Come Away
Words and music by Ken Medema
What’s this?
It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.
Come Away
This piece snuck up on me. It seemed like a simple, easy anthem. Rated medium difficulty, we sight read it easily and learned it in a week or so, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought. But then I practiced it at home for screens. That was my job this week instead of singing, and the lyric caption timing is my contribution. After that practice it kept playing in my head, over and over. I can’t quite put it into words, but there is something about it I really enjoy.
The composer’s story, which you can read here, is rather unique.
Behind the Scenes
Since this piece was so easy to learn, sing, and run slides for, there isn’t much to say about that this week. The choir was small, with only four altos (my section) and not that many more sopranos, but it balanced and they sounded good. The recording sounds good too. It helps that the choir mic placement is better when we don’t have the bells.
We are continuing to modernize our equipment. Having switched over to a Waves mixing system (I’m not sure what specifically to call it just yet), we are starting to offer personal mixes to musicians that can use that. Personal mixes allow musicians to choose the mix they hear in their monitors (earbuds, headphones, or speakers). That’s not a thing for the choir — we have to actually hear each other directly so we can blend, but I or someone else in the choir now could set the mix and level for the choir’s floor monitors during the pre-service rehearsal, if we decided to do that.
It is a thing, however, for the two hearing-impaired screens operators—half our team—of which I am one, and it was a special experience. I was able to keep my headphones on the whole time (which keeps out distractions) for the first time ever. I mixed hand and headworn mics, choir mics, and my video sound feed on top, and keys and winds below. I muted brass—I can hear enough of them even with the headphones on. I’ve done lots of this in the past for other people, but this was the first time doing it for myself.
This does complicate my screens job, which already involved both hands and uninterrupted concentration, because now I have an iPad for my mix that I adjust using my third hand. No, I don’t have a third hand. I usually have at least one hand free, but I have to break concentration momentarily and look over at the device in between slide turns if I need to tweak the mix, like when I had one of the worship leaders muted after she switched mics. But it worked.
The special part came when the service began and the congregation began to sing. We have a personal monitor box for screens, for the two of us that use headphones, a Behringer P1 that we use to set headphone level and balance (it also has a limiter for ear protection). I have one good ear, and I use the balance control to even-out what I hear, and I am used to that arrangement. What I am not used to, and it was a wonderful surprise, was suddenly hearing everything, worship leaders, choir, instruments, and (of all things) the congregation too! Blended and clear. Wow.
I had three videos to run this morning, and it was also very nice to be able to hear those clearly. The overall experience — music, sermon, videos, and communion — was one of being immersed in the service even more than if I had been in the congregation. I’m jazzed.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, October 6, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.