Saturday, February 05, 2011

Two Left Hands

I was asked to play the organ today for a funeral. I don't really consider myself an organist. I'm a pianist who fakes playing the organ. lol I always feel like I need to do a good job when I play for funerals because the people are in mourning, and the funeral is a tribute to their departed loved one. Well, today it was an awkward tribute on my part.

For those who don't know, I should explain that the organ has many different "stops". "Stops" are controls that determine which sounds are made by the organ. Each stop represents the sound from a different instrument. So one stop might be the violin, and another might be a flute. There are also what are known as "preset" buttons that are used to arrange ahead of time a set of stops. The organist could decide ahead of time which sounds were best for a certain song, then "set" those stops using the preset button. When the time comes to play the song, all they have to do, instead of flipping each individual stop that they want, is to hit one preset button.

Today I was playing the closing song without any problems when suddenly my finger accidentally hit a "preset" button. Suddenly the organ started blaring! It wasn't necessarily a bad sound, but it was certainly unexpected and loud. lol I saw the chorister glance quickly over at me, probably wondering what the heck I was doing. lol I have never used the preset buttons before, and am not that familiar with this particular organ, so in that split second of chaos, I tried to keep playing, while quickly looking for the cancel button. But my choice was to either look at the music, and continue the song, or stop playing while I searched for the cancel button. I decided the least distracting thing to do was to continue playing with the preset sounds, but just lower the volume. I would like to think that everyone thought I did that intentionally, but it was too awkward of a place in the song to be intentional. lol The one redeeming thing about my playing for them, even with a mistake, is that I play for free. I guess you get what you pay for, right? lol

3 comments:

Looney said...

More reason not to do our good deeds in order to be seen and heard by men!

Nene said...

I did that one time and it was not only a blaring, but a horrible sound! I had not idea how to stop it, so I actually hurried and turned the organ off, then back on and then his the preset button to get back to the settings I was on before. Very embarrassing! I feel your pain! :0+

Ramana Rajgopaul said...

I wish that I had been there Delirious!