Category: Demos

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Demos Rock and/or Roll

Silent Star, featuring the Allegro Quartet

Joni Mitchell wrote the quintessential depressing Christmas song, River. (Also check out this beautiful new rendition by Herbie Hancock and Corinne Bailey Rae.) But there’s always room for one more, right? This is a recording of “Silent Star” from a rehearsal with the Allegro String Quartet: MP3. Perhaps next Christmas will see a proper recording of the song.

Strange angels in the sky
interrupt this lonely night
singing peace on earth
but what’s that worth
when they sing it from the sky?

No angel will never know
what it’s like living below
they sing of birth
but that just means more hurt
as another woman cries

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