Essentials Blue Creative Project (Song demo)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, in St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Perhaps rather predictably, for my creative project I’ve decided to write and demo a song.

Lyrically, I set out to echo my worldview post of the previous week and, as I worked, it became obviously fairly early on that it was turning into a Prodigal Son song, so I ran with that. I did try hard to honestly reflect my own thought and feelings so, if nothing else, this is a song that does it for me.

I’m hoping that it’ll be simple enough for congregational singing but I appreciate that the range may be a bit of a stretch for some singers. Harmonically, I’ve made use of quite a few inversions but, as these can be ignored (just play the chord to the left of the slash,) it really shouldn’t prove too difficult for your average church-guitarist.

In singing it I’ve used a fair amount of rubato but I’d expect to sing it more rigidly to-time with a congregation.

It’s in the key of A major and I’ve recorded it at 60bpm. Of course, I’ve sung it in a key that suits my voice but that’s not to say that you can’t change that with one o’ them new-fangled capos.

Technical bits (for any who are interested, as I always am):
Recorded on a PC (not a Mac! Is that an instant fail?) using Steinberg Cubase SE3 with several VSTi plugins – XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums, Steinberg’s The Grand 2, Applied Acoustics’ Lounge Lizard Session, GForce’s Virtual String Machine, real bass (my ancient Ibanez SR886) and real voices (four tracks of me and two of my wife, Sue.) Rendered to wav and then Normalised and topped-and-tailed in Steinberg Wavelab 6 and then saved as 192kbps Stereo mp3.

Here is the audio

Here is a lyric and chord sheet

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For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, in St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

As a musician or as a computer-geek (I’ve done rather a lot of both in my nearly-forty years) as soon as I start using jargon I tend lose people.

If I say “We’re starting on the dominant first-inversion with an anacrusis on the third beat into sixteen bars of half-time and then we’ll double-up into the chorus” or “Check the boot order in the BIOS is set to CD/DVD first, and you’d better check the CPU temp while you’re at it” no doubt some people will understand but many people will glaze over, and grin, and call me something uncomplimentary. It’s happened rather a lot to me but I’m slowly learning that, if I don’t want to lose people, I have to speak their language, not mine.

Ok, there are times when I’m with other musos who speak my language and using the correct terminology is the quickest and most effective way to get on. And, sometimes, computer nerds talk to each other too. Using words. From their mouths.

Believe me, I do find the dumbing-down of language quite sad but, ultimately, I’d rather be understood than merely correct.

A missionary friend of ours is working on a translation of Galatians. He’s trying very hard to keep the jargon out.

I’m not going to give you a list of words I find particularly unhelpful, but tell me – can we avoid the jargon in our worship song-writing?

Should we bother?

Does it matter?

Work of art

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, in St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

The question of whether creativity resides in all of us is one that I’ve pondered for quite some time now. I really don’t agree with the commonly-held belief that many people are entirely devoid of creativity.

I’ve occasionally tested individuals’ musical “ears” (purely out of interest) and have almost always found what I believe to be latent talent; and that’s just in the field of music (and, by the way, I’d also argue that a genuine appreciation of any art form indicates some sort of talent.) The visual arts, poetry, cookery, comedy, perfumery, sculpting… these are obvious examples of creativity but, as Dan mentioned in his video, creativity takes many, many forms, so many, in fact, that it would surely be incredible to happen upon a person gifted with none of them.

It puts me in mind of a song by Keith Green:

We are like windows
Stained with colors of the rainbow
Set in a darkened room
Till the bridegroom comes to shine through
Then the colors fall around our feet
Over those we meet
Covering all the gray that we see
Rainbow colors of assorted hues
Come exchange your blues
For His love that you see shining through me

(you can find the full lyrics here)

Speaking for myself, what has held me back creatively has been areas where I’ve been damaged. Fear of destructive criticism, fear of failing, fear of revealing emotion. As I’ve drawn closer to God I’ve experienced healing and my inhibitions have diminished (confession: I’m still not perfect.)

Rather than watching Sky+ in our ivory towers and counting our royalties, shouldn’t those of us who are already “shining” (or, rather, “allowing God to shine through us”) be encouraging those that aren’t? Not “Do a bit of macramé and you’ll feel so much better about yourself,” of course – more like “Your Father is really quite amazing, you know – why don’t we see if you’ve inherited any of that?”

P.s. It just occurred to me this morning that I’m a work of art. Not a da Vinci, or a Monet, or Rachmaninov – the Artist that painted me puts that lot in the shade. Makes me feel special, although you lot are by the same artist.

