What people find "singable" is always an issue in any church setting, Mmario. A lot of Sunday AM musicians say that ANY new song (new to the people) takes several repeats to become part of the music the people find singable. The choir will introduce a new piece as an offertory, then repeat it as a congregational piece a few weeks later, and hope it sticks the third time around. Last night at evensong, in another parish, a well-known text was new to music I had never heard. There was not much singing going on, and no choir leading. Finally one stroing but pretty unattractive voice took it up and we all followed; bt the third verse most of us had most of the tune but then there was no fourth verse.

At other churches using praise music it's the same thing. No notes most of the time, because the note books are very expensvicee, so the words are usually put up on an overhead projector or there's a words-only book. A congregation develops a body of songs they are comfortable with, everyoine gets very excited, then it either gets stale with songs always-repeated or else the band intorudces now songs and the people have as much trouble going into new material as any Sunday AM tradtional-songs congregation. In any event, if you are a newcomer to any congregation, the body of music that congregation uses is going to seem strange for a long while. Our Sat. night folks now include an extended family of 6 former Baptists. Naturally, they don't know the same songs we do. They push me to look into Baptist hymnody for new material, and when they first started coming I made a serious effort to find songs they might know-- but then the rest of the folks didn;t know THOSE songs.

Now, since it began, our Saturday group have broken all those precedents about "new music is not singable". They've been notable for being excited about new, rare material, and that's kept it frsh for everyone.

But in church life as anywhere else, you can't please everyone and some people tend to be more positive in their approach to saying what they think, and some people tend to be more negative in their manner. It's all information-- you try not to take criticism personally and to hear the infromation instead. You do the best you can, to present material you hope will be useful to people's spirituality, but if they don't TELL you what is working, all you can go by is the atmosphere after the service ends. I sure haven't seen anyone cringing their way in, or out-- although a little personal feedback has been positively offered on a regular basis by several folks, and this has provided great guidance to us over the years. One lady in particular has surprised me over and over; she seems like a very conservative, traditional lady, but she's been coming regularly since we started many years ago and she has liked it all! I told her, one night, that I look her way often to see if a new song is pushing the envelope to much-- if SHE doesn't approve, I know I've gone too far. She was very energetic in assuring me that she has liked it ALL and I shouldn't worry. (Of course she's right that a worried mind is not a good approach in church!)

I'm very grateful our band has the process it does. We always-- no matter which of us has picked the music for the night-- bring more pieces than will be needed. We run through them in rehearsal. The band reaches a consensus on which ones will work best, before the night's final choices are made. We are not limited, as a Sunday AM choir is, to the hymns listed in a bulletin; we announce them as we go.

We also have the option of adjusting the choices as the service unfolds; when we play out of an existing songbook, sometimes the choices change on the fly. I've had one song we were planning for a closing, for instance, and then I might see that the opener didn;t go well and I might pass a note along the line to the band that I'm chaging the closing because it's similar to the opening. Or we might make a change on the fly when a person who has made a request several weeks back has not been there the week we did their request-- they'll come in after the service starts and we go to their request instead of doing the planned material.

Of course, it's helpful to have musicians who are capable of that degree of flexibility. It would be a lot to expect of a new player.

~Susan