My AM church gig was pretty good. When I got there, they had the stage set for a show with the orchestra that afternoon. I had no idea where to stand, so I ended up taking a position in between the organ and bass player.
Musically, it was another morning where I didn't contribute much. I played some tenor and some soprano, and played clarinet (as always) on the last song. I'm still really enjoying my new soprano mouthpiece, and after breaking in some softer reeds Saturday night, it's really fun now. The big song for the day had a little bit of space for me to blow in between verses by the choir, so I played soprano on it, which I think fit it better than tenor.
At one point in the service, the pastor mentioned that a dollar bill was backed by gold at the Federal Reserve--I wanted to raise my hand and vehemently disagree! Then he corrected himself--it was backed by silver. Wait--what? What year is it? President Nixon ended the gold standard in 1971. Weird stuff.
While we were on break, Wayne Viar walked by--he was playing drums in the contemporary service on the other side of the building. Always a pleasure! He was telling us about playing drums on some kind of national tour with somebody from ABBA. He had to run the backing tracks, too--all on an ADAT machine!
My PM church gig was a bit of a volume war--as in, I set the level so it was audible in the back of the church, and the band leader said it was too loud. Fine. I turned it down. Anybody complains, I know who to blame.
Musically, there wasn't anything that lent itself to my improvisatory noodling, so I didn't add much. I tried to make up for it with more attentive audio mixing, albeit at a lower volume.
