Today I played the organ for Sacrament Meeting. When I first started playing the organ I thought it sounded a bit different than usual. "Maybe someone changed the organ registrations and added a 4' flute," went through my mind. Then I noticed that I couldn't hear the congregation singing very loudly. So I cranked up the swell pedals to add some volume. "That always get the crowd singing," I thought to myself. But it still didn't work. I got through the opening hymn, then the sacrament hymn. Still pretty quiet voices today. I went down to my seat after the sacrament hymn, and was immediately handed a note from the other organist, Andrea Diamond. It read, "Peggy, the transposing knob has been turned on and the music is being played too high." Skip was immediately at my side telling me the same thing. Sure enough, when I went up to the organ to play the closing hymn I saw that faint little red light indicating that the transposing feature was "on." I turned the knob to the right, 3 times before the light went off. "I get it! The congregation wasn't singing because I was playing the hymns 3 notes higher than written!" I had someone come up to me after the meeting and say, "I usually sing soprano, but today the bass parts were well within my range!"
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Why Aren't They Singing?!
Posted by Peggy at 10:39 PM
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3 comments:
You should increase it by one note each week until it's back up to three notes above but everyone is used to it and can see amazingly high. I imagine it sounding like everyone inhaled helium. Now that would be an interesting meeting!
One week in sacrament meeting months ago I was asked to play the piano (we were on campus where there is no organ). I had a similar experience. I started playing the song, and everything seemed fine and dandy until I got to the last line. Everyone stopped singing for the last line. I was so confused. What had I done? Did I mess up the song so horribly that no one wanted to sing along? I then quickly glanced at the program and realized that I had been playing the hymn one away from what we were supposed to be singing. The words went perfectly along with the hymn I was playing except for the fact that it was one line too short! I embarrassingly stopped and said, "How bout we sing the correct hymn?" Everyone got a nice chuckle, and the people preparing the sacrament had a couple of extra minutes to do so.
Every once in a while I'll sing the girl part with Karen in falsetto.
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