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