Killing two birds with one stone

This piece should be subtitled, “Or, if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what will!”

I have had a very long, busy day today. Not a “bad” day, just a day where I’ve had to jump from one place to another to another. According to my LifeCycle app, I spent two hours and 32 minutes on the road, and two hours and 12 minutes at the doctor’s —that was for two doctor’s appointments. I sandwiched lunch in between both appointments (pun slightly intended) and was able to come home and rest for a couple of hours before getting back in the car, driving to the church building, where I spent a little over half an hour rehearsing with our praise team before, once again, getting back in the car again and coming home. At the moment, I am in my living room, on the couch, next to a space heater. 

I occasionally sing alto on my praise team. While I am not a Madonna, a Billie Holiday, or even a Taylor Swift, I can carry a tune and I’ve learned to sing a part that I did not grow up singing (I grew up singing soprano). Before the pandemic, we had eight people on stage - two sopranos, two altos, two tenors, and two basses - and we projected the words and music up on a screen. By doing that, I could follow the notes, and by singing next to an alto, I could pretty much learn my part and keep up.

The pandemic changed that.

When we went back to meeting together and singing on stage, we were reduced from eight singers to four singers . . .and because we were also doing (and we still do) an online service, we could no longer project the words and music together. Our “music screen” for our online audience is a “picture in picture” screen, and the only thing that will fit so that they are visible are the words. 

I’m not the world’s most confident alto, and I’m afraid going to four singers brought that out. 

Fortunately, our worship leader believes in a lot of praise, encouragement, and help when needed. He’s currently attempting to get practice recordings of the music we sing in separate soprano/tenor and alto/bass tracks. We have some music already in those practice tracks; if you listen to them in stereo, one ear has the soprano/tenor and the other has the alto/bass. If you’re wearing earbuds and want to listen to your part, just put in the earbud that plays your channel and start listening. 

I’ve had trouble getting the alto part at times, and on one occasion, our worship leader asked his wife, will you sing the part while Tina records it? (His wife is a wonderful singer.) I appreciated her help and I got through the next service.  (Our worship minister once texted me that I got it right more often than not. I keep remembering that when I am feeling shaky on my singing.)

This week, the two songs we’re doing have recordings, but not separate channels for soprano/tenor and alto/bass.

We use an app called Planning Center, which helps church worship leaders with their scheduling and also contains copies of the music we’re using on a particular week. The music is loaded in a PDF file and the recordings are loaded in mp4 or whatever format they happen to be in. 

I am scheduled to sing alto on Sunday.

So, since I was going to spend what turned out to be over two hours on the road today . . . I put that time to good use.

I downloaded both songs from Planning Center to my iPhone, and played them on a loop while driving to the vein doctor’s office (legs look good but left one needs a bit of a tweak), while driving to lunch, while driving down to the urologist’s office for a look at my bladder (which included a trip through the ‘needs its own circle of Dante’s Inferno intersection’, a.k.a. I-285 and GA State Road 400), and then while driving back to the church building for rehearsal. 

The result?

Well, I think it was halfway decent singing. 

Sunday will tell!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

(PS: If absolutely none of this makes sense, it’s because it’s nearly 9:20 p.m., I’ve been on the road and at the doc’s and at practice, and I wanted to write before bed because I’ve committed myself to writing every day. Consider this a practice run, or a draft that is so rough you can feel the bumps on it.)