Being in the choir

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St_Francis

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Hi All,
I recently joined the choir at our church. The problem I have is that I find it very distracting! I have three books to keep track of now, and I am always a bit behind.

Do choir members have a Mass they attend and another at which they sing? Will I get better at managing all this? Etc.

Thanks!
 
I’ve been both a cantor and a choir member. Yeah it’s hard. The only time I got to actually focus on the Mass was during the consecration. I never personally took communion at the masses I sang because I always felt disconnected. If it helps, I used to go to Saturday evening and then sing Sunday morning.
 
St_Francis said:
Hi All,
I recently joined the choir at our church. The problem I have is that I find it very distracting! I have three books to keep track of now, and I am always a bit behind.

Do choir members have a Mass they attend and another at which they sing? Will I get better at managing all this? Etc.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
At first I definitely would go to an earlier Mass. I got better at managing it but I get very tired toward the end of the Mass where I was in the choir.
 
St_Francis said:
Hi All,
I recently joined the choir at our church. The problem I have is that I find it very distracting! I have three books to keep track of now, and I am always a bit behind.

Do choir members have a Mass they attend and another at which they sing? Will I get better at managing all this? Etc.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I’ve been singing in Church choirs on and off for a time period that covers almost 40 years. Like any other liturgical role, singing in the choir has both its rewards and its challenges.

Our parish adult choir has about 60 people and we are blessed to have a choir director who is very organized. We always have a ‘menu’. (Hard copies are available during rehearsals and it is normally emailed out a few days before rehearsal.) The menu includes info on what the source is for a particular piece of music. We have folders for octavos and copied music. (It’s all properly licensed, lest anyone think otherwise.) We also have choir versions of the parish hymnals available to us, although some of us prefer to use our tablets and purchase our own electronic hymnals. We have someone who acts as a music librarian and she makes sure our folders (which we keep at the parish) have the proper music. We have a cart for our folders (crafted by a long term choir member) and it is rolled into the Church on Sunday mornings.

If we didn’t have a crew of organized helpers I don’t think the choir experience would be nearly so smooth.

It is easy to get distracted during Mass and keeping track of all the music can be confusing. But you do get the hang of things after a while. At some point we obtained some of those 5 ribbon page markers for our hymnals and that proved to be very helpful since we could mark the pages of what we’d be singing before Mass starts. Post-it notes work well too and may be more useful if you sing from multiple books. (It’s my understanding that post-it notes were invented by a 3-M employee who sang in a choir.)

I have learned to tune out page rattling, dropped hymnals, three ring binder snapping, off-topic chattering, and other things that are happening around me. I don’t (usually) attend a second Mass. Our choir does not sing during the summer so that is when I get to sit with my non-choir husband and experience Mass as “regular parishioner.”
 
Not a choir member - it would definitely not be a “joyful noise unto the Lord” if I were - but I am a lector and have also been an acolyte at previous parishes.

At those Masses where I perform those functions, there definitely is a challenge to focus on the whole Mass and not focus solely on my particular duties. For instance, at those Masses where the readings have a lot of hard-to-pronounce words, I am focused on those words rather than the Introductory Rites of the Mass.

My prayer during those Masses is that God will graciously accept my efforts and overlook my distractions.
 
I would not seek out another Mass. If one serves in choir, one is fulfilling one’s liturgical role, and one’s actual participation includes the direction, flipping of pages, conducting, etc. That is your role, and while you are part of the congregation, your tasks differ from the congregation and your “distractions” are in fact not distractions. They are you fulfilling your liturgical role.
 
I’ve been both a cantor and a choir member. Yeah it’s hard. The only time I got to actually focus on the Mass was during the consecration. I never personally took communion at the masses I sang because I always felt disconnected. If it helps, I used to go to Saturday evening and then sing Sunday morning.
 
Thanks for all your help 🙂 Esp. you, SM. I was actually thinking of putting something like your folders together as I was, and still am a heart, a desktop publisher. It was good to hear your experience with that, and I could email my copy to people who could then print it out, if they thought it would be helpful. (We have full copies of everything, so I don’t think it would be a violation of copyright.)

And I like the ribbons idea 🙂 Post-its are good, but the ribbons seem more… appropriate 🙂
 
St_Francis said:
Hi All,
I recently joined the choir at our church. The problem I have is that I find it very distracting! I have three books to keep track of now, and I am always a bit behind.

Do choir members have a Mass they attend and another at which they sing? Will I get better at managing all this? Etc.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I am in the choir as well. my parish has a concert choir though as well as choirs for mass.

