One of the songs we did at church this morning was relatively unfamiliar to me with various challenges like the timing of the chord changes. Although I get to pick most of the songs when leading the music, there is a certain amount of negotiation with the service leader too and it is good to make time for newer material as well as some safe choices. I thought I had the song down fairly well yesterday but, in pre-service practice, it was sounding off until I noticed that it was probably to do with the fact that the key and the starting note were both C but the starting chord was an F2/A. I think I was probably singing an F instead when trying to jump in cold and that was easily fixed by hitting a C chord to provide an anchor before before starting the song proper.

When I lead now, I tend to use my iPad with an app called OnSong; this means I can share my arrangement of the chords across several screens for the rest of the band and also transpose up or down as required. Unfortunately, when we got to the song in the context of the service, I forgot that I’d scrolled down during the practise and so I kicked off with the second verse. Whoops! That would explain why the congregation was strangely quiet.

Still, at least I got the right starting note! Meanwhile, not checking the starting point is a(nother) mistake to try and avoid in future.