Lord, I Stretch My Hands to You
Words and music by Jay Althouse
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.
Lord, I Stretch My Hands to You
This was our monthly Choir, Bells, and Orchestra Sunday, and we sung it with the bells and flute.
This is a special anthem for me. It is a musical prayer. I wasn’t familiar with it before we rehearsed it, but after absorbing the notes and beginning to focus upon the words, I realized that the elements of this prayer are, nearly word-for-word, things that I often pray myself. I don’t know what to say about that, other than that it is reassuring.
It was special in another way, being the first anthem I have sung with this choir that I fully memorized, music and lyrics, freeing me to watch the director and overcoming my limited vision. I hadn’t done this in more than ten years, and I hope now to do it often.
It would be much easier to drop out and leave it all to the younger people — climbing around on risers, driving at night, hearing instructions through the noise, and just being able to see the music clearly — as others my age and older have had to do. (For that matter, whole choirs are disappearing all over.) But I have been doing this over the past 32 years, and it’s about the only thing worth mentioning that I still do. Continuity.
Behind the Scenes
Our recordings are improving, bit by bit. During the weekday rehearsal it was finally established that the sound team — the way they were trained, I guess — had been using simple cardioid microphones for the choir. Without going into detail, this means that portions of the choir were being picked up strongly while other portions were not (including two of our 5 or 6 altos — my section), and that phasing issues were possible as well.1 I suspected this all along, but couldn’t believe they would do it.
When I heard this, I suggested X-Y microphones2 or hanging mics, and I think they are considering those possibilities now. The problem either way is that when we have the bells, there isn’t room to place X-Y mics where they need to be, and hanging mics might pick up more than their share from the bells (though I think good placement with angling might solve that). But this is a church, not a recording studio, and we have limited space.
The mix is improving. Choir vocals are working their way toward the top where they belong. I noticed that the flute was hot in this recording, but one thing at a time. I am glad that it came out this well.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, September 29, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.
See, for example “3. Avoiding Phase Issues“ in this article.
See, for example, Why The X-Y Microphone Setup Isn’t Just For Stereo.
beautiful.