I am mainly in the concert choir but have sung at mass on occasion as well and also for stations of the cross. our choir director came up with a musical one.

my situation is a little different though. due to my visual impairment I don’t read music and just learned it all by year all my life. I write out the lyrics of new songs in braille and learn them as I go but I don’t bother bringing my binder to the concerts or mass because lugging along a giant pile of braille and trying to read it standing up with my fingers just is not practical, especially with a guide dog to hold too… and I can’t read the missals either so that’s also another thing I don’t have to worry about. I just listen to the readings

yeah it can definitely feel like it is hard to keep up at first but you will get the hang of it once you get in to the routine of it. most choir directors don’t reinvent the wheel and will tend to use materials that they have previously used before so after a while, you will find that you often sing songs that you know.

it’s a wonderful ministry. you are glorifying God through music, which is important
 
St_Francis said:
Hi All,
I recently joined the choir at our church. The problem I have is that I find it very distracting! I have three books to keep track of now, and I am always a bit behind.

Do choir members have a Mass they attend and another at which they sing? Will I get better at managing all this? Etc.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
That’s a very good question! Years ago when I was very deeply involved in liturgical ministry (often times for 2 or even 3 Masses on a Sunday), I would still sneak away Sunday night to a Mass in a neighboring town where no one knew me.

I could leave all those responsibilities behind and enter into an almost contemplative level of concentration during the Mass. It was really wonderful.
 
porthos11 said:
I would not seek out another Mass. If one serves in choir, one is fulfilling one’s liturgical role, and one’s actual participation includes the direction, flipping of pages, conducting, etc. That is your role, and while you are part of the congregation, your tasks differ from the congregation and your “distractions” are in fact not distractions. They are you fulfilling your liturgical role.
Click to expand...
Oh, of course! this is just like Mass with young children 😃 Thanks for explaining that!
 
Just keep track of your books if you’re in a loft:). I used to keep mine on the ledge of the loft, then one day an errant jerk of the forearm sent St. Gregory’s Hymnal overboard and down into the congregation during the Kyrie. Thank the Lord and St. Cecelia it missed konking an unsuspecting congregant in the head by a foot and landed in the aisle.
 
victrolatim said:
Just keep track of your books if you’re in a loft:). I used to keep mine on the ledge of the loft, then one day an errant jerk of the forearm sent St. Gregory’s Hymnal overboard and down into the congregation during the Kyrie. Thank the Lord and St. Cecelia it missed konking an unsuspecting congregant in the head by a foot and landed in the aisle.
Click to expand...
A danger of being in the choir I hadn’t thought of :eek:
 
When I joined our parish choir 5 years ago I was prepared for hard work with the practices and singing at Mass, but I didn’t expect the difficulty you describe - ie. just keeping the music organised.

So, you have my sympathy!

My suggestions:
  1. Don’t forget that your main contribution is to be there. You are useful by being present, even if struggling to keep up.
  2. Early on, work out a way to keep organised so that you can forget about this problem. This is what you’ve done here - the many useful suggestions may have the solution for you. For a few months, make this a priority until it’s part of your routine.
  3. Practice the choir pieces in your own time. That is something you can control, and will boost your confidence, even if you a struggling with organising your music.
 
Edmundus1581 said:
When I joined our parish choir 5 years ago I was prepared for hard work with the practices and singing at Mass, but I didn’t expect the difficulty you describe - ie. just keeping the music organised.

So, you have my sympathy!

My suggestions:
  1. Don’t forget that your main contribution is to be there. You are useful by being present, even if struggling to keep up.
  2. Early on, work out a way to keep organised so that you can forget about this problem. This is what you’ve done here - the many useful suggestions may have the solution for you. For a few months, make this a priority until it’s part of your routine.
  3. Practice the choir pieces in your own time. That is something you can control, and will boost your confidence, even if you a struggling with organising your music.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much! #1 is very heartening, and practicing ahead of time as you suggest sounds like a great idea!
 
The key for me is to stay organized. I put tabs in all of my octavos and use mini post-its to mark the hymns in the missal.

When I first started singing with the choir I felt a disconnect, too, but it faded a little more with each Mass. Give yourself time to get used to it.
 
St_Francis said:
Thank you so much! #1 is very heartening, and practicing ahead of time as you suggest sounds like a great idea!
Click to expand...
My best suggestion for practicing ahead of time is to use Youtube. Just look up a piece, and sing along. (and repeat)
 
If able, you could go to daily Mass once or so a week. They are shorter and you can leave your liturgical role behind for a while.
 
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