Piano music to Jehovah's Witness songs

When I was in prison (over the so-called "neutrality" issue) being a faithful little JW I decided I was going to come out with some practical knowledge of music.

Instead of going into the Mess Hall to eat dinner, I'd sneak into the Catholic rectory where there was a nice grand piano. There I'd teach myself music.

Naturally, I make my efforts of some use to the Lawd Gawd Jah, consequently I used the Kingdom Song Book as reference.

One of my first tasks that I set for myself was figuring out the chords of each song. This was for a reason.

Inasmuch as I had no formal instruction in music I had to get a grasp on the "vocabulary" of music in some way I could grasp as a starting point from which to proceed.

I had owned a toy chord organ as a kid; the kind where you noodle out a melody with your right and and push a "chord" button with your left. (This is not too unlike the way an accordian works.)

I noticed the chords were labelled clearly: A Bb C, etc. I used my ear to determine what notes fell within the harmonic parameters of each chord that way.

This led me to conceive of music as being always a matter of left-hand=chords/right-hand=melody.

(This is naive, of course, I now realize.) But, it gave me a wedge I could use as a fulcrum for the heavy-lifting of musical progress.

I digress!

At any rate, by figuring out what chords might "belong" to the melody in the Kingdom Songbook I learned to play the songs in a knowledgable way (i.e. I understood what was going on musically as I played.) This led me further to be able to make arrangements for the few instruments that might be played by some of the JW brothers who had musical training and we formed a kind of miniscule "orchestra" that would play at the beginning and end of our meetings inside the prison.

The reason I mention all of this is to urge you to apply yourself to do the same.

It isn't that difficult when you discover that almost all of the Kingdom songs are pretty banal in their chord strategy.

The harmony is almost always thirds and that means you are really only going to use (mostly) scalewise chords. Figuring out the names of the chords is no big deal when you know the key you are in.

I decided I would make the harmonic structure of my favorite songs more....well, "interesting" and I deconstructed the left-hand part into more of an obbligato when I played.

Incidentally---our Jehovah's Witness meetings were held where we had no access to a piano. I discovered a very old-fashioned bellows organ (where you pump air with your knee as you play!) and I played that chordally as the other brothers played trumpet, trombone and, yes, violin!

How did it sound? Let's just say the Amish would have been proud of us.

T.

The brothers who were not FULL-TIME pioneers would not be given a letter by the Congregation Overseer to the local draftboard. This meant you had to go before the draft board and convince them yourself you qualified for a Ministerial Draft Deferement (which was the ideal way of escaping going into the Army.)

All I achieved was a Conscientious Objector status from my draftboard. This meant I could be called up and sentenced to work in Alternative Service (which, in my case, was Terrell State Hospital.) The Congregation Overseer and his Assistant took me into the Kingdom Hall library and a had a little talk with me. They specifically instructed me that I could NOT accept the alternate service. I had to be an example to the other brothers by going to prison.

That was the fate I accepted and the reason I ended up teaching myself music.

What a lovely education.

T.