Author: Greg Scheer

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Psalms Retuned hymn Rock and/or Roll

Psalm 82: Stick it to the Man

Update: For sheet music or to adopt this orphan tune, head over to gregscheer.com.

This Sunday at Church of the Servant we sang the Psalter Hymnal version of Psalm 82, “There Where the Judges Gather.” After the service Ron and Deb Rienstra commented that the tune which accompanied the text was too nice. What it really needed was a tune that got across the “stick it to the man” tone of the Psalm.

How could I resist?

I spent the next few days writing and recording this new version of “There Where the Judges Gather.” The tune, appropriately enough, is called “STICK IT TO THE MAN.” Do punk rock and metrical Psalms go together? You be the judge. Listen to the MP3 here.

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Church Congregational Songs Live Psalms

Psalm 30: Sing to God (live at COS)

Update 10/1/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.

We sang the new setting of Psalm 30 this Sunday at COS and it went surprisingly well for a new congregational tune. People picked it up quickly and gained momentum each verse. Listen to the recording from the 11am service or download the final version of the PDF file (see link above).

One person remarked that he wouldn’t have known that it was a Psalm if it hadn’t said so in the liturgy. I didn’t know if he meant that as a good thing or a bad thing. Jack, COS’s pastor thought the words were great. He thought he was paying me a compliment until he realized I had only written the music. My wife Amy pronounced the song “okay.”

Even in the face of such ambivalent reactions,  I remain undaunted! My calling in life is to fill up the world with so-so music, and I intend to do it with gusto!

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Finale demo Psalms

Psalm 30: Sing to God That All May Hear You

Update 10/1/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.

Once again, I’ve turned to Michael Morgan’s 1999 Psalter for Christian Worship as the starting point for a new Psalm setting, this time Psalm 30. I like the way Morgan places the joyous sentiments of the Psalm text in the first half of each verse, and the lament and supplication in the second half. That allows the musical setting to reinforce the meaning of the text in each verse.

Morgan recommends the tune ABBOT’S LEIGH (“God Is Here”) for the text. That’s a beautiful tune, but I just couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wrote a draft of a new tune one afternoon last week, obsessed about it the rest of the evening, revised it the next morning, got some helpful feedback from my friend David that afternoon, then finished it by dinner time.

We’ll sing it at COS as the lectionary Psalm this Sunday. In the meantime, you can download a PDF file of the music (see link above) or listen to a cheesy Finalefied MP3.

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Church Live

Psalm 5

Yesterday, we sang a new setting of Psalm 5 that I composed for two narrators and congregational refrain. I was quite pleased with the way it sounded, though I’ll probably raise the key and make a few minor changes. If you want the music, just email me. Otherwise, take a listen.

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Colin Demos Finale demo

20+ with Colin

Colin and I have now written over 20 songs together! That’s a pretty decent output seeing as we started in October. The latest two are “Come, Stay with Me Tonight” (MP3, PDF) and “The Happy Song” (MP3, PDF).

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Colin Demos Finale demo

Perfect Love Song

Paul McCartney can have his silly love songs, Colin and I have written the perfect love song. Okay, there’s probably no such thing as a perfect love song, but that’s the title of our new one. Check out the PDF file or the MP3 demo played by Mr. Finale.

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Demos Live

Recordings from Uganda

As you may know, I recently returned from a 2 week trip to Uganda to train East African worship leaders. Over the next few weeks I’ll be creating 8 audio reports from the trip–kind of NPRish things, with narration and music. Eventually, the reports, photos, and unedited recordings from the trip will be housed on their own web page at the CICW site. For now, here are links to the first 2 reports: report 1, report 2.

As a special bonus for you, my loyal musicblog subscribers,  here is a little tune I recorded one afternoon at the Humble School where the worship training took place. The recording is a bit windy at first, but it gets better.

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Colin Finale demo

Two more love songs with Colin

I just returned from 2 weeks in Uganda. To assuage your eager ears while I catch up with things, here are two songs I wrote with Colin Gordon-Farleigh before I left. The first is “Let Your Fingers Do the Walking” (PDF, MP3), a 1920s-style romp of a song. The second is a ballad called “Colours” (PDF, MP3).

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Demos Rock and/or Roll

Greg Scheer, Live at the Morris Inn, volume 2

Here are the rest of the songs I recorded last weekend while at Notre Dame. Please listen with gracious ears–there are lots of musical warts.

“Everything to Me” is a song I’ve sung a million times at coffee houses and such. I often start a set with it because I could sing it in my sleep. Also, I like the way the first line gives voice to what most people are probably thinking: “That’s just what we need–another song.” “Hope and Humor” is another song that’s seen well over a decade of action. I wrote it at the end of my year in Austria as a travelogue of an itinerant musician. Strangely, I told the staff of COS one of the stories from this song (“Standing in the rain for hours”) yesterday at our staff retreat. “Have I Gone Too Far?” is another one of my many songs about songs. In this particular case, I was obsessing about the fact that my music is usually to complex for the pop world and too simple for the art music world. My rendition here doesn’t really capture the jazz ballad style I’d like it to have. (As a matter of fact, there are certain chords I didn’t capture at all.) Finally, “Five Days without You” is a goofy song I wrote the first time my wife and I were apart for more than a day.

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Demos Rock and/or Roll

Greg Scheer, Live at the Morris Inn

I attended a conference at Notre Dame this weekend. In my spare time I annoyed people at the Morris Inn by recording some songs in my room. I’ve only had time to gussy up two of them so far: “Silent Star” and “Let It Go.” They’re just rough, one-take demos, but they get the idea across. I’d love to hear some feedback on these, because I’m thinking about making some “real” recordings of a few of them in the future.

Two technical sidenotes: 1. A few people have said that they can’t get the mp3 links to work. Are other people having that problem? I tried a different linking system for the above songs, so let me know if it solves the problem. 2. When I mixed these songs in Audacity I got a muddy, slightly overblown sound. It sounds fine in Audacity, but when I play the mix in iTunes it’s much louder. Anyone have any ideas?

Addendum: Here’s another one along the same lines–“Happy Birthday, Goodbye.”