I will be thinking of you spiritbear - St. James-Rosemount is the church of my childhood & confirmation   I have many good memories of it & the fine people there. 

What's it like to hear a choir actually perform music you've composed?

I have to admit that I'm not always satisfied - the songs are designed for congregations to sing, and unfortunately when a choir sings, the impact of the lyrics is generally lost (unless the words are printed or projected as well, but it's very unusual for choirs to do that for their anthems). The general rule in the UCCan is usually that if it's not in a hymnal, it can't be sung by the congregation - usually because of the difficulty in putting the song and words in their hands. Although the advent of projection makes this restriction unnecessary, it's a hard habit to break. With many churches following the lectionary, I find that hymns with meanings that are more than superficial or that tie in well with the theme (beyond a few words like "light" or "love") are hard to find, as are new melodies to fill them out, so I generally write to fill in both of these gaps. But even at my home church, when my songs are sung, they are often ones that have been used before, even if there are better ones to fit the theme.  Music in the UCCan still has a long way to go in engaging more than a small demographic.

Nevertheless, when my songs are sung, I'm grateful that there is at least an inkling of interest in becoming more musically diverse and engaging.

St. J-R is a bit far for me to venture just for a service but if the weather is good ... who knows? Like carolla, I grew up in that church (she was earlier than me, IIRC) and know that there are still some folks there who would remember me so it might be worth the trip. Not likely, though. Hope it goes well, spiritbear.

Mendalla

Happy travels spririt bear. I did pass the booklet of songs you gave me on to our music director/accompaniest. Our words are on the projector but so far none of yours.

Maybe soon.

As a complete non-musician, but avid listener, I find your comment interesting spiritbear, about feeling the lyrics are 'lost' when sung as an athem, rather than expressed by the congregation itself.  I had never considered that before.   

I must say - I am quite in awe of those who can compose & perform music - and very grateful.  So I hope you will enjoy your visit to K-W & the accolades that no doubt will come your way.  I imagine it will be a proud moment for your mom. 

Hey SB   I was just just thinking-some times the words to anthmes are printed as an isert in the bulletin.

Yes, Tabitha, for those restricted to older technology, printing words in the bulletin is perfectly valid, if time-consuming (although some already complain about the length of the bulletin!).  It's also time consuming to to put lyrics together so that they can be projected. In my congregation, where we are able to project, the extra time is one of the reasons I don't project all our choir's anthems (it already takes about two hours per week to put the slides together). The other reason is that sometimes the lyrics just aren't the focus of the anthem. And then there's the issue of what to do with countermelodies (part of the choir is singing something different than another part). Tricky to sort that out, although it's usually only the bigger choirs that handle that degree of complexity.

But it's an interesting question: setting aside the issue of the extra work needed, what do people think of projecting lyrics to choir anthems or putting them in bulletins?

I think it's a good idea. There are a number of reasons that people may not understand the words the choir is singing. Here's a few off the top of my head:

1. The choir may not enunciate well.

2. There may be people in the congregation who cannot hear very well.

3. There may be people in the congregation who recent immigrants and who are learning to speak English (or at least trying to figure out the accent!).

That said, if you project the words and/or put them in the bulletin, in all likelihood you are going to find people like me who are going to try to sing along. Be prepared!

heh spiritbear, are you using software designed for church projection?  Reason: I found when I used one (Carolla may remember the name), the time taken to project a service went to very little (from large)

Hope you are well, and who knows, maybe I will be able to make the service on sunday

Count me interested, too. We're working on doing this but are just doing Powerpoint slides at the moment.

Mendalla

Found it mendella and spiritbear: http://www.easyworship.com/

We had a thread on it a few years ago: http://www.wondercafe.ca/discussion/church-life/quick-question-software-used-worship-presentations

I tried it and really liked it.

I have my doubts that changing software would help in our case. Yes, we use powerpoint, but by choice we do not use commercially available backgrounds (and until we upgraded our projector brightness, backgrounds wouldn't have worked.)  Most slides are illustrated by photos of our congregation (which was one of the original "selling points") and tweaking those is often what takes the most time.

