“Most Amusing/Embarrassing Experience in P&W”

[Micull]

The first time I rehearsed with my p&w group I was so nervous. I was so afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep up and that I would end up in a fetal position. But to my amazement I think I did well. Glory to God for giving me a chance to praise Him. That night amused me in a good way.

[bear04]

Dropped my guitar on stage in front of everyone. We went up at the end of the service to play a quiet, meditative closing song. I picked up my guitar, put it over my shoulder, and let go. My strap wasn't connected and my guitar dropped to the floor. Kind of ruined the mood. But the audible gasp by the congregation was pretty funny...

Thankfully it was my old Peavey Detonator and not my Strat or Tele. And I've never let go of my guitar like that again. At least not until I make sure the strap didn't come loose...

[jabsalt]

Originally Posted by ChickenKiller

This is absolutely "horrible" guys...

I had been a bit sick to my stomach for several days, but not too bad. When I got to church that night I had really bad gas, but it was controlled...

Well I'd made it through the P&W part of the service, then through the Preaching without any problems, then we had come back up to play during the altar service...

Well during the altar service I accidentally floated one and it was really bad.

Our piano player has a fan blowing on her and it is right beside me. I was so embarrassed that this happened and I was PRAYING no one noticed...

Well I sorta looked at the piano player out of the corner of my eye and she had this HORRIBLE look on her face and was trying to get my attention.

I look at her with a "confused look" (trying not to admit any guilt) and she looks straight at me with as serious of a look and a fearful look that I have ever seen her give.

Then says, as serious as she could be "I think I smell a demon!" (She honestly thought that is what it was...)

I got so tickled/embarrassed I had to turn my back to the congregation, bit my lip, and almost started to cry/laugh/cry... The smell seemed to lag around for a long time too... Horrible horrible....

I KNOW that was very juvenile, but it was one of the most embarrassing times for me.

Just spit all over my iPod Lol!!!

[jb12string]

Last night, before our contemporary service, we had gathered for prayer and our WL was going through his list of reminders etc, and his final one came out as "don't forget to worship yourself" we kinda raised our eyebrows and looked at each other, we all knew he meant to say "don't forget to worship, yourself" but it came out wrong, he caught himself and corrected it, but it was good for a laugh.

[jabsalt]

One service I tuned up guitar all ready to go started playing and realized I'm not in the right key. Bass players tells me what key but just didn't sound right. Turns out my tuner was set to like 420hz and not 440.

Getting ready to take a solo and pressed my volume pedal too far nearly ripped the skin off the first 5 rows

At a conference halfway through the amp fell over on its face

Started an intro in G nobody told me changed to A last minute

[Sixwire]

One afternoon I was playing outdoors on a trailer and the whole seat of my pants ripped out. It was a little windy and made it really difficult to keep hid. My guitar hid me while I was playing, but had to be really creative trying to get away.

[GeetarPlayer]

About 20 years ago, I was playing acoustic guitar to accompany a female singer. She chose to do a Michael Card song. Now, My exposure to his songs was limited to 6/8 songs - at least that's all I could think of when I did his songs. But this song was 4/4. We practiced that morning, and it seemed to go well. When it came time for me to play (I was the only instrument) all I could play was 6/8. I could not get it out of my head. So that's how we did it, and it D R A G G E D , but she got through the song, despite my bad choice of time signature. I kept trying to shift to 4/4 while playing, but that just made the song more of a failure, and I could not make the shift.

At least we had 2 services, so I got it right the second time.

[ChickenKiller]

This has been a great thread man.

Another one of my recent embarrassing moments that happened about 3 months ago.

I'd been working on the rhythm and looking for an acceptable tone of a song our team was learning, the drummer and I had practiced it one morning before church just to goof around after practice... Well our drummer can practice perfectly then he does a control+alt+delete sometimes and FORGETS the rhythm completely! Right?

So Service starts, Offering is being taken, I look down and see the opening song... and I rip into The Song! Man my tone was GREAT, I was popping and muting on time, congregation was up clapping and swaying... MY FLIPPING Drummer looks at me like DUH has not even started hitting the bass pedal or anything yet... I "YELL" at him "IT'S THE RIGHT RHYTHM!" and he just sits there NOT PLAYING... I am thinking MORON! The Keyboards finally START playing, but they stop too!

So I look at our Worship Leader for "Help" She's looking at me all goofy too so I say "WHAT?" The Congregation doesn't know what's up, all they know is I am the ONLY one playing, but it is a cool groove so they are clapping waving etc...