Honestly…

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, in St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

I’ve had a very busy, and somewhat frustrating, week. We’ve been without our only car since the middle of last week and it looks like we won’t get it back until Monday afternoon at the very earliest, so we didn’t make it to church last week (which, honestly, is something all four of us miss very much,) it looks like we’ll miss it again this week, and it seems like I’ve been telling my customers “Sorry, I still don’t have a car” for absolutely yonks now. So I’ve really not been feeling like writing a cheerful blog. (mumbles) Been a bit cross, actually.

However, coming back to this Word document that I’m typing in (‘coz it fixes my atroshus spelling,) I found I’d written just one word: Openness. I’m so deep.

The reason that I’d typed that was that I’m so super-spiritual that – no, I’d better be honest: it’s not a word I use very much and I wanted to see if Word would decree that it hath one “n” or two. The mighty M$ decreed that it should be two, and so therefore it shall. Thank you, Bill.

Anyway, as I brought this window up and noticed that solitary word I thought “actually, I do have something to say about openness.” Actually, I made a related comment on a post by one Mark Kennedy earlier today regarding just that. So I will. So get on with it already.

The thing is, I’m realising that, despite often being quite willing to speak my mind (see: big-mouth,) I’m not always as open as I should be. I tend to extremes, sometimes seeing it as my mission to shock people into seeing things as they really are – ahem, as I see them – and other times trying very hard to please. I also want to appear to be a completely healthy Christian but I’m starting to see that that is rather pointless – a bit like going to the doctor and then telling him “No, I’m fine, really, how are you?”

Of course, I’m not talking about celebrating or embracing my faults but, if I really want to be freer, happier, more useful to others etc. then I’m going to have to learn to be open, honest – and vulnerable. How can we receive help and prayer if we keep trying to hide the problem?

Ok, here endeth the confession.

Songs vs. Psalms (Essentials Blue)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, in St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

So why the sudden blog then? Well, it’s a required part of a course I’m taking – “Essentials Blue” which, so far, has been very thought provoking, and not a little nerve-wracking. The last time I did anything academic-like was c. 20 years ago and, let’s be honest here, I was never the model student (well, that’s not entirely true – I was a good boy in primary skool and for possibly a year at secondary.)

Anyway, I want to expand a little on a comment I made on my recent posting which you may or may not be able to see on Facebook, depending on whether or not you’re part of the right group (it’s all very technical!)

When considering how well the current pool of “worship songs” our church draws from deals with various issues (Justice, Spirituality, Relationships and Beauty,) I thought I’d do myself a little survey, using an Excel spreadsheet and some really l33t formulae wot I made.

I scanned through the lyrics of fifty of these songs, initially looking for those that were calling on God to address, or help us to address, these issues, but I quickly noticed a trend and added a couple more criteria to my sheet, namely, was the song in question a prayer (i.e. begging God for something) or praise (the meaning of which I’m sure is self-evident.)

I was rather surprised to find that only twenty percent (ten) of the songs were asking God for anything, which probably sounds nice at first – give God a bit of a res t ‘n’ all that. (In case you’re interested, only four of these ten even mentioned “justice”, the topic I was most interested in, the rest falling into the “Spirituality” category.) But then I thought “Surely the Psalms were songs, weren’t they? And they made it into the Bible, didn’t they? So oughtn’t we to be daring to write a little like them?”

Take a look at Psalm 1, which might be summarised by it’s last verse:
“The Lord protects everyone who follows him, but the wicked follow a road that leads to ruin.” Psalm 1 v6 CEV
I’m probably wrong, but I don’t recall ever singing a song that issued a warning to the wicked.

Consider the first verse of Psalm 10:
“Why are you far away, Lord? Why do you hide yourself when I am in trouble?” Psalm 10 v1 CEV
Now I really don’t think the Lord hides when we’re in trouble, and I also don’t think that the author actually believed that either. I think he was being honest in expressing how he felt. I certainly don’t remember singing anything so honest as that!

Ok, final example:
“Only a fool would say ‘There is no God!’ People like that are worthless; they are heartless and cruel and never do right.” Psalm 14 v1 CEV
Now I’d say that, despite containing nothing vulgar, that’s pretty strong language, and I’d be very leery indeed to suggest that we sing lyrics like those in our church, so what’s my point? (hang on, I’ve got it here somewhere…)

Ah yes, this is my point. Are we (the global community of followers of Joshua bar-Joseph) being entirely honest in our writing, or have we absorbed a little too much of this good ole P.C. stuff that’s doing the rounds? Are we compromising for fear of offending? Are we afraid that something we sing will make its way out into the Big Bad World and they’ll be mean to us?

I’d better shut up now – I’m making myself a rather scary bed.

Please bear in mind that these are thoughts I have which may (perish the thought!) be completely wrong – so why don’t you tell me what you think?