Worship Musician May 2018 | Page 34

When I auditioned for David Cook (I found out later that it wasn’t really an audition because they were already pretty confident that I could nail the part from watching videos… thank the Lord for the Internet!) one of the things that David said when we ran through one of the songs was that it sounded like I had done my homework. Rehearsal shouldn’t be for doing the dirty work of learning the song there in the moment. It should be to run through it and make sure that everyone knows their parts and is together. [James] When I first started playing with Steven Curtis Chapman, they just called me and said, “Can you do these shows?” And I had to show up with no rehearsals, barely even a sound check, and be able to play all of his songs in the set. It was one of the hardest, most stressful experiences of my life. But if you do your homework and spend the time diving in, it’s noticeable. It’s important to know how you learn best, and to spend the time putting in the work to know the music. There have been times where I’m going on tour and they James with Hillsong’s Nigel Hendroff expect me to know thirty songs. They’re only and tune in to who might be having a bad day, building blocks down. It’s interesting to see the going to pick fifteen, but they want to know or realize when you’re having a bad day. It’s like little pieces that I’m missing, or to really analyze that you know all of their stuff. You just have being in a family. You won’t always get along, what happens between beat 4 and beat 1 of dive in and know that you know it. The worst just like in a family, but you have to be mature the next bar that isn’t readily apparent on a thing would be for them to say, “What are you enough to deal with it. Sometimes you have first listen. playing there?” or, “Where is that part?” and to to put your own ego and your own needs on not know it! the back burner for the greater good of the situation that you’re in. [WM] Do you have any tips on how to ace an audition? [Jeffrey] When I auditioned for Lincoln, one of the questions that I asked during the interview was what was it going to take to win the audition. He told me that the very fact that we were talking in the interview meant that I had already passed the musical portion! One of my big tips is to nail the nuances. I like to learn a new song, play through it a bunch, and then go back after a couple of days and relearn the song. It’s always amazing to me to see how much I’ve missed after getting the basic 34 May 2018 WorshipMusician.com