I walk out to her and say WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?...

She says "Kelly you are playing the wrong song...." I said HUH? She said the name of our Opening Song and I said "OHHHH!"

(We weren't even gonna play the "new song" that day, but I did)

I felt my face turn red, Sweat Glands instantly got busy and I was scrambling, Still playing I told her give me a second.... I kept playing and just converted over to a completely new chord progression and rhythm w/o the congregation ever noticing.

I was SO Embarrassed, the whole time I was thinking... Morons! can't even remember the song! But it was me haha.

Funny thing, I got several compliments that day for playing that opening 'solo' ha ha .

[GeetarPlayer]

There was a time when I was leading worship, and we did 3 services. The first was a shorter version - missing a couple of songs, and the other 2 both included all the songs.

A few times in the first service I would forget and just lead everyone through the whole set - making the service 10 minutes longer than it should have been, and forcing the Pastor to make up the time with his sermon. I felt bad about that. And timing was an issue because the parking lot would become a nightmare if the previous service wasn't done on time.

[hobbystuff]

Oh man, these are funny.

I just started playing guitar and bass a couple years ago, and have been playing with two worship teams at our church. I play bass on one team made up of a fellow on acoustic guitar, a guy on drums, female singer (crazy good) and a girl on keyboards all in their mid-twenties - and me in my early forties. These guys are rocking, and I love playing with them. The only funny thing that has ever happened is when the worship leader on acoustic guitar had his batteries die - so he just unplugs and heads off to the sound booth for batteries. The rest of us just kept going until he popped back and started playing a couple verses later - for one bar and the song ends.

The other team I play lead guitar with a very experienced group of guys more my age - of course they have all played professionally before. Except for me, and I think they include me because they are great guys - and probably also because they find me entertaining.

So one morning I am playing with this group and we have ourselves an older gentlemen on the soundboard, and he isn't really all that great. I am still pretty new at this, so sometimes I will bring my volume down a bit to "find my place" and then ramp it up during the solos. Our other sound guys will just leave my channel right where it is...... not this guy. I bring my volume down a bit to settle in, find my place and then I brought the volume up for the solo - at the same time this fellow decides something went wrong with my channel and boosts my level. Absolutely face melting full distortion solo in the mains, my other buddies are such pros they just bring it up a notch and we got through it. Funny thing is I got all kinds of compliments after the service.....

[Tim's tele]

Originally Posted by Ronsonic

Yanni! You got us beat. We were recently compared to Mannheim Steamroller.

Flying Sheep, please don't even get me started talking about working with teenagers. Amazing they almost all grow up sane after all. Losing music and losing nerve on a playing opportunity that they insist on and then wondering why you don't hand them more solo spots!?!?!?!?

I'm 16 and I play lead almost every week. Granted it took me almost a year to build up my gear and skill to do it well. You just got to come along side teens and build them up, how did you get to where you are? Someone showed you a couple tricks i assume, and let you play.

Lucky for me, I can't think of any completely terrible screw ups, my worst is probably when i played mainly piano, I was about 13, not that that makes it any better. We were playing in a coffee shop for something for our youth group, i can't remember. I was using the transpose function on the keyboard for a previous song, well of course i forget to take it off. Drummer clicks in, I start playing a step or two higher. So we restarted, wasn't to big a deal. But the most embarrassing part was that I didn't notice at first. THE DRUMMER DID. He looked at me, said "Lets try that again". The church I play at has smart drummers, a rare breed of drummer, . I can't name the amount of random bad swells, notes, botched lead parts, I've done though, too many to remember, heck, I'm glad i don't remember!

[leonard d rock]

i am fairly comfortable in praise and worship meeetings but a mass is something else. second time i played, i pre-empted the priest by strumming the chord ahead of what was supposed to be the cue to the song. priest looked at me and probably thought "wth" was that. lesson: better be a little late than early.

[SoVeryTired]

Countless 'errors' on my part!

The time I put the guitar on, the strap came off, I grabbed the guitar and somehow knocked the B string out by a semitone without noticing, until I hit the first chord...

The time I totally forgot the opening riff to King Of All Days, played something horribly wrong instead, and just mumbled into the mic "sorry, it's broken" while I gathered my thoughts...

The time when I put the amp on standby between services and forgot to turn it back on, until I 'hit' the first note...

