Based on church threads-Any church musicians out there?

[Buckalew11]

I have no musical abilities (even though my grandfather could play guiter, fiddle, banjo, madolin etc. and Dad can play piano by ear).

I just "make a joyful noise"! LOL

Our church is a Southern Baptist that does tradition hymns such as Amazing Grace, Victory in Jesus, I'll Fly Away type music. Not traditional as in cathedral type music .(for lack of a better description)

 

[Val]

My DH, oldest DD17 and I all sing in the adult choir. My DH and DD cantor, too. I play flute for the various choirs when they need me. Help out with the children's choir that my DD13, DS9 and DD7 sing in......and the kids attend Catholic school. Needless to say we spend a LOT of time at our church and school each week!

On a side note, my DH is in an oldies rock band called the Knights of Crisis- the members are all 40+ professors/insurance execs/computer programmers who belong to both our adult choir AND our local Knights of Columbus AND are in the middle of their midlife crises.....at least we wives know where they are- if they aren't making noise, errr I mean music, in the basement they are playing another local bar or Knights hall!

 

[Beast fan]

Background ............

Our church (St. Paul's United Methodist in Rochester, MI) is quite conservative. (It used to be VERY conservative.)

That said, DW is in our church handbell choir.

I used to be in the handbell choir, prior to me working nights and being unable to attend weekly practices.

I also play the cello from time to time (about once each year) during church services.

 

[powellrj]

I play in our handbell choir.

 

[FranP]

DH and I both sing in our church choir (Roman Catholic) and of course, DD (The Music Teacher) directs a Presbyterian choir, and provides music at another church for mass and a prayer service.

 

[Jcricket Fan]

DH is the director of music & liturgy for our Roman Catholic parish. He is college trained in music but was a child prodigy playing the organ & piano when he was only a child. He also sings (I love his voice!) I use to sing in the choir. I tried to cantor but it makes me too nervous to sing around DH in church so I stick to singing at my seat.

Colleen

 

[MainStreet USA]

Our church has gone through a number of changes lately, and the music ministry was not an exception. I was involved with my church youth group for all of my high school years. A number of years back (maybe 6 or so), we had a minister of music/choir director who was a bit unorthodox I guess you could say, but he was excellent with the youth in the church. In addition to the regular choir AND the children's choir, he also started up a bell choir staffed entirely by the youthgroup. I loved playing the handbells. They always sounded so pretty and were a lot of fun to play with so many of my good friends from the youthgroup. Being one of the few of us that could actually read music (i'm a percussionist, since 4th grade), I was placed at the higher end, where myself and two other musicians manned a combined 10-12 handbells between the three of us. Ernie (the director), called us the "dingbats". it was a lot of fun.

Once Ernie left, and we had people stepping up each week to play organ and such, without having an actual director, the youth bellchoir also fell apart. However, that was not the end of all that is music within the group. The youth group did some on-and-off singing for special ocassions and such. I'm not much of a singer, but I was a participator, so I never turned down the opportunity to sing for the church. We finally got a new minister of music about two years ago, and he was also great with the youth group. We organized an in-church performance by the youthgroup (and Eric), in which we performed a couple songs we learned from a band we had seen on a couple ocassions at a few retreats. Our "band" that morning consisted of Eric on the piano, two guitars, myself on drums, and the rest of the youthgroup on vocals. It was so neat to hear something other than an organ or piano in church for a change. Unfortunately, we only did one of those such performances.

Oh, and althought this next part isn't about me, my college roommate from last year played piano at the non-denominational service here on campus. I never heard him play, but I'm told he was pretty good.

 

[Galahad]

Ooops.

Must have been a "resurrected" thread.....already answered it before.

 

[helenabear]

My husband and I are both in the music ministry. He is our percussionist and plays a drum set every week at our Roman Catholic Church.
(yep, we have a drum set )

I sing in the choir and cantor very regularly.

I think our music is a big mix of everything. We have a small orchestra that we sing with, and because of them, we can do a variety of styles.

 

[MainStreet USA]

(yep, we have a drum set )

That's what I played that one time!

 

[brerrabbit]

I sing Tenor in our Church Choir (First United Methodist) We sing traditional but do a lot of extra stuff as well. We have done a Christmas Musical the past two years and last year at Easter on Maundy Thursdat we sung Hayden's "Seven Last Words of Christ". We also recorded all the music from our Christmas Pagent and sold CD's. Last September we had a retreat in San Antonio and spent Saturday rehearsing and then performed at four church servises at Randolph Air Force Base. It was a wonderful experience and we are planning another trip for the fall. This summere our choir is taking a trip to Scotland and Ireland and will be performing there. Unfortunately I will not be going. Need to save my $ for a son in college and a Thanksgiving trip to DW.

Yesterday we sang "O For a Thousand Tounges to Sing" but also have done "Down to the River to Pray" and two weeks ago sang "Joyful, Joyful" using the arrangement from Sister Act Two.

