I'm joining the guitar choir at church!

Definately gonna be a great learning experience. It might not be the most enjoyable thing out there but it should be fun still. Im glad for you. Good luck with it. I dunno what kind of church it is (catholic but dunno what kind of catholic) but the music may be boring. If it is it will still be a good learning experience, kinda like scales x 100.

Good luck. 8)

Keep us updated, I think it's great you'll be playing with your church.

I think music can be an important part of worship, and any churches ministry.

In my opinon music can inpspire, and touch ones heart and soul like nothing else, this goes for all forms of music whether it christian or mainsream.

I feel so fortunate, the church I attend has very contemporary music, guitars both acoustic and electric, saxs, drums, violins, eclectric keyboards, piano, you name it....It's awsome the music is a big part of every service.

I think it's great you'll get to be a part, just the fellowship alone should be great.

Regards
david

Being an atheist I cannot speak about the church-part, but even while ignoring that I still think it is a great experience. Playing with others, in public, is something you can't really learn with lessons, and this way you'll be forced to learn more then what you'd probably learn on your own. Have fun!

Definitely...to all beginners, get out and play with other people as soon as you can play the basic chords. Not only does it improve your playing rhytmically but it can also give you masses of confidence even if you just play around in the background. It'll also keep you interested while you go through the harder parts of learning and give you extra challneges as slipper man said. :wink:

Well, I sat in on the practice for the first time yesterday morning. The group was very welcoming. I explained to the lead guy that I was a beginner and just wanted to sit in on some practices for the time being until I learned the music, and he was just fine with that.

So what they do is practice the four songs that change from week to week- they prayers that are sung every week they don't practice. They let me play along with them as they did this- I didn't know all of the chords but I played the ones I did know, and I made sure I played kind of quietly. After the practice the leader commented that he thought I knew a lot of chords for only playing six months, so that made me feel pretty good. He alsopromised to give me copies of the music to the pieces they play every week so I can practice them.

When it came time for the service Obviously I didn't play- they asked if I wanted to sing with the group and I told them that that wouldn't really be a good idea with my voice.

I did tape record the music they played during the service so I could practice along with it at home.

In all, it was an enjoyable experience. Actually, the music is very beautiful. It is definitely more challenging than most of the rock-n-roll songs I have been working with- generally more chords and more frequent changes. So I am definitely not bored practicing it!

There are seven sung prayers that repeat each week. Three are very short (like 15 seconds or less). Two are long (I'd say 2-3 minutes), and two are in between. My goal is to get thje three short ones down this week and get through half of one of the long ones.

It may be until the end of the year that I'm ready to play during the service., but that would be okay with me.

This is great, my 15 year old nephew was learning to play guitar a few years back and got himsellf into a church group that played 3-4 songs a week in the service. his playing really took off after that :D :D and was able to incorperate his new found skills and techniques into playing hard rock and alternative styles 8) 8)

Sounds cool, I'm also in a church band, and I enjoy it a lot. Great learning experience. What songs are you guys playing?

What songs are you guys playing?

RollnROCK-

Most of what we do is from a hymnal entitled "Glory and Praise", since that's what's available in the pews. For example, the songs we did last week were "Seek The Lord", "Service", "Turn To Me", and "Lord Of Glory". Next we we do "Remember Your Love" and "Glory & Praise To Our God" from the same hymnal in addition to "Gather Us In" and "You Are Mine" from another publication.

Do you folks do any of those? I go to a Catholic Church, so I am not sure if the hymns are any different for other denominations.

Things have changed. I played guitar in a Catholic youth choir as teenager in the seventies. The songs we did were congregational faves such as Morning Has Broken, Peace Train and One Tin Soldier. At that time the Catholic Church actually approved those for liturgical use. The stuff from 'Godspell' was popular too. Not so these days, I'd be willing to bet -- the Vatican's been reining in the American Catholic for some time now. No matter, that was a good time.

Morning has Broken at least is still okay. It appears in some hymnals, and I've heard it done once or twice in the past few years. The others, though, you are right.

We do have a separate teen service at our parish, and they have what i understand to be a pretty serious group- with drums and all. They might get more daring with thier selection. I haven't been to that service myself since it is on Sunday evenings and it does tend to run long.

Now my curiosity is up and I may have to check them out.

Week two-

Went to practice this morning; they loaded me down with music books- four diferent ones plus some loose material! Good thing I don't have to learn it all- they only do certain ones.

This afternoon whilst watching my Ravens win (sorry about that, Cowboy fans- NOT!) I practiced the seven sung prayers they do every week. I feel pretty good on about four of them and need a little more work on three others.

The thing is- now they want to break me in on the Thanksgiving Day service! Boy, do I have a lot of work to do over the next few days! But it's good that they feel confident enough in me to let me play so soon. Well, I expect the Thanksgiving service draws a small crowd- since it's not a Sunday, so that's probably a good opportunity.

They say they're going to do some patriotic stuff- like America The Beautiful and God Bless America. The leader is e-mailing me the chords to those since they're not in those big books.

I'll let you all know what happens.

As long as they are leting you reherse you must show some promise. Thanksgiving then Advent, Christmas At least there is a bit of a break till Lent.

Joking, Good luck, break a leg.

I DID IT!

This morning (Thanksgiving) marks my official public debut on giutar, a mere seven months after I started this ordeal! Lastr Sunday, after two practices, the group said they'd break me in today. I originally figured it'd take a couple of months to learn the music well enough, but the leader said at the two week mark that he thought I was ready, so I said "O--K".

Well, you know it was the strangest thing, I wasn't even nervous or anything. I think that's beacause all of the other members were so supportive. They all said they'd been where I'd been before and all that stuff. The leader (Dave) e-mailed me the chords on Tuesday- it was patriotic stuff-America The Beautiful and My Country Tis Of Thee, I had one day to practice it.

So I said to Dave this morning, well, I still don't know all of the music but I'll play what I know and not play what I don't know, and he said "fine". So that's what I did. I actually played through all of the songs, very lightly strumming on parts I wan't comfortable with and more agressive on the parts I knew.

My wife, who is a singer with the choir, stood right next to me.

Man, I was having a great time playing during the service. I really felt good that I was doing something productive with the guitar after what I felt was so short a time.

After the service, Dave told me that I blended in well with the group, and I was also complimented by Dale, who was the guitarist who I first approached about joining.

I still have some more work to do- learning the parts I still don't know- after all there are seven prayers they do every week plus four unique hymns each week. But it sure felt good.

I need to say - maybe for the benefit of other beginners who are in my shoes- that this experience if joining the guitar chior is one of the best learning experiences. It makes me set a goal- to learn specific songs. It makes me work real hard at making my playing sound good, you know, polishing those rough edges, since I'm performing in front of people- several hunderd actually!. And the music itself is challenging. You learn all sorts of new chords.

For instance, in one hymn today it called for a progression of barre chords:

Bm7>CSharp m>C sharp m7>Bm7

I worked all summer on barre chords. I came out fine today.

And there's also the benefit of learning to play with other people.

I would recommend doing something like this to any aspiring beginner if he could find the right group.

Luckily, the group at my church is very accomodating of a beginner like myself, and I am happy that I can contribute to my church while learning something at the same time.

Thank you all for letting me share my experience on this board. I really find this board to be a great source of support since I read the posts of so many people who also have worked through the same challenges I've had as a beginner.

Now comes this Sunday...

Cool.

Sounds like a great experience and one should be proud of after 7 months. Nice motivational story as well.

Congrats.