November Resolution: Music

My worship director has been gently nudging me to learn guitar for years.

I'm quite capable of mastering a few easy chords for a day or two, but then I put the thing down and don't pick it back up for another six months. It sits there going out of tune, right next to my abandoned cheese-making kit (which is going out of tune in a more... French sort of way).

The Worship Element

The mentorship of my worship director and books like "Worship Matters" and "Sing!", have taught this cold, calculating physicist that music (nebulous, artsy, and emotional as it may be) has serious and material effects.

Music makes doctrine stick.

Music makes doctrine real to us personally.

We don’t just sing ‘Jesus loves me’ when we are children; we remember it when we are adults. Scripture goes down easier with melody, and in the most apathetic, distant, or painful times, we can find ourselves begging the Lord to Abide with [us], thanking the Lord for Amazing Grace, and declaring the Lord to be Holy Forever.

When it comes to singing in particular, the more joyful I feel, the more I want to sing, and the more I sing, the more joyful I feel. (Spotify calls me out occasionally: "You played JESUS IS COMING BACK SOON 347 times. Are you okay?"). It's a perpetual motion machine powered by my terrible Forrest Frank rap attempts and wheezing through Idina Menzel's high notes. All that mimicking of different voices for tone and pitch? Secret training.

But I don't often feel the same way about my instruments.

Improving my technical ability on instruments means I can focus on the heart posture of worship instead of panic-sweating over whether I’ll use the wrong limb while playing piano. Plus, my inner drama queen could use a distinctly baroque outlet.

Redeeming Practice Time

I'd rather not suffer through flashbacks of that pre-teen piano recital when my 'Fairies' seemed to be suffering cardiac events from their all sugar-plum diet. Instead of making instrument practice the horrible obligation it used to be, I need to make it joyful like singing has become.

As per usual, the bar is set underground: three minutes of guitar or piano per day. Which is roughly the length of one unskippable YouTube ad about mattresses (Really, YouTube – you have no idea the quality cut I will endure to sleep on my own lumpy, self-stuffed mattress). But truly, I can do anything for three minutes. Including:

• Plain acoustic guitar

• Percussive guitar (since I can't play drums, naturally I should try to drum AND play guitar at the same time)

• Actual sheet music for piano

I'm not trying to become a guitar hero or fulfill my eleven-year-old dreams of playing the third movement of Moonlight Sonata. I'm just trying to turn my guitar from expensive décor into an actual instrument, and read sheet music again.

Maybe by December my worship director can finally collect on whatever bet he’s placed on me.