I had my audition for the worship team at church last night. It was a short meeting - just about 15-20 minutes long. He asked about my background a bit - church and music. And then he handed me some charts and asked me to sing three of the songs. The first was one with an echo part, so he took the lead and I took the echo and then he asked me to sing harmony on the unison chorus section. Then we moved on to a second song, he again asked for harmony and then he asked me to take the lead. Then again with the third song.

After the singing he told me that I had good tone and pitch and a pretty good ear for harmony - one criticism was that I was lacking emotion, but I explained that when in the service that will come out - my singing style in a casual setting is very different from a more formal “performance” setting. (I hesitate to use the word “performance” in the context of leading musical worship, but you know what I mean, I hope.) He was surprised that, as a soprano, my harmonies tended to be the lower alto (maybe tenor?) parts. I have a harder time naturally hearing the middle harmonies, but I can learn them. And then he explained that he has added quite a few new vocalists to the team recently and that he has no plans of increasing the number of vocalists on stage during the services even after we move to the new building, so I might not be needed but once every couple of months. I said that was fine - that after two years of being “on” pretty much every Sunday it was nice to have a break and that I was willing to do whatever he wanted.

He invited me to stay for the vocalist practice he was having last night, but I needed to head home. I’m assuming he’ll let me know when the next one is (I don’t think all vocalists meet every week for practice). So I’m in and I’m looking forward to the first time I get to practice with the group.

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1. I’m the same way when picking out harmonies - I always go for the tenor part.  Obie asks me all the time to pick out a higher harmony, but my instinct naturally falls to the lower one.  Also like you, I can LEARN the middle harmony with no problem, but picking it out immediately can be trying.

   Posted by Jaynee  on  04/08/05  at  09:59 AM

2. I have had a few conversations about preformance when it came to leading worship.  I don’t think that you can do both at the same time.  But thats just me.

   Posted by Michael Morgan  on  04/08/05  at  10:06 AM

3. Yeah, it’s why I hesitated to use that word. I’m not up there to perform, but to help lead people to worship (although I’m not even the leader per se, just a part of a group that does that - semantics). But my singing voice is different when I’m up front with a microphone than when I’m sitting on a sofa with another guy who is playing a guitar. The quality of it different. Plus, I was concentrating on what I was singing for him - so there wasn’t that worshipful element last night either.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  04/08/05  at  10:16 AM

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