My wife has a good voice and a good ear for music and she wants to join the church choir and of course she should. The problem is that she will not join the choir unless I join as well, even though she knows I cannot sing a lick (unless I am jointly singing “American Pie” at some wedding).

Joining the church choir is difficult for me since I cannot even read music and my voice is different everyday. If I try to look at the notes in the song book I often lose the words as well. Even when I am in the pews they are often already on the third stanza by the time I get the hymnal open to the right page and get my reading glasses on. (I don’t even have a decent pair of reading glasses because the $5 pair I got from Wal-Mart’s years ago is now too weak and the price for a new pair went up to $20!  As thrifty as I am I do not want to pay twenty bucks for a pair of $5 reading glasses!)

Some days in church I can hardly hear myself sing but maybe that is because I am half deaf. Maybe I should take the hearing aids the VA issued out of the drawer but I don’t know what use they would be in my ears since I cannot hear as good with them on. I used to have a hearing aid that almost worked until it stopped working. That’s when the VA told me they now have more advanced hearing aids and I needed hearing aids for both ears. Problem is, I  never could hear anything with the new hearing aids they gave me and the batteries die after a few hours. So you might as well put corks in your ears (that’s probably not a bad idea in some cases, and now you know why some people like hearing aids)

When I am singing I often wonder what the person in front me is really hearing coming out of my mouth. I never can reach those high notes, so often in the middle of the song I have to drop down to a lower key (if that is what they call it). I don’t know if you are supposed to do that but what other alternative does a person have if they do not have the vocal range required in the song?

I guess I could just sing the base notes if I could follow them (they usually are not near the words). Anyway, I tried that and I always run out of air trying to get enough wind across my vocal cords to make enough sound to be heard in that lower frequency. People who sing base must have huge lungs or amplified vocal cords. I read where some professional singers now have sound systems that modifies their pitch when they get off key before it even comes out of the speakers. Maybe everyone in the choir could sing into that system. I guess that two hundred thousand dollar church sound system will have to be replaced with a two million dollar system. But, if we are singing to the Lord I guess the music committee board could make a strong case for the expense.

I am pretty sure that we will start working on a Christmas cantata soon. I found practicing for cantatas are about as much fun as hunting for snipes on a rainy night in Georgia. I always expect to hear the choir director to tell me to just move my lips and not sing. The choir directors always think you can read music and actually figure out how to get back to the start of the next stanza.  😉  Singing the wrong words is pretty hard to fake.  Someone needs to write a book called “Choir for Dummies”.  I think to join the choir you should have to pass a course called Choir 101. That would leave me out.

Heck, half the time I cannot even spell the word choir and no wonder everything about music is so confusing. Music is really a different language.  I tried learning  Spanish a couple of times in my spare minutes and I still haven’t a clue what anyone is chattering about. Mexicans speak so fast their words get past your brain before your ears hear them. I guess with their large families they have to say everything they know as fast as they can without ever taking a breath, because as soon as they take the breath they lost their turn in line. But I digress, learning music at choir practice is much like trying to learn German by singing German beer garden songs.

I know I am going to be forced to join the choir, it has happened before. There really is no free will here! I really see no way out unless I can fake laryngitis for the duration.

I do have some food for thought though. Everyone in church should just join the  choir and then the pastor could preach to the choir from the back of the church.  It is logical because then they could just decide to switch sides and the choir problem will be solved and the pastor could literally preach to the choir. Think about it.