Why? Part 2
As I said last week I was asked how I am led to the songs that I choose for the choir to sing. I want this blog to always be encouragements from Scripture, and I hope that you are truly ministered to in understanding the method to my madness.
This week I want to talk about the second most important element of the song…the music. There are several elements in music.
1. Does it compliment the lyric? Sometimes as I listen to songs, the lyric is a very emotional lyric and the music is this kind of a happy go lucky sound and melody that doesn’t match. The purpose of the music is to enhance rather than detract.
2. Is it sing-able? Let me name drop for a second… J When I was traveling full time, I got to do a couple of concerts with Michael W. Smith. I’ll never forget the words he said to me. He told me that no matter what kind of style of music I wrote, the big score was when someone could walk away singing it. Although I don’t expect everyone to walk away singing every song that the choir sings when only hearing the song one time, the melody needs to connect easily.
3. Does the style of music work at Wedgwood? In Christian music there are all kinds of styles from country to heavy metal. Although we do have a variety of music, there are parameters that we stay within. What works at one place doesn’t necessarily work at Wedgwood.
4. Do the harmony parts in the song fit well with the voices of Wedgwood? We have some very good voices in the choir. The best sound the choir is going to produce is simply from music that fits their voices.
5. How fast can the choir learn the song? Since the choir sings a song almost every Sunday, the learning curve of a song is extremely important. I do choose songs that are hard to learn because of rhythms or harder to hear harmony, but these types of songs can only make up a small percentage of what we do because of how many songs we need to learn. I want to challenge the choir to stretch and grow musically as well as spiritually, but the main objective always has to be to lead people the next Sunday in worship. I try to balance the hard with the ones that don’t take much to learn but still gets the message of God’s love across.
So this is the music side of choosing the songs. Next week I will close this by explaining aspects that don’t enter into the decision of picking songs.
Have a great week.
pb
As I said last week I was asked how I am led to the songs that I choose for the choir to sing. I want this blog to always be encouragements from Scripture, and I hope that you are truly ministered to in understanding the method to my madness.
This week I want to talk about the second most important element of the song…the music. There are several elements in music.
1. Does it compliment the lyric? Sometimes as I listen to songs, the lyric is a very emotional lyric and the music is this kind of a happy go lucky sound and melody that doesn’t match. The purpose of the music is to enhance rather than detract.
2. Is it sing-able? Let me name drop for a second… J When I was traveling full time, I got to do a couple of concerts with Michael W. Smith. I’ll never forget the words he said to me. He told me that no matter what kind of style of music I wrote, the big score was when someone could walk away singing it. Although I don’t expect everyone to walk away singing every song that the choir sings when only hearing the song one time, the melody needs to connect easily.
3. Does the style of music work at Wedgwood? In Christian music there are all kinds of styles from country to heavy metal. Although we do have a variety of music, there are parameters that we stay within. What works at one place doesn’t necessarily work at Wedgwood.
4. Do the harmony parts in the song fit well with the voices of Wedgwood? We have some very good voices in the choir. The best sound the choir is going to produce is simply from music that fits their voices.
5. How fast can the choir learn the song? Since the choir sings a song almost every Sunday, the learning curve of a song is extremely important. I do choose songs that are hard to learn because of rhythms or harder to hear harmony, but these types of songs can only make up a small percentage of what we do because of how many songs we need to learn. I want to challenge the choir to stretch and grow musically as well as spiritually, but the main objective always has to be to lead people the next Sunday in worship. I try to balance the hard with the ones that don’t take much to learn but still gets the message of God’s love across.
So this is the music side of choosing the songs. Next week I will close this by explaining aspects that don’t enter into the decision of picking songs.
Have a great week.
pb
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