I've never blogged about what I do nearly every Sunday, but yesterday's experience has warranted a post. I sing at UpStreet (the K-5 name for Sunday School at my church), specifically for the 2nd-3rd graders. Immediately after I started singing, our worship leader had to take a break from singing because she got callouses on her vocal cords. I literally became the leader my second Sunday in UpStreet. It was a little weird at first, but I've had a blast. The songs are NOT the typical churchy-songs sung by kiddos and I am learning new worship songs that cater to kids every single week. I honestly didn't know how much work it would take, but it's been one fun ride. Typically, there are two-four singers to a team, with one worship leader, but my group has been small. I have only sung with two other people twice and more often than not, I am singing with one other person. It makes sense, since there are only three people assigned to my group and our leader was recovering.
The production that is put on every Sunday is phenomenal. It's like Vacation Bible School on steroids every week. The kids anticipate UpStreet and you can tell they love coming to church. What the kids don't see is the vast number of volunteers it takes to put on the "show". In my one group at the 11 am service, there are no less than 15-20 volunteers (and multiply that by three groups for two services, you're looking at well over 100 volunteers...and that's just for elementary school children). One set of volunteers works the sound booth. Yes, Sunday school at Buckhead Church includes multimedia that you would expect to see at "big" church. The weekly productions are top-notch and engage the kids. I am always impressed.
Yesterday, while the worship team was on stage singing, the biggest technical glitch occurred during our first song. It's important to let you know that we sing to tracks. I should also note the sound booth people also record us every Sunday and the Buckhead church leader listens to all the services. Well, our first song started out as planned, we were singing and doing the hand motions and the kids were getting into it. Then, I heard another set of singers, singing the same song, but like 20 beats behind our worship team. It wasn't until the start of the second verse that I looked awkwardly at my worship team and also saw that people in the audience, especially the leaders, were giving quizzical looks at each other. I honestly thought we had gotten off track and what we were hearing was the back up singers on the track. Then, I realized that the singers were singing the song, not just the back up. I don't know how I kept singing, or kept the beat in my head, but for the next two minutes, I sang the song and my team followed my lead. I could see people swarm the sound booth in the back and they were frantically trying to fix the audio feed for us, but it was not working. Our track ended first and then the overlap track with the singers ended a few measures later. We still had one more song to sing and the same thing was happening! Two songs were playing, one with people singing and ours with just the music. The sound booth ended up killing our track and we sang with the track that had the singers on it. The second song worked out, but the first...I don't even want to remember it.
My worship team exited backstage and were still confused. We all thought the same thing. That we were hearing feedback from the singers next door through our speakers. But when we went backstage, we heard the next door 4th-5th grade singers singing away on the first song. They had not even been singing while we were singing!
Curiosity got the best of me and I waited until the kids were dismissed into their small groups and went to the sound booth to ask what happened. Apparently, the recorded singers from the 9 am service had started to play over our music. I got to listen to our recording and it sounded like a cacophony of sound colliding.
I wonder what the church leader is going to think of our recording this time...
The only other time I remember thinking, "the show MUST go on" was when I was in college. It was my very first clarinet performance of my music career and I was a freshman. My pianist had skipped a line of music and gotten off very badly. I remember crying afterwards because I thought I had messed up. The pianist insisted that I didn't pay her for the solo, that it was her fault, and I could tell she really felt awful. Every music teacher I have ever had insisted that the music must never stop. So even though the piano and I were clearly playing at two different places in the music, I kept playing. My clarinet professor marked me way down on my first performance, despite the fact that it really was not my fault. He even pointed out that the piano did a great job when we got off. But I guess I learned something from that experience.
The show must go on. No matter what.
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