I do take short cuts to speed up slide assembly. Slides for hymns are generally taken from previous services. I have 9 years of services (each one titled with its date) on our church laptop and I have a very compact (self-written) piece of software that lets me instantly identify all the instances of when the hymn was used (also very useful in advising the minister that he has used the same song 4 times in as many months!). Old slides can be transferred quickly (I've been able to add an additional hymn five minutes before the service started, but only if there are no illustration changes).  If it's a Voices United hymn that hasn't been used before, there's software that can be bought from the UCCan that allows you to cut and paste the lyrics. (I post all my own songs to the web in .txt form so that they can be cut and pasted quickly as well).  More Voices doesn't have this option, so when a new song from MV is used, it must be typed in manually (at least the first time). 

So anthems would be similar - ie they would have to be typed in (and their format is often more difficult than standard hymns - eg less standardized stanza structure). It takes me about an hour or two a week to put the slides together, depending on the number of new elements. So Pinga, when you say "very little" time, I wonder if it would be shorter than that, especially if there is a lot of customization needed.

To answer your earlier question - yes, sometimes we do have anthem words included - often as an insert to the bulletin.  Often helpful with anthems done by the younger kids choir - even with good microphones etc. sometimes it is a little hard to hear their words.  We don't have projection option in our sanctuary, unfortunately.  Something to work on ... 

It is amazing how quick it is. 

I adjusted on the fly in the service.  Pull down a free trial and see what you think

I also had a 11yr old (or so), running the service without a problem....

I just downloaded EasyWorship to look into and had a rather sad epiphany. It's Windows software. My minister is a Mac/iPhone geek so someone else who has Windows will have to work with him on prep'ing it for his services (the office possibly, though her hours are rather limited already). Anyone know of software like this that plays in both universes or is cloud-based or something? Also, the Bible piece is likely nice for a Christian church but will be of limited use for us UUs (I'm one of the few in our church who actually uses the Bible and I don't even use it every time I lead worship). IOW, I'm not sure it's worth what they are asking for us. I'll still look at it but I'm seeing some limitations in my world.

Mendalla

The bible piece isn't much good even for the UCof Canada, I found most of the videos weren't of value at the time that I looked, but, the easy layout was awesome.

Sorry, Mendella, I am a windows person.

So, really, am I. In fact, I am not particularly fond of Apple and would likely use some flavour of Linux if I was going to go off of Windows.

Mendalla

@ Mendalla - I did see this note - posted about 18 months ago - so possibly there is an easyworship version now for mac?

from: http://www.worshipsoftware.com/worship-software-review/easyworship-for-mac/

Spiritbear - so how was it?  Or did the weather perhaps interfere with your travel plans?

The weather did impact mine, sorry SpiritBear.  I hope we will have another opportunity.

Right - time to report back. Fortunately, weather did not interfere with my wife & me reaching K-W (and to drop off Spiritcub @ UofW) and getting to St. JR on time. The congregation was smaller than in my memory, only part of which would be due to weather issues. The choir sang skilfully and my very cold clarinet managed to pull off its obbligato role without any noticeable glitches. Lots of complimentary comments from congregation members.

The whole affair makes me wonder if other churches (esp in the SE Ont region) would be interested in a free instrumentalist some Sunday. Perhaps the deal might be that they would have to feature one of my songs. I've learned, however that the next step - get a congregation to sing a new song -  is an order of magnitude more difficult than having the choir sing it  (although it's always a good idea for the choir to "preview" a new song the week before).

Fortunately, my congregation (and especially our music director) is a bit more flexible that way. We'll be introducing a new song of mine (or at least one that's been waiting to be introduced for 4 years) at our church's anniversary worship service next week (and the congregation will be singing it). It's called "Fill Our Lives" (see http://www.crossroadsunited.ca/spirit#fulfill or click here to listen: http://www.crossroadsunited.ca/spirit/FILL_LVV.MID) which addresses what is sometimes missing from anniversary services: finding the courage to look ahead rather than dwelling on nostalgia for where we've come from.