Getting to Know You

I haven't changed jobs very much.  Oak Grove is only my third full-time position.  I was at Embry Hills for three years and Decatur First for thirteen.  This week I've been thinking some about getting to know Oak Grove.

It takes a long time to really get to know a place.  General guidance is that you learn the most during your "year of firsts."  By a year in, you'll have experienced everything the church typically does at least one time.  That was true for me at Decatur First.  By a year in I had a good handle on a lot of things about how the church operated.  I mostly knew where to go for what and what all the expectations were for the programming I would oversee.  And so, a year in, I knew enough to begin adding my own fingerprints (see previous post) to the ministry.  I knew where the bathrooms were, and I knew that the first floor wasn't, in all cases, the ground floor (though it was in some cases).  I could start new programs, and if something wasn't going well I could troubleshoot from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance.

In addition to learning about the nuts and bolts of the church, I got to know a lot of people that first year.  But with so many, it was like drinking from a fire hose.  I was lucky to catch a couple of names here or there.  What I mean is I got to know a little about a lot of people.

Actual picture of me trying to learn all the people.

The good news is that while the fire hose was wide open on Sunday when I was trying to get to know people, during the week I could really apply myself to figuring out the church and the ministry.  I could have long talks with the directors of the other work areas and the pastors.  I could study the budget and thumb through the catalogs of music previously sung at the church.

It looked something like this except I was
a lot heavier than that guy is.

My transition to Oak Grove went...nothing like that.  As I type this, the sum total of normal traditional services I have attended at Oak Grove stands at...1.  I attended once a full year before I started my work.  I've been able to do precious little of the information gathering and getting to know the institution or the general population of the church.  And with gatherings limited in number, I've been able to get to know a relatively small number of people.

But I've been able to get to know them relatively well...and much more quickly.  This Sunday there are about 25 youth participating in a virtual youth choir and about 30 adults participating in virtual chancel choir.  I know each of them reasonably well...far better than I knew the Chancel Choir a couple of months into my time at Decatur First.

One thing in particular I know VERY well is their voices.  Individually.  Honestly I didn't know the individual voices at Decatur First super well even at the time I left.  I knew some of them very well, sure, but since we sang as a choir for the most part, there were a lot of singing voices I wouldn't be able to identify.  I think I can pretty much identify my entire chancel choir by their singing voice right now.

WARNING: Music dorkery ahead. If you don't want to dork out about music, skip to the green arrow!

That's led me to a point of personal growth I did not expect.

Once I have all the videos on my computer, the first step of making the virtual choir is to phase all the voices together (line them up so they are singing at the same time).  The second step is to separate them into parts and adjust the voices so they sound like a choir rather than a bunch of individuals.  The way I do this is to guess where everyone needs to be based on history then pull down any voices I hear popping out.  Then I go to each voice, pull it way up, and then fade it down until I don't hear it.

From time to time I still don't wind up with the right sound.  I think that's because pulling the voices down like that sometimes leaves you with the lowest common denominator, which isn't what choral sound wants to be.  When this happens, I find myself asking what is missing from the sound.  Is it too thin?  Too muffled?  Does it need more core?  More fundamental?  More ring?

That's where the deeper knowledge of the voices comes in really handy.  You may have heard voices categorized into flutes and reeds, like organ pipes.  While that's a significant oversimplification, it is helpful.  If the sound is too shrill I can add a little more of the flute-y voices to compensate.  If the sound is muddled I can add a little more of the reedy voices to compensate.

What's most interesting to me about this is that if I only add more of one voice (a reed, for example), I will hear that person stick out.  But if I add all the reeds together, it changes the sound without sacrificing the unification of the sound, which is very cool.

So while I still don't like virtual choirs, since a big (BIG) part of my job right now is putting them together, I may as well learn something, and what I'm learning is something of the miracle that is diverse voices forming a unified sound in an up-close an personal way I've never been able to experience before.

If you skipped here, welcome back!  If you've stuck with me through the dorkery, I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Here's the thing.  As the new director of music ministry at OGUMC I have a lot to learn both about the institution and the people, and the pandemic is forcing me to learn those things in a completely different way from how I did it last time I did it.

But the REAL point here is that getting to know you is important to me--just as important as getting to know the building and the budgets and how to turn the exterior lights on.  It's hard for me to reach out to everyone, so I hope you'll reach out to me.  We can talk on zoom or on the phone or at a distance on the porch.  I may have been at this for almost 6 months now, but I still feel brand new.