Melody, I can’t tell if you are kidding!
And Mike, I was teasing. I just saw what I wrote and it could come across as quite snotty. The beauty of the computer (sarcasm) – no tone of voice, facial expression, etc.
Sharolyn 7:14 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
To speak more to your post, I used to play TV theme songs when I got bored for prayer background music during Jubilant Song concerts. I thought I was funny and it kept my friends entertained. You could not pay me to do that today.
1) At least I played them “worshipfully”, which was actually a tempo marking when my brother worked at Word Music
and
2) It was only Jubilant Song, right?
michael lee 8:36 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
I lovingly refer to that kind of playing as “Spirit-invoking Doodle Music.”
Because the Lord is vast and wondrous, shrouded in mystery and in coruscations of grace, he moves like the wind and alters the lives of men and nations …
… but he only listens to prayers in the key of G.
Stick 11:03 pm on 7 January 2008 Permalink
G????!!!!!!!
Oh man! No wonder!
Scott 1:02 am on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Totally done this. You know those charts you throw in the notebook thinking “maybe I’ll play this as a joke during sound check”? After 35 minutes of stalling, your new arrangement of “Taps” starts to look pretty good…
JC 9:28 am on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Michael: I don’t find myself looking up too many words that come out of the mouths of friends of mine, but “coruscations” did it…congratulations!
michael lee 10:38 am on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Ha. Thanks.
It’s a ripoff from C.S. Lewis – I can’t remember which book, but he talks about beauty as a “coruscation of grace”, and the phrase stuck with me.
Cerise 11:22 am on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Snotty?? Yeah, Sharolyn, you’re a real brute. I thought it was a valid question. But then, I AM a brute and I HATE Sousa.
Am I banned from AddRd?
Michael, you’re a brilliant guy. You noodlers are all geniuses. People have been saved because of the noodling. Remember that the next time you’re ‘worshipfully’ playing the theme to Sex and the City at alter-call time.
Eric 12:20 pm on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Coruscation of grace – that’s brilliant (pardon the pun). Mike, you are truly ineffable.
Chad 12:53 pm on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Well, he has 2 kids, so he’s been effable at least that many times.
Gretchen 1:41 pm on 8 January 2008 Permalink
naughty Chad. Very naughty.
Cerise 3:44 pm on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Nicely done as always, Chad.
Chad 4:15 pm on 8 January 2008 Permalink
Every once in awhile I have to hogtie the blocking gnomes.
Eric 1:57 pm on 9 January 2008 Permalink
Chad, but that reminds me of a friend who’s 10 year old son finally figured things and and said to his dad, “I cannot BELIEVE you and mommy had [dramatic pause] sexual intercourse.” My friend told him, “Well actually, it was more than once. You have an older brother, remember?”
I guess that’s off topic, huh?
On the subject (sort of) of the original post, an organist friend of mine told me that he was laughing so hard he could barely play the processional tune one more-than-a-little overweight bride had requested: “Something in the Way She Moves”.
Evanescent, huh?
Melody 4:01 pm on 9 January 2008 Permalink
So yesterday I played B-I-N-G-O as a ballad for 80 4th graders to see if anybody recognized it (bear in mind this is their favorite song). A whopping one child said, “Oh, I get it!” So don’t worry about it. Besides, didn’t your college composition prof frequently suggest that your original melodic lines reminded him of some old song you didn’t even know?
Chad 4:30 pm on 9 January 2008 Permalink
Back in APU days of yore, at a small group rehearsal camp, we were warned once about situational awareness when choosing songs and making statements.
The story used to illustrate this point involved an outreach concert at an unmarried, at-risk pregnancy shelter. The all male group was doing quite well, until they closed the set with, “He Touched Me.”
Needless to say, they sorta lost their audience at that point as peals of laughter began to reverberate in those pregnant bellies. He touched me, indeed.
Cerise 4:05 pm on 14 January 2008 Permalink
Just to veer us off-topic and into Eric’s world of bridal processional irony (that was awesome, by the way. Are you sure she meant it seriously? We fat people are very jolly) – I marched in to a recording of de Victoria’s “O Magnum Mysterium”. My cue to actually enter the sanctuary was right when the choir got to “o beata virgine”. J-u-u-u-st a little private Cerise joke since my Mom made me buy a white dress…(oh yeah, and tried to have “the talk” with me two days before the wedding. I was 23.)