This is, literally, my musical diary–notes fresh from my pen and recorded in a few hours. You can find my finished works elsewhere; here, it's all about capturing the moment!
Update 1/11/22: Sheet music for this tune is now available at gregscheer.com.
A few months ago I wrote a tune for a text by Herman Stuempfle. Strangely, when I went searching for a text to accompany this week’s sermon on the Wedding in Cana, I was led again to Stuempfle. Even stranger? The new text, “Come, Join in Cana’s Feast,” fits the same tune!
Because yesterday’s service was led by the Joyful Noise Orchestra, I had some cool instrumental options. I’m a huge fan of jazz with orchestra, so I broke out my hollow body Ibanez and wrote some string parts, a la Wes Montgomery’s Bumpin’. Throw in Lauren Figueroa on vocals and Joel Klamer on tenor sax, I figure you can’t go wrong.
Here’s the the MP3 of the service. Below, for your listening pleasure is some real music: Wes Montgomery’s Bumpin’.
In 1971, Priscilla Wright wrote a song based on the prophesies of Joel. It was a scripture song like many of its era, with verses that quote a biblical passage verbatim and a music style that mimics Jewish folk song. We ended up singing it on a Joyful Noise Sunday, so I wrote a quick little arrangement for strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion. Email me if you need a score.
Update 1/10/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’ve been using this arrangement forever, but for some reason have never posted it to my blog. PUER NOBIS is one of the great hymn tunes of the Church and is matched with many texts, including “O Splendor of God’s Glory Bright.” I tried to bring out its folk song flavor with a piano accompaniment that is energetic. As one pianist put it, “I’ll send you the bill for the physical therapist.” Keyboardist complaints aside, I feel like this arrangement brings out the sprightly nature of this tune in a way that often gets lost in the four-part hymnal.
Update 10/1/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.
Two years after Naaman Wood and I began collaborating on “Restore Us, O God,” the song has finally been sung by an actual congregation. I think you’ll agree that it went swimmingly:
Of course, its success is due in part to the Church of the Servant Guitarchestra, which got its Klezmer on for this one. It’s also due to my congregation’s enthusiasm for singing. Listen to the way they dive right in when I invite them to sing.
All in all a successful debut of the Wood/Scheer writing team. What’s next, Naaman?
Can’t get enough? Take a look at the leadsheet (see link above) or listen to the first and second drafts.
Isaac Watts, Greg Scheer’s posthumous collaborator
Update 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
A few years ago I co-wrote a song with Isaac Watts called “Arise, O King of Grace, Arise,” aka “O Savior Come.” I hadn’t thought much about it lately until one of my fellow worship planners here at the church chose the song for a Christ the King Sunday service. Watts teases out the Christological overtones of Psalm 132 so that it works beautifully in that service as well as during Advent. I decided to revisit the song, with a piano accompaniment and string arrangement. Listening to the way the congregation grabs ahold of the song, singing with more gusto each verse, makes me realize that this one’s a keeper.
Update 1/24/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
Yesterday was Church of the Servant’s monthly BES Combined Service. That’s the service that brings the “Basic English” congregation together with those in the “Standard English” service. I try to choose music that both congregations know or that uses simple lyrics, while still following the same liturgical movements and lectionary texts. Not an easy task.
Yesterday the lectionary called for the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79; the song of Zechariah) as the “Psalm” for the day. The most accessible version I found was Michael Perry‘s 1973 text, “Blest Be the God of Israel.” (Although I changed the word “harbinger” to “messenger.”) It’s usually paired with MERLE’S TUNE by Hal Hopson. That’s a beautiful tune, but wasn’t quite in the groove of a BES Combo service, so I finished up an idea I had been working on a few weeks before. This new tune has a lot of similarities to the Peruvian Gloria, and could even use that as an extended Amen at the end of the song.
Download the leadsheet (see link above) and be the first to use it in your town!
Update 1/15/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I first heard “Ready My Heart” on Steve Bell’s CD Each Rare Momentover a decade ago. It’s been an integral part of my church’s Advent ever since. It is a unique Advent song, a devotional text in which we pray that our hearts would be prepared to cradle the coming Savior.
It was written by Lois Shuford in the late 70s. I’m not sure how Steve Bell found it, but it certainly wasn’t due to a promotional campaign on Shuford’s part–in email correspondence a while back, she just seemed pleased and maybe a little surprised that the song had taken on a life of its own.
Head over to gregscheer.com for resources for using “Ready My Heart” in your church. Shuford is not registered with CCLI and seems pleased to have churches sing the song as long as they attribute the song to her. If that changes, I’ll update the information here.
Update 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
Here is a new song co-written by Isaac Watts and me.
My pastor, Jack Roeda, is preaching through Hebrews and pointed out the other day that there are few songs that use the image of Jesus as high priest. Shepherd, Bread of Life, yes, but not high priest. Even though I knew he was baiting me, I took the hook and went off to find some good high priest songs. I fell in love with this text by Isaac Watts and wrote a new tune for it.
On thing I’ve been thinking about a lot in my writing lately is the “Occam’s Razor” principle, which basically states that the simplest answer is likely the simplest answer. Another way to state it might be “don’t gild the lily” or Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s famous, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
I’ve spent most of my life trying to master the intricacies of putting notes together, and now I’m realizing that sometimes music sounds best in its simplest forms. This doesn’t take less mastery, but more. In any case, I kept reminding myself of this while writing the tune for this song, and I think I was able to strip it back to an extremely simple, clear form that sings well. Listen to the way the volume of the singing increases on each verse–that is music to a composer’s ears!
You can download the leadsheet or the string parts at the link above. If you’re a worship nerd, you can hear some more highlights from yesterday’s service. If you’re a hymn nerd, you can visit Hymnary.org to see how Watts’ original text was broken into two modern hymn texts: Join All the Glorious Names and Jesus, My Great High Priest. (And how I chose from his 12 verses to come up with my 4 verses and a refrain.)
Just a quick post from yesterday’s service, featuring the inimitable Joyful Noise Orchestra. If you are not familiar with JNO, it’s an ensemble (collective? flash mob? uprising?) of musicians that span from age 12 to 72, from beginner to pro. We lead worship every few months at Church of the Servant, and when we do I try to write something special to show them off. This time it was a contrapuntal introduction to the hymn tune DARWALL, which you may know as “Rejoice the Lord Is King.” (We sang it with the text “Join All the Glorious Names.”) If you want to verify that we were mostly playing the right notes, you can take a look at the score: PDF. If you want to verify that JNO is the best looking band in the business, check out this picture from Thanksgiving 2014.
Church of the Servant’s Joyful Noise Orchestra, with Joel Klamer conducting
Update 1/11/22: Sheet music for this tune is now available at gregscheer.com.
Now that my book is finished, I have a little more time for creative ventures. The first fruit of that time is a setting of Herman Stuempfle’s text “How Wide the Love of Christ!” I came across the text when searching Hymnary.org for hymns based on Ephesians 3:14-21. I was drawn to this one because it takes “the breadth and length and height and depth” and gives a verse to each word, followed by a doxology. I began with the intention of writing a big festive choral piece with brass, but it started morphing into a more intimate, jazzy setting–a very different feel, but I kind of like it.
