Lord, I Run to You
Words and music by Tommy Walker. Arranged by Cliff Duren.
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Lord, I Run to You
From the Distributor’s Page
Consider the trustworthiness, strength, and sufficiency of the Lord with this worshipful selection from Help Is on the Way that opens reflectively and builds to a passionate moment of praise for our one and only source of help.
We are back, with the start of our 2024-2025 choir season. This is a beautiful anthem, that I loved singing, but I have to warn you that we have a new state-of-the-art mixing system that had only been installed the week before and was not ready to go. I haven’t talked with any of them yet, but I can hear from the recording that when the crew attempted to adjust the sound level at the start of the piece, they encountered severe feedback and had to proceed at low gain.
I applied a digital boost to the level in this video, which seemed to help a little. [Edit: it was a 100% boost, and actually that seems to have worked well, listening now to the published video.] I wouldn’t usually do this, but if you would like to hear a good recording of the anthem, a publisher’s demonstration video is available on YouTube here. It’s what I used for practice at home.
I can tell you that where I was on the risers the sound level was quite high, and that may have been the source of the problem. I had this piece 90% memorized (100% of the notes), so that I would only need to glance down at the words, but the chancel was so loud that I was glued to the music anyway, because of the distraction.
We have had more than our share of mixer problems over the past year or so, and the new system is quite welcome, just not quite ready, and the choir monitors were too hot, and there wasn’t sufficient time to test everything well. The sound techs certainly tried, though.
This replacement is part of a larger overhaul to bring our system into the 21st century—this sanctuary is something like 40 years old—and bring the chancel (i.e. stage) levels down. The old Soundcraft Vi6 mixer was something like 20, and it died for the second time December 23rd and was unrepairable. We were using a temporary 32-channel replacement, a Behringer X32, but with choir, orchestra, and bells, drums, piano, and organ, between all the returns and sends the X32 was not sufficient.
There are good people working on this, and we’ll have it going soon. I am more concerned about our anthem for next week, for which the sheet music is a low-quality way-too-small copy with bits and pieces cut off here and there (yes, we did buy the licenses) and very confusing for the choir to follow. The anthem itself is good, but if we can’t read or follow the sheet music, we may not be. I am going to have to try to enlarge the pages.
Our tech team volunteer situation has improved greatly, with the addition of a new experienced sound tech, and a new screens operator who is now experienced, having trained and survived during the summer when everything is crazy. (Survived, literally, but telling about that part might be too personal.) This means I will be back to running screens about once a month, and singing with our shrinking alto section more often.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, September 15, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.
This turned out better than I expected! We are back down to a rather tiny alto section -- just four of us this time -- but we clustered near the center mic, as we have done in the past, sang a bit louder than written (we were asked to do so), and held up well to the other sections. And I was so glad to hear our brief moving part come right through in the final measures.
This song is still playing over and over in my head, in key, and while part of that is because I listened to it so many times while practicing, but also because I have been having many "run to..." moments lately, and these lyrics are so encouraging.