Capo Disaster
Man. Does this clip bring back some nightmares. I don’t know where it’s from. Or who it is. But whoever you are. I have felt your pain. But never this bad. Way to battle through. I think.
Ladies and gentlemen…
What happens when the worship leader forgets to take off his capo.
[audio:capodisaster.mp3]
It’s been me.
Has it ever been you? Or your worship leader?
Los
RAIN IT DOWN
that was me Los!!! ….. Just kidding… but I will say that brings back alot of memories of my time leading worship with High schoolers…. That was almost every week. That sound hurts me more than looking at that cut on your head. SICK!!!
- Vic
Didn’t the rest of the instrumentalists realize the lead wasn’t playing in the correct key, BEFORE they came in? I guess if I’m hearing an E chord being played, but I see a D chord on the chart, I’ll either transpose it on the fly or just not play. Just my .02 worth.
Wow. Yep, it’s happened to me. Usually when I forget to take the capo off though, it’s the vocals that suffer most. You just can’t do many worship songs in a key a Perfect 5th up from the original chart – doesn’t usually work. I’ve learned to just stop and start again, in a good key for all concerned.
that was awesome!!!
Holy carp that was funny. I’ve felt it. Been there. But dang that’s a funny carp.
nice…worse has happened under my watch , unfortunately!
Oh my goodness!! That was so painful to listen to! I wanted to start crying for that guy. Partially cause I have totally been there before. That has got to be one of the worst moments when you’re leading worship. No hidin that! Thanks for sharing. That was priceless!
Yeah I’m not sure what is worse, forgetting to take off your capo, or me over on the bass knowing you are forgetting to take off your capa while waving my hand in the air to let you know and gesturing to you for you to take it off. The whole time the flow of the worship is totally getting killed and the congregation looks baffled.
It sounded peachy till…Ouch…uumm that’s when you stop, acknowledge your mistake, take a moment to mock yourself and giggle with the folks, and push reset. Be real with yourself. OR stop playing your acoustic, find the note, and sing with the band. I mean come on, for all that is silly in the world;The clip was in the 56 second and it was still happening. You have to pick up on that faster.
I don’t laugh at him, but with him. Man, I have my share of those times. I feel his pain. You are so focused on God, you lose track of everything you are doing. That is great! I am not alone.
Where did you find this?
…i borrowed my electric guitar players’ tuner one time…it was calibrated to Eb…i was the only one that tuned with it…and i tuned right before we started…so yeah…the first few bars of the first song were not good…
ouch… painful
You still sounded okay. So what is a Capo? No for reals…what is it? I wish I could sing, but I think we have already been over that one. So did you get your head fixed?
ahahahaha I don’t even know what a capo is, but I now know how important it is to not forget about it! By the way, I refuse to believe you’ve EVER sounded like that! hehe
Memories?!?! That happened last Sunday for me!!! HAHAHAHA!
We were playing God of Wonders – capo 2 that was going to go into Indescribable in G – no capo!
And in a moment of the Spirit’s sense of humor, I felt led to say something about the song and what we were going to sing about in Indescribable but I never took my capo off! It wasn’t quite that bad, thankfully my electric guitarist noticed the capo and got everyone but the keyboardist!! We had this sweet ethreal patch that unfortunately sounded like he screwed up instead of me! HAHAHAHAHA. It was hilarious.
Man, that’s bad. A couple years ago, I started “No One Like You” 2 frets higher than what’s written. Needless to say, a similar thing happened. I still have nightmares.
DUDE! Of course this has happened. I suck.
You wouldn’t believe all the crazy stuff my worship pastor has done. Like this once, he cut himself shaving his dome and then thought it was like news to the rest of the wor…….wait a minute, never mind.
Apparently you turned up a copy of the Cliff Notes version of my life as a musician. I thought I had left all that behind…
Oh yeah, wow. That does bring back some hellacious memories. There was a period where I tuned my strings to E flat (cause that’s what the Edge does, of course) and so when I capo’d I had to think in capo AND in e flat. How shall I say…I don’t tune to eflat anymore. There are musicians who can actually think musically out there, but I’m not one of them.
Thanks for the nightmares.
We were debuting a new song with a new worship leader. He was going to start the lead on the song, me on guitar. He was totally choking and I was thinking, “Dude… you are tanking! What’s the deal? You nailed it in rehearsal. Maybe using you wasn’t such a good idea.”
The band all realized what was happening and came in right (in the wrong key I was plying in…), then after the chorus – I’m still clueless – I look down and see no capo on 3 (we’re supposed to be in Bb).
Lightbulb over my head turns on. Shock and panic… I wanted to die!
I turned around to the band and they’re all laughing. I call out Bb and popped my capo on in superhuman time and we hit the downbeat for the turnaround in the new key.
I wanted to crawl under a rock.
And I owe that guy lunch!
YES!
((((
I transpose on the keyboard constantly to match the guys without having to rewrite chord charts. One song is normal, the next a 2, the next a 1, the next a four. Then I go back up to play invitation and forget the last song was capo-ed! Ugh. Not a good time for errors. The guys learned to come in behind me tentatively,and I BEG them to say to me often, “Got your copa off/-on?”
Reading these comments, I guess for all those who don’t know what a “capo” is, that sounds rather odd!!!
No…
No…
Make it stop. Please!
Yeah, you just gotta start over on this I think. You’re pretty much toast and have lost everyone. I think people would laugh it off if you just started over.
I had to do it last week. I wonder if his sound guy put this on the web? If that’s the case…I’d chase him down and have a little “talk” about putting my mistakes out on the web for the world to hear.
i’ve done it, but i try to keep the flow going by laughing at myself and stopping the band and starting over. I’d rather do it right and try to worship than struggle and fret throuGH A WHOLE SONG. my dAUGhter iS HAVING fun pRESSINg my CAPS lock key rIGHT NOW.
mmmmhh!
The funning is, when you out in the congregation, you cant help but notice… oh sure, you can pretend you’re still “worshiping in the spirit” but in your mind your thinking “WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT!?”
Totally been there. I typically lead worship for students, but the worst time for me to have done something like that was during an all-church gathering. I’m going around with all my musicians saying, “you got this? you need anything? don’t forget about this/that.” then i turn around and pull something like that. go to a different (higher) key, use my cut-capo instead of my full capo … yeah, that was fun to try to pull off.
sometimes you do just have to stop. it’s not stage etiquette, but it needs to be done sometimes.
Too funny.