I wouldn’t call myself a worship musician or a church musician but I do play in church for worship quite often. There have been times when it’s been a thing I did every Sunday and times where I’m hardly ever doing it. All the while I have been doing an online Friday service as part of the evening prayer series for my church.
As you can imagine being able to play three instruments competently (guitar, percussion and bass) does make me a versatile fit. On the other hand not being able to sing is a big deal in most worship services and situations. They really really expect you to sing a song or harmony or both and I don’t.
But it is meaningful and fulfilling to lend my musical voice to this meaningful situation involved with worship. On this occasion I was playing with Rachel Coleman who used to teach for me at my music school at River eights School of Music and Larry Campbell on bass. Larry is famous for playing a lot of local scene and it had quite the storied career and it’s always of honor and a pleasure to play with him.
The setup is quite simple, we show up a couple hours before the service, at 5:00 o’clock, and set up the equipment and run through the tunes. It’s usually about seven tunes, one for opening, one for gathering, one for the setting of the table, two during communion, and one to ‘sing our way home’.
They do record these services but it’s pretty dodgy. It’s a volunteer thing so some weeks sounds better than others plus I don’t think the computer that is connected to Facebook and YouTube live is hardwired so every time I listen back to it it’s like… well I try to remember I need to bring up my own record to find out what it actually sounded like.
Anyways so all you get is the idea and a picture of the equipment I used on that particular evening.
Robert Burton
info@riverheightsmusic.com
204-487-3664
2025 Corydon Ave. #202
Winnipeg Manitoba
R3N 1P5