“Are you a professional?”

Someone asked me this in the middle of church last week, and since it was the middle of church, all I could say was “yeah,” to which she replied “I can tell”.

Professional what, you ask?  Musician, of course!  I sang special music for the first time at our church last Sabbath.  Since I’m a music snob and a perfectionist, I opted to accompany myself for the first time.  I’m not totally opposed to using mics, but for the small church, it was totally not necessary.  So I’m singing along, adjusting the ridiculously loud piano as I went so that there was a good piano/vocal balance.  As I started the 2nd verse, I see the pastor get up and go to the pulpit to get a microphone.  I’m thinking, “oh, come on, I KNOW you can hear me!  Please don’t stick that in my face.  How am I going to tell him that the loud, high part is coming up?”  I opted to say nothing, but it still managed to totally distract me, enough that I wasn’ able to get my mojo back in time to play the tricky part that I’d been practicing for a couple of weeks.  Vocally, it was fine, but totally flubbed the piano part.  Grrrr . . .can’t say I was jazzed about that!

When talking with the pastor after church, we discovered that they needed the mic for the recording.  I’m thinking, couldn’t you just have let this one special music go unrecorded?  Here’s the music snob in me, but seems like it was kinda rude to be rejiggering the mics mid-song, kinda like he was talking or doing a little dance or something.  Oh well, obviously not everyone has the same take as me.

Anyway, back to the professional comment.  I sit down and the gal behind me asks me that question.  She and her DH are both professional musicians (he’s a composer and she has a masters (I think) in piano), so we chatted after church.  She offered to accompany me in the future, which is great news!  Maybe then I won’t get a mic shoved in front of me mid-song!!