‘At our church, we’ve got a wonderful pianist who’s got a diploma you know. We’ve also got an opera singer, la de da.’
‘Church musician one-up-man-ship’ is one of those games many of us would love to be able to play. ‘Poor St. Albert’s — they have to get by with someone who’s only got grade 6. How terribly mediocre.’ The game is all a bit of a waste of time though, as one of the things you learn doing a job like mine is that there is a difference of skills between trained classical musicians and church musicians. I’m a living example of someone who mistakenly thought that having grade 8 on the piano would set me up as a really good church musician (though maybe that’s partly because I only got a merit).
Plinky plonky
My misconception was painfully confirmed when I was asked to play the electronic keyboard for my Christian Union when a student. It was disastrous, and doubly embarrassing as I was the organ scholar for my college. My playing was as wooden and plinky-plonky as you could ever imagine. Like every bad workman, I blamed my tools. The keyboard, to be fair to myself, was plinky-plonky, but what took the bigger blame was the sheet music.
