PnP Rehearsal
It was a disaster. Eugene was on bass (Jeremy was absent because of a miscommunication), Leon on keys and Ps Meng Charm on guitar. With thouse cats playing, I was forced to be on my toes. Man, I wasn't. Instead, I was everywhere except my toes. I felt I was out of balance, the mix on the monitor wasn't what I was used to at G2. The metronome was not set properly because there was no sub-mixer for me this time. Now I gotta go to G2 and get back that Rolls mixer that I used to mix the click to the monitor mix. I didn't felt good, so if I didn't feel good, the music must have been crap. So if I ain't in the groove, the band, no matter how good they are will be out of groove.
After the rehearsal I had a quick crash course on reading music charts with Ps Meng Charm. I also listen to what he meant by "funky" (For "All heavens declare) as he tap the top of the grand piano as we go through the chart. It was a great 7 minute lesson. Now I sort of realised what he meant when the chart stated the groove is "funky". It doesn't mean I have to play a Zorro or David Garibaldi kind of funk. That was what I was trying to do when I saw the word "funk". It basically means to play with a 16" feel. And the groove he tapped on the piano top was simple and groovy. It was so cool!
This morning I decided to try a different intro for "Made to worship" and I thought Steve Gadd's "50 Ways" groove fit the song really nice. And I can execute that better than the original intro with that dreaded open roll at beat 4 of the intro. I imagined that it would fit well. I asked Pastor if we could have another rehearsal, at least for Jeremy and I would love to be there to loosen up a bit.
Well, may be I set the bar too high for me and I just felt like shit after the rehearsal. But it's good shit because I am very driven to do will even though it's PnP. The point about playing for church is not just to be excellent technically, but also to worship and enjoy mixing worship with technical excellence. Sounds like a tall order, but I know it'll definitely make me the musician I want to be.
