Indianapolis Temple

Indianapolis Temple

"Note"-able Oops

6/15/2009 07:11:00 PM Edit This 3 Comments »
I played the organ yesterday for sacrament meeting and during prelude I thought to myself "Wow, I am so out of practice that I'm beginning to hear things! Those 16 pedal stops sound horrible!" I continued to play the opening hymn which sounded all right but as soon as I played the first chord of the sacrament hymn I knew something was really wrong. I looked over to my left and found the problem- there is a transposing dial on the console of the organ (which I usually check before I start playing) and it should be set to 0. But this time it was set to 4 half steps lower! The really bad thing was that this particular hymn was in the key of F major which is a pretty low key. While I'm playing the first verse I'm trying to decide what to do. There are a lot of factors that I have to consider- Should I wait and turn it between verses? Should I just suffer through the hymn being 2 whole steps too low? Can the basses even hit those low notes? The sopranos are probably thinking "What is going on?" because they're singing low A's. While I am thinking of all the scenarios I am messing up the first verse because it's hard to think through things and play at the same time. I decide to correct the dial between the first verse and the second verse and when I start the second verse I could hear the whole congregation do this weird glissando while they adjusted to the new key. The bishop almost got whiplash when he turned his head to look at me so he could figure out what was going on. Oh, the life of an organist. (This happened to a friend of mine except that he was playing Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains 2 whole steps too high.)

3 comments:

Marly C said...

Hi Val! I'm glad you found my blog. That is a hilarious story!Probably funnier looking back on it then when it was actually happening. Your family is beautiful:-)

Emilia said...

I had a far more interesting story going on in my head for you. I figured you had just started off in the wrong key, realized quickly what had happened, but mentally transposed the rest of the verse and then went to the right key for the rest of the song. the Bishop was pretty funny to watch, though. ;)

Valerie said...

Haha, yeah, I'm not Malcom :)