 

[BethR]

I sing in the soprano section in our Archeparchial (think "diocesan") Choir. Our hymns and melodies are traditional Eastern Catholic (and Orthodox) fare. We sing in both English and Church Slavonic. Everything is sung a capella. And 90% of our liturgy is sung - including the bible readings.

Here is a link to our Archeparchy website where you can hear our choir when you click on the link: http://www.archeparchy.org/ .

 

[ncgolfer]

I constantly threaten to join our church's choir as a scare tactic to our minister of music. My wife sings and has a beautiful voice, but I have no musical talent and sound like a tortured animal singing. At least the noise I make is joyful.

 

[goofy4tink]

I sing in our choir...Episcopal church. We have 2 services with music...one at 9 a.m. that is contemporary music and the other at 10:15 that is traditional, with hymns and more classical music. I sing with a quartet and sometimes solo within these two services.
At the moment, 1/2 our choir (about 5 of us, small choir) are participating in a 3 church presentation of Faure's Requiem....our church, the Lutheran, and a Congregational church. It is incredibly beautiful when the 3 groups blend. Only wish we had more members in our choir, but our director/organist is very good at alienating people.

 

[BabyTigger99]

I sing in both the adult choir and intergenerational choirs at my church. I also direct the "Christian Kidz", our 3rd - 8th grade choir.

 

[Towncrier]

I sang in our church's chancel choir and men's chorale for several years, but decided to take a year off. Our former choir director sings with the Cleveland Orchestra and was a remarkable teacher as well as director of music at our church for 33 years. She would give me the occasional solo part to sing and I was often invited to sing with groups for special services.

Her replacement (whom I helped select), however, is anything but remarkable. She refuses to believe that the men can sing any 4 part music besides "Majesty". She constantly takes SATB arrangements and has the men sing them. And she doesn't even reassign the parts correctly. She has the baritones singing the tenor parts and tenors singing the alto parts. She never allows enough time for the groups to properly learn the music. She cuts all the anthems short by hacking the ends or middles out of them. And often times she just has the 50 voice choir sing unison.

My best friend in the choir (and fellow tenor) moved to South Carolina this past summer. The other tenors are always flat (and the director doesn't say or do anything about it). We never practice the music long enough before singing on Sunday morning. She never taps any of the former directors soloists (including me). And our new sanctuary is a huge echo chamber where you cannot understand a word the choir is singing. It was not hard to make the decision to just stay home on Thursday evenings.

Sorry to sound so bitter, but I so miss our old choir director and am looking forward to the day that her replacement retires.

 

[tkd lisa]

I sing in our church choir, and do special music, often with my daughter. Our church has 2 services. First is traditional, second is contemporary. Difference is exclusively music. Our choir sings at both services, so we try to stay pretty middle of the road with it. We occasionally do contemporary music (my favorite we did was Shout to the Lord), and sometimes more traditional (currently we're working on I'll Fly Away). Nearly all of our music is done with recorded tracks.

Our contemporary service has a Praise team which has a guy playing keyboard and three ladies leading the church in singing together. The keyboard has some extra stuff, so it sounds like more than a piano, but it's not a full praise band type sound.

We have a music night every quarter, and most of that is current contemporary Christian that people sing. We also have people who sign music about every 6 weeks or so. Again, mostly contemporary stuff like 3rd Day or CeCe Wyans.

I LOVE the music at our church!

 

[Queen Quinnella]

I play in the Hand Bell Choir and DH sings in the Choir.

 

[tc]

TC, I can understand how you feel. I am only in choir because you have to be in order to sing on worship team. Our choir director seems to think we can sing black gospel. Now, I love black gospel, but I don't think just anyone can sing it. And certainly not a bunch of middle aged, western, white folks. I am not trying to be racist or anything, I just think you need to be raised in that environment, getting the rhythm inside of you, to sing that music, and we don't have it. I get very tired of trying to sound soulful, and not acheiving it.

Worship team is a 4-6 member team that helps to lead worship when the choir isn't on. I love it. We sing once every three weeks. I am allowed to sing the harmony I want and just let loose. I sing alto. Our church is very contemporary, drums, guitars, etc. in every service (we have 5) (except the 8:00 a.m., it's just piano and organ). We sing many contemporary songs and some original stuff that our worship minister writes. I used to lead worship in a rock service, and I loved that. However, attendance fell due to lack of leadership, and the service was cancelled.

If you ever see a special called "Restoration" on PAX tv, that's my church! I am in the worship choir, but you don't see us very often.

 

[ead79]

I sing in our church’s sanctuary choir. We typically sing traditional music (traditional in the sense of traditional Baptist music, not traditional sacred music a la Catholicism if that makes sense) with occasional praise music mixed in. I enjoy the group, though most of the members are old enough to be my mom or grandma. It’s a great group of people that enjoy worshipping together. I can’t read music, but luckily that’s not a requirement. We practice a lot and those of us who can’t read music well just sing by ear.