Friday, September 12, 2014

Bass Pro No

September 12, 2014

About ten years ago, the fellow who played bass for our church band moved away, leaving us without that lower end for the worship team. It's funny how that sometimes works. We've had as many as three bassists, but suddenly the band was bassless (think about it). I've played guitar since I was fourteen, but only barely adequately. When people asked me if I played guitar, my standard response is, "I play at it." But I did what I could, and when Wayne Saxton and I traveled to Portland Oregon in 1993 to learn about small group ministry from Dale Galloway, we came back fired up for small groups and lay pastor ministry, but we had also seen what contemporary worship looked like. I had never seen anything like it before; when we decided to transform our newly minted 8:30 am service to this new format, suddenly things took off.

It was pretty basic back then. Wayne played bass, a leftover from his high school rocker days. I played acoustic guitar, and we projected words to praise choruses with an overhead projector, and although it was pretty simple and definitely unpolished, it worked, and the church grew.

Over the years, things improved quite a lot. We added a drummer or two, a couple guitarists, and eventually a keyboardist. But that day when we needed a bassist, I said to myself, "How hard can that be? Four strings instead of six." Well, I found out how hard it could be. I can strum guitar and sing all day long. When I'm playing bass, it's all I can do to hit the right notes; only occasionally can I chime in with harmonies. I get lost in the songs, often having no idea where we are. I regularly hit wrong notes. At times, it's pretty dismal. But I like the bass! I've actually learned the notes on the fretboard (most of them, anyhow), and see the fingering patterns I didn't even know existed before.

With all that being said, I can't look at sheet music and be able to play a bass line written there. I was never too good at figuring out the bass clef; even playing the bassoon, I didn't so much learn the note positions as I associated the lines and spaces with particular fingerings. I have to think about what note a given fingering represents. I played with what might be termed a sort of musical shorthand.

At the beginning of the summer, I sent my bassoon to a repairman outside of Philadelphia. A few weeks ago, he called me up to discuss my instrument, which turns out is turn of the century-well over a hundred years old. It can be made serviceable, but he thought I might be better off spending the money on a newer instrument. I haven't decided yet, so he still has the bassoon, the fall band schedule has already started, and I don't have an instrument to play. When I wrote to our conductor about my predicament, she asked if I were interested in any other instrument, whereupon I mentioned that I've wanted for some time to learn stand up bass. Unfortunately, I don't have one of those, either, and neither does the school. So she asked if I had access to an electric bass, which of course, I do.

So this afternoon, I had my first actual music lesson on the bass, from one of the college music majors, a young man whose passion is the stand up bass, but who knows far more than I about any bass you can imagine. My homework is to learn the pentatonic and minor scales and begin reading actual sheet music so that I will be able to play bass in the New Horizons Jazz Band. They're doing some pretty classy standard big band jazz, and I'm pretty pumped about joining them. I'm way over my head and out of my league, but I'm going to give it my best. After all, who wants to retire to just do what he's always done? Not me! I want to keep learning and growing. Tonight I am thankful for Fredonia State College's New Horizons music program, for young men like Vincent, willing to teach an old dog some new tricks, and for the opportunity to keep growing, all the while meeting new people. I hope I can enrich their lives as they do mine. Who knows? I might actually get good at this!

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