Monday, August 31, 2015

2015-8-31 Re: oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin' elder-boy

{note:  some of this letter is in answer to the family's letters, so I left out that part. :) The rest is in answer to my question about practice before the big event!}

As for practice beforehand... not really. As far as the hymns, we just sang Praise to the Man and Called to Serve, so I didn't really need to practice those two that much. And I had about 45 minutes of playing prelude in front of the entire mission to warm up before Elder Christofferson showed up, so that was fine. As for the song, however... that was really the Spirit, I'm pretty sure. The two missionaries that sang, Elder Larsen and Elder Castañeda, wanted to do a vocal arrangement of "Because I Have Been Given Much," but the thing is, they didn't have any music. I got bussed out a day early to be able to practice with them (I had no information whatsoever beforehand), but we only ended up getting about an hour and a half. They had a CD with the arrangement they wanted to do, but it was all guitar and vocals, with a lot of changes from the original hymn. We talked it out, and we just practiced with me playing the hymn normally. But they asked for something a little cooler, so I essentially ended up making up an accompaniment in less than an hour that we performed the next day in front of an apostle without another practice session. So that was something a little new for me. Dad knows that I haven't written anything before, let alone on the fly like that. So it was pretty much the Spirit, because God didn't want bad music for Elder Christofferson. I'm not saying it was a masterpiece of arranging or anything, just mostly working with arpeggios of the chords and a steady ripple (quick notes, not sure what to call it) rhythm, but I think it turned out decently. They messed up more than I did! Hehe... But seriously, it ended up really well, I think.

Sorry, time's up!

Love you, and miss you!

Élder Rob Weatherford

No comments:

Post a Comment