Choir rehearsals - cancelled until further notice. Bell choir - cancelled until further notice. Worship in the church - cancelled until further notice. It was a very tough way to enter the Easter season of 2020. Everything that I do at the church revolves around gathering groups of people to sing and or play instruments but all were cancelled until further notice. Fortunately, the Director of Music was not yet cancelled but what was there left for me to do?

Online worship experiences began almost immediately and that was ok, we could have the organist, Hyunju play and that would be the music for the service. It took several recording sessions but we finally figured out the best way of recording the organ to get the best sounding result. Suddenly I had become a recording engineer with very limited skills and equipment. In addition, some of my time at the church was then spent shoveling out my office. Some of you have snuck a peek inside and know how scary that was. Well, it did improve but I’m not sure it would be noticed, it is still far from finished because as time moved on there were more new things to do.

An occasional soloist was now to be part of our recorded worship. Recruiting solo singers and setting up recording sessions was now part of my new job description. This also brought about the need to use more time as a recording engineer.

Both the Covenant Choir and the Neighborhood Brass Rings were desperately missing being together as a group. Wasn’t there some way that the group could be together? Wanting to keep the group in communication with each other, we began meetings on, guess what?, Zoom of course. As time went on, talking on Zoom was not good enough, one group wanted to sing and the other group wanted to ring! There was almost a demand that we had to try singing on Zoom. “There must be a way”. You should have heard our first attempt at Happy Birthday, it wasn’t pretty and it didn’t get better. After several more attempts most of the singers were finally convinced that it is impossible to sing as a group on Zoom.

In exploring what other churches and choral groups were doing, I soon became aware of the virtual choir concept. Members of the choir and even the congregation had also seen and heard such things and thought that we should be able to put one together. My question, who would put it all together? After acquiring the appropriate audio and video editing programs and with numerous hours of reading and instruction via YouTube, I guessed it would be me. Every step in the process of putting these things together is laborious. First is finding and getting music in a pdf format which can be sent via email. Then .mp3 recordings of all of the parts and accompaniment were made so that the singers would have something to rehearse and recored with. We then had several meetings on Zoom discussing musical aspects of the piece and where problem spots might be. It was finally time for each of the singers to record an mp4 video of themselves singing their part. The result………nobody wanted to send their recording to me because no one was satisfied with their results. Most of the singers recorded themselves several times, finally sending me a recording with which they were still not satisfied but they hoped that I could use it.

Our first recording was for Thanksgiving Sunday. I had requested that I receive the singer’s recordings so that I would have two weeks to put it all together before getting it to Lauren who would edit it into the online worship service for Thanksgiving Sunday. It was a super long and frustrating process. I was at the computer day and night for two weeks. Had I given myself three weeks, I probably would have been able to fill that up too. In the end, things came together and we had a very nice presentation with about 16 wonderful singers.

In the midst of all of this the bell ringers were getting antsy and wanted to be able to, somehow, ring! After much back and forth the group was allowed to meet outside to rehearse and to record in Fellowship Hall with no more than eight ringers wearing masks at all times. It worked!

By Christmas all was running fairly smoothly and the groups were able to participate in what turned out to be some very meaningful Advent and Christmas worship videos. We were able to continue with similar participation in online worship through Easter 2021.

A big thank you to the members of the Covenant Choir and the Neighborhood Brass Rings. Even in a year when so many things had to be cancelled, they rose to the occasion and were able to contribute beautiful inspirational music to the new form of worship at Neighborhood Church.

The year has been challenging but also rewarding, I am grateful to have learned some new ways of making music. I thank God and this church that I have not yet been cancelled!

Join us for live worship in the Sanctuary this Sunday, July 18, where we will have a live choral presentation from about 20 members of the Covenant Choir. They are very excited to have the opportunity to sing together again. Hopefully, soon we will all be able to join our voices, to make a joyful noise.


God bless you all!

David Sateren
Director of Music

This article appeared in the Wave on July 15, 2021