Wedding season is in full swing

Lately, I've been inundated with weddings and, when you are a musician, that means several weekend gigs over the course of a few months. I decided to do a quick little post about some of the music I have done at weddings so far. I actually don't think I have any more weddings to sing at (although I'm standing up in two more), so this makes a good time to recap what I've done in weddings.

Song #1 - Everlong by The Foo Fighters

Before I write anything, listen and watch this video of the original, pre-Bryan version.

My first thoughts, the strumming seems a little too percussive and the vocals are a little to raw/edgy for a traditional wedding. The bride and groom requested to keep all the lyrics as written and asked for it to be "slower", which I found out meant less percussive. Apparently, my computer or myself is unable to post video of the final outcome (turns out "young people" can be technologically deficient). I'll try to explain what I did. After I reworked the song, I played traditional chords instead of the power chords, but kept the same chords themselves (Dmaj7, B9, G9) and played the guitar line that goes with the pre-chorus an octave higher, enabling me to stay closer to the headstock of the guitar. The strumming was almost a campfire strum, with some syncopated accents to bring in the original strumming patterns. I would love to show you (whoever happens to read this), but, as I stated earlier, YouTube does not like me or my computer.

Song #2 - Come Thou Fount

This song is a fairly familiar hymn, so I didn't have to change very much. The girl who sang it with me is a friend of mine, which was fun. She sings in a very pretty mezzo-soprano voice and I have a tenor voice. That meant that if we both wanted to sing the melody the whole time, it could be a wee bit trebly, which isn't always enjoyable. Because she is a soprano, I decided she could have the melody for the whole song (which just fits into the stereotype, doesn't it?). I wanted to change up the song to keep it interesting for the friends and family who drove from all over Iowa (and beyond) to come to the wedding. I split it up as such:

Verse 1- finger picking guitar; voices in unison
Verse 2- finger picking guitar; voices singing harmonies
Verse 3- whole notes plucked with fingers on guitar for first half of verse, then finger picking; voices singing different harmonies

I thought it went pretty well, but I'm not aware of any recording that happened to post a video or sound clip of the whole song.

Song #3 - Song of Ruth, arr. by Eilers

This was in the same wedding as Come Thou Fount (which I also ushered in). It is a really pretty SATB arrangement of (you guessed it), the Song of Ruth found in (right again) the book of Ruth in the Bible. Essentially, in the Bible story, Ruth is saying she will follow Naomi, her mother-in-law, after her son (Ruth's husband) dies. Noami urges Ruth to go back to "her own people", but Ruth pledges her loyalty to her mother-in-law through this song. Basically, it says, where ever you go, I'll go. This song was a great choice the by couple, as the groom has been teaching in Tanzania and the bride had to give up her job and life here in the United States to teach for a few years with him in Africa. The song is written in a "churchy" style, which I hadn't sung in for a year or two. Because it was already written, I didn't have to arrange anything this time and just had to focus on getting the notes and intonation down with the other singers. We didn't practice more than 2 or 3 times total, including the day of, so I was a little nervous, but it seemed to go well. It challenged me to sing out, something I'm notoriously bad at, and listen more to the other people singing, something I don't have to worry about most of the time for work.

Overall, I'd say that I'm very happy with the music for this year's wedding season. Each song challenged me in some way and I felt that the musical product was pretty good in each of them. I can only hope that they couples I helped enjoyed it at much as I enjoyed learning from the songs.