The time when I hadn't plugged the lead in fully and so the signal cut out - right at the point where I was meant to hit the big closing chord...

And probably many others, but these were recent enough to remember!

[tjalla]

I'd obviously blocked this out of memory, something that came back to haunt me years later. My apologies if this on the edge of appropriateness for this forum. However, and unfortunately, this IS my most embarrassing moment in P&W so here goes...

Its ~1997, I'm 16 years old and rehearsing with the team at a moderately conservative baptist church where I grew up. After a run through one of the songs, the vocalists (comprising mostly middle-aged and respectable-type ladies) were discussing the allocation of their harmonies. It didn't seem like much progess was being made, so after a few minutes I thought I'd pipe up with my two bob. Hooray for me!

Now at this time I had just started singing in a gospel choir at another church, and harmony arrangement was becoming part of my musical vocabulary. Essentially from what would be the melody line, the guys go up a third in their register (ie sing the tenor part) and some ladies would drop a fourth from the female melody and that would become the alto part.

Keen share some newfound understanding and eager to make an impression on the team, I pipe up and propose exactly that ie some of the ladies split down to alto, while I and another chap jumped up to tenor. While this suggestion seems to go over ok, I feel that I may have stepped on the toes of a few ladies who took pride in singing a high harmony above the melody. The situation was slightly uncomfortable, but would have been bearable had I said no more. However, the awkward, insecure part of me needed to qualify myself to relieve some lingering tension in the air.

My brain understands this information as follows: "Harmonically, rather than a female sing up a third, it is more suitable and pleasing when a female sings down a fourth."

The words that came out of my mouth:















The exact words...

























"Its good for a woman to go down."





















I just stood there wondering what on earth was matter. My socially awkward brain didn't even register what I had actually said.





You know when random incidents from years prior pop into you head for no apparent reason, except to bring a dawning clarity of what actually took place at the time?

[jebbo]

Not realy embarrasing (more of what's going on moment), but one time in P&W I was playing a song (don't know wich one) and I took a solo. It was realy awesome, probably one the the best solos I've ever done. When I finished, I looked up and everybody was crying. I was so confused. I just kept playing until we finished the song.

[jebbo]

ohh wait. I have another one. In the middle of a song my amp went crazy. (Those bad blues juniors) It made a realy loud buzzing sound so I went to figure it out calmly. (NOT) I freaked out and had no idea what to do. I walked over to it, unplugged the chord and plugged it back in. It wasn't the chord that was causing problems. Two caps in it were leaking. So the sound guy walks up on stage, and plugs my guitar into the bass player's amp. I told him that was a bad thing to do, but he didn't listen. I started playing again, and the worship leader yells "halleluja". I stopped playing and looked at her. She obviously didn't put in her mind that my $500 amp was broke, and playing through the bass amp is bad for it, and it sounds bad too. Everybody just stared at me. I didn't know what to do, so I just started the next song and finished the worship service. Lets just say that wasn't the best worship service we ever had.

[mrboson]

Yikes... we have to be careful what we say on TDPRI. Some folks around here have been known to take quotes from posts and make them their signatures. How would you like to have this show up from time to time:

Originally Posted by tjalla

"Its good for a woman to go down."

[tjalla]

^ well thanks for helping that right along, mrboson

[Parma_TeleMon]

And well worthy of the theft, might I add!

Originally Posted by mrboson

Yikes... we have to be careful what we say on TDPRI. Some folks around here have been known to take quotes from posts and make them their signatures. How would you like to have this show up from time to time:

[jebbo]

OK one more. Last night we had Jeff Johns from White Horse. The worship team wanted to impress him, plus we try to do our best anyway. I made it through the first few songs and it sounded great. Then we started "Hosana" and it went well, atleast until we got to the instrumental. I don't know why, but my mind went blank. I stepped on my OD and my wah pedal and went to play the instrumental, but I totally forgot it. I played one note (not the right one) and then my string just went "plunk". The bass player freaked out and didn't know what to do. Eventualy he started singing the bridge wich is where it goes after the instrumental, and it went pretty good for a little bit. Then I dropped my pick and it slid under my pedalboard. I didn't have any extras so I had to stop playing, crouch down, crab my pick and start playing again. Once we finished that song everybody just gave me this mean glare. The rest of the songs went smoothly, but it was very awkward when we finished the worship service.

Let me end by saying we didn't practice before we played. That is why you need to practice, so the dumb guitarist doesn't forget the instrumental.