I played my acoustic guitar for church yesterday. I haven’t played acoustic in a very long time. I played it through a crate CA15 Cimarron acoustic amp looking rather a lot like this one:
I was really impressed by this amplifier. I had another available to me, but I thought this one sounded better with my guitar. It almost sounded like a Taylor instead of an Ibanez. Thanks to Danny for the loan of his amp. Thanks to Crate for making a very fine and very affordable amplifier. We mic-ed the amp, which worked rather well. I can unreservedly recommend this to players looking for small-venue amplification and to other players who can’t afford a Fishman Loudbox or a Roland AC30 (or better)
Our regular acoustic guitar player/lead vocalist/music minister was out of town. I only took over acoustic guitar duties, not singing and leading. In the few years since I sang last, I’ve fallen totally out of practice and am having pitch problems as well as tonality problems. I can’t keep it out of my nose. I need to either learn to sing or quit entirely. Right now, I’m mostly on the “quit” side of the fence. I am sticking to musical fingers for now. Anyway, I was in Texas and unable to practice on Wednesday so I had to pretty much pick up the set with a cold start during our Sunday morning runthrough. There were two new songs, and one of them was a worship song and hymn medley. It was a lot of “new” with the acoustic guitar, new songs, and amp. We also found out that our bass player would not be there. That left drums, piano, and me. Still, we all adjusted and did pretty well. I was feeling confident.
On the other hand, we found that the offeratory was supposed to be an instrumental by the band. We didn’t have one. My wife was on piano, and was playing through “Spirit of the Living God”, a beautiful hymal chorus. It was so beautiful I knew we had to do it. We were trying to figure out what to do when it hit me that Danny (on drums during the worship set) could pick up the other acoustic guitar and we could do the whole thing on acoustic guitars. I would comp/chord, and he would take melody and riff on it a bit. We did a quick partial run-through, and let it go.
Most of the songs were in guitar-friendly keys like A or G or D. I was pretty comfy with them, and wasn’t feeling the bruising of fingertips or the strain in my wrist. Later I was seriously wishing I had a capo with me. One of the songs was in E flat, and I was barring like mad at the 3rd fret to play it as if it were C. It took some finger-picking and a little pinky finesse and by the end of the second chorus I was really feeling the burn.
It became a bit of a nightmare in that E flat song. When you don’t play acoustic guitar for a while, it isn’t just the fingertips and wrists that suffer. The strings can be a little old and experience some pitch dynamics. That’s a nice way to say that the G and B strings both started going flat on me. At first it was fine, but the longer the song went the worse the strings sounded. It was noticeably off by the bridge. I was trying to bring it back in, but my ear is lazy and my hands were too eager, and I went sharp, then flat again, then gave up. I tried to play the song through on the lower 3 and tune up at the break. Of course, Libby had piano, and I doubt anyone missed my upper strings. Maybe the power chords actually added punch. Maybe we got through on strength of vocals. Maybe it was a supernatural miracle of hearing. Maybe people just didn’t notice.
I had to do a very quick by-ear tune job before the last song, which was a very sweet song featuring a bit of light finger-picking. It would have been awful if I’d not got it quite back into tune. I wish I’d brought a clip-on tuner with me. Next time, maybe.
The last ensemble song went quite well, and I was able to return to the moment rather than cringing over my strings or aching wrist. We were able to play and worship together as we should. The set ended quite well, and there was such a sweet spirit in the place.
Our final bit was for the offeratory song. It is common for things to come out better live than in practice, because there is so much more feel when the congregation is present. This time it was a little bit of a challenge. While my guitar was finally in tune again, we hadn’t actually tuned the two guitars together. Danny is so professional about this. He kept pressure on, bending the strings up to pitch as he went. I’m glad he was slightly flat and not slightly sharp. Still it sounded very warm, rich, and full. I like working with Danny because I never worry about him. I know whatever he does will sound great. We got through the verse and chorus, and then we each realized that we didn’t work out the ending. That was pretty sloppy of us. Here we are at the end of a very nice song with such a good acoustic vibe, with a solemn and reverent mood over the whole place, and we’re ever so slightly stuck. He looked to me, I tried to motion that we’d go back to the start of the line for a tag, but who knows what that head motion looked like. So I went back to the start of the line, and he followed beautifully and we ended together. Whew.
It was a good morning. There were compliments, but we knew that we’d made it through on grace, silent panicky prayer, and the skin of our teeth. Some mornings are more miraculous than others. We weren’t without challenge, but we were able to focus and work through the songs and carry a message to the congregation, and they joined us in every way. It was truly a fine morning. You should have heard it.
Blogging Ottinger (tim)
