I normally play piano with the corps band when they visit us once a month. They're so thin, I fill in multiple missing parts, and strings including piano are 'transparent' meaning they carry whatever color wind instrument(s) play at the moment. They add no color themselves.

My guitarists aren't ready to play with them and don't really want that. Keys with b's in the signature require nasty bar chords or playing with a capo.

No piano meant the only color was from the brass instruments.

Yes, I "got" to play tuba. But given the circumstances, I would have been much more valuable on piano filling in the missing parts. Piano is also percussion, percussive, meaning it adds rhythm and movement.

I can't shake the fact I was lied to, more than once. I do not trust these people.
They appear treacherous.

The springs corps pianist is in her 90s and not full time there or anywhere. She is competent, but not a concert pianist. She could not play a rigorous Beethoven sonata.

Sometimes the corps band plays a tune in another key than in the tune book, so I both sight read and transpose. I believe it would stress her to do that.

The Salvation Army is musically weird.

They have NO hymnal.

There is the song book which has only words.

The pianist has the tune book which has notation but no lyrics. If the pianist's voice is needed, good luck with that. The hymns are written in keys playable by beginning brass players. These are often in tessitura difficult for people to sing in. It isn't that these congregations can't carry a tune. They can't sing in the tessitura or overall range of the brass players.

All brass music is written in treble clef, including baritone, bass trombone, and tuba.

Lyrics in the song book are interchangeable with three or more familiar hymn tunes. Problem with that is familiar hymns like Old Rugged Cross, Amazing Grace, In the Garden, and How Great Thou Art don't work when other words are put with them.

There is serious rivalry among TSA performers, and especially bandmasters and pianists. it isn't musically healthy. The bandmasters act like old school orchestral conductors like Fiedler and Stokowski, ready to bite the head off any player who makes a mistake. In the profession, conductors like that are dinosaurs, and they're becoming extinct.

Good TSA bands play with good intonation and technique. But so much more is necessary to make music. Humility, humanity, and graciousness for example. Shaping phrases and orchestrating them so they touch hearts of the listeners. This is not concert stage music. We aren't there for that, or for people to oo and awe at how good we are, but to free them FROM thinking about quality of the music and instead letting that set a mood and tone of personal worship. They're there to talk with their Jesus in their heart, one-to-one. We provide an environment inviting to that idea.

You see my thought is when people go to church to find Jesus, or God, they won't. You bring Jesus or God with you, in your one-to-one personal relationship.

The better we make our music, the more transparent and invisible we become, stepping out of the way for them to be with and feel their Jesus.