The church, the piano, and me

Our church meets in rented space at a college, and we have use of the grand piano at the front of the meeting hall. We've heard many talented people play it over the years, both regulars and guest musicians. Sometimes we have people playing the trumpet or cello or something in addition, but most of our church music is based around the piano.

Recently we have been a bit short on regulars, so I offered to fill in here and there. So far it's been just prelude music and offertories (small church, short offertories!), but I may end up doing a service during the summer.

That's both more and less of a stretch than it sounds. I actually did play for evening services at a small church during university, although I had no church training other than "regular" piano lessons and a few years doing Sunday-School-style guitar chords. "Sunday School" is the style I identify with most. I don't do honky-tonk, jazz, or even classical very well. Too many notes make me huff and puff, and glissandos are not my thing. But I can pound out VBS songs all right...so at this point I'm what you'd probably call an "okay" pianist. I can carry people through a hymn, but let's just say I know my limits.

My other limitation is that we don't have a piano in the Treehouse. We do have an electronic keyboard that has slightly less than the full 88 keys. It's good for practicing anything not involving too many octaves. And I am very, very rusty. My playing fingers are kind of like old dancing legs--too many muscles not used for too long. Oh...and I also don't have a lot of prelude-offertory-type music sitting around.

So my strategies have taken a couple of directions.

1. Get to church EARLY (before most people are there) and sweat over the grand piano for awhile.

2. Use online resources for music and technique. Guess what? There are whole websites and video tutorials devoted to church pianists, improvisation, and getting better than "just" playing what's in the hymn book. (Should-be-obvious tip that I hadn't thought of: hymn books, at least the kind we use, are written for the benefit of the singers, not so much the instrumentalist. So you can do things like play the tenor notes with the right hand--or skip them--and play octaves with the bass notes.)

Favourite sites I've found:

The Church Pianist: This is Jenifer Cook's website. She updates it regularly, so the most recent posts are about American patriotic music for today, the 4th of July. Look for her videos on You-tube (linked from her site as well) and her free (and not free) arrangements of hymns, rated by difficulty. I used her arrangement of Jesus Loves Me last week.

Jenifer Cook links to James Koerts' site and his arrangement of For the Beauty of the Earth, which I've also used. I liked "10 things not to say to your church pianist."

Free Piano Lessons for the Church Pianist

Greg Howlett's Free Christian Piano Lessons and Piano Music

The index to the RUF Hymnbook Online, with symbols to show which hymns have free printable piano music. I like O The Deep Deep Love of Jesus.

There's lots out there...and a lifetime to learn more.