Acoustic Guitar: Lesson Learned

by Adam Johnson on May 29, 2010

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So this last week I had an unfortunate thing happen during worship. Practice that morning went great. There were no problems whatsoever. I stood on the stage waiting for the countdown timer to reach 0 so we could blast into our first song.  

As soon as the timer ran down I welcomed the congregation and started our first song. As I strummed my very first chord all I heard was crackling and distorted noises coming from my guitar! Apparently may battery had gone dead, it worked fine literally 20 minutes before, but now its was dead. To add to the turmoil I was short on band members so I was the only acoustic, we had no Keys, and 1 electric.  Needless to say the set was a wreck. The electric guitar had only practiced the leads for that week so he was fumbling around on the chords. The drummer couldn’t hear any rhythm and the tempos were all over the place. The singers stood with wide eyes waiting for it to get over, and I tried my best to not let this distract us from worship, but failed. 

Let me tell you what I have learned from this in hopes you won’t experience anything similar.

  • Check your battery regularly. (I know, obvious right?) Some guitars have a little light that will let you check your battery. Mine is a Taylor and there is no way to check it unless you take it out of the guitar and lick it.  J
  • Teach your team what to do in situations like this. Mine covered as best they could, but if I had told them what to do when something like this happens, it would have been a lot smoother.
  • If this ever happens again, I probably will call one of the other pastors up to lead us in some kind of a prayer so that I can change my battery and then pick up where we left off. Continuing like I did was really pointless as most people were distracted and confused by what was going on.

So, not a real deep blog this time, but this is what I have. Check your battery!

Anyone else experience something similar to this? What did you do? 

Other Acoustic Guitar Articles.

Adam Johnson

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Adam Johnson is the Worship Arts Pastor at Grace Community Church in Spring Hill, KS. In addition to leading worship, Adam is in charge of all graphic design/media for the church. Outside of the church Adam enjoys spending time with his wife Natalie, trap shooting, and being with friends and family.

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  • http://www.WorshipMinistry.com Gary Miller

    Good post Adam, sometimes its the obvious that needs to be said the most.

    Thanks for the post!

  • brianmaddox

    this post brings to mind the general principle that we should be prepared for ANYTHING. because if you do this long enough, it will all happen at least once. last week second service my drummer was called away on an emergency 3 minutes before our closing song… and i've lost power multiple times in the last 6 months and have even led a closing song with no sound system at all [in a 1200 seat hall...]. interestingly, because i truly had a backup plan for just about anything, these and other mishaps have actually created opportunities for spontaneous worship rather than disasters… excellent post! thanks for sharing it….

  • http://www.scottjasmin.com scott jasmin

    Adam,
    Boy oh boy can I relate! I now use 3 guitars when I lead worship–the one I play plus two backup guitars. Another couple tricks I have are to use a tuner pedal with a mute button, which allows you to exchange guitars silently… and/or to use an A/B switch, which allows you to leave two guitars plugged in and just click the switch to change to the backup guitar. You can read about one of my Worship Blunders here: http://www.worshipministry.com/ministry-talk/scotts-th...

  • http://www.joshhamrick.net Josh Hamrick

    I feel for ya, Adam. Definitely been there. I “handled” it by completely stopping and asking the soundman to come change my battery. Soemtimes there are situations where nothing you can do is gonna be right. May be God's way of keeping us humble.

  • http://adamrothjohnson.com Adam Johnson

    I'm glad to know I'm not alone! ha ha

  • http://twitter.com/mitchvdb Mitch VanDenBerghe

    Rough situation. I normally lead from electric, but that has happened to me leading with acoustic before. I rarely ever lead worship without a backup guitar on a stand right next to me. Your backup guitar doesn't need to be the same quality instrument as your main axe, it's just helpful to have something else to play. Especially if you break strings as much as me.

  • AudioAndrew

    My band was playing a New Year’s Eve party for a group of friends from church a couple months ago. I had just finished building a custom Strat and this was it’s debut. I played it at home all week and it sounded great, played great, and looked beautiful. We played several songs, including our most rocking original with a big, sweet guitar solo at the end. Man, it was fun. I finished up the song with an extended solo and clicked my pedal on to the preset for the next song. Nothing. Tried a different preset to make sure it wasn’t just a bad patch. Still nothing. Bypassed the pedal and went straight to the PA, switched cables, switched channels, still nothing. That night went down in history as the night “Andrew played a sick solo and blew up his guitar!”

  • http://patkashtock.squarespace.com/ Pat Kashtock

    Yes — dead batteries and broken strings. We try to have a spare guitar ready to go. When all else fails, I find it better just to stop playing if there is no one to cover, and bring the congregation into it. An extra minute and a good laugh about technology beats Having everything messed up.

    Of course a broken string takes longer. It isn’t even worth trying to finish a song playing a guitar with a broken string unless you are almost done. The whole thing sours from the change in neck tension. My husband is an inveterate string breaker. Back up guitars have become our friend ;)

  • http://www.gear4music.com/PA_Equipment/PA_Packages.html pa systems

    Admiring the time and effort you put into your website and the detailed information you submit. It’s great to come across a blog from time to time that is not the same stale rehash information.

  • Passion4JCM

    I have been there! Exact situation… short on other instruments and electric guitarist just learned his parts. A past experience taught me to “smoothly” end the song and lead straight into prayer (with all eyes closed), in a charade sort of hand language I asked one of the singers get a battery out of my case, quickly changed it out, then segued back into the song A’ Capella and built it up from there. From that day on I put in a new battery every Saturday for the weekend’s 4 services.
    The first experience I mentioned was when I was a new leader of worship many years ago… another acoustic guitarist started a song in another key (using a capo, he forgot to move it from the last song). The other instrumentalists were not experienced enough to quickly transpose, but I kept trying to march us through by singing louder in hopes that the rest of the team could find their way. They did not. Thankfully, our congregation gave lots of grace and pretended they didn’t notice, lol! But God is good, we all learned what it meant to “play skillfully” and what areas we needed to practice as a team and individually.

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