Can’t hear yourself think? Or sing?

In a world where, no matter how big the issue, the panjandrums of the parachurch tell us we should all just agree to differ, T. David Gordon is a one man oasis of wisdom.  Over at the online journal,Second Nature, he casts a cold eye on praise bands and on obnoxiously loud organs too.  Here is a key paragraph, though the whole article is worth reading:

Roughly twenty years ago, I began teaching the course on Presbyterian Denominational Standards at Gordon-Conwell Seminary.  About a fourth of the course addressed Presbyterian polity and three-fourths addressed Presbyterian worship.  Students in those days will recall that I often expressed concern about performing choirs and overly-loud organs. In each case (performing choir and overly-loud organ) my concern was the same:  congregational praise is a commanded duty that can be audibly discerned; we should hear congregational praise when it is sung, and nothing else (choir, organ, marching band, bagpipe) should be permitted to obscure the thing that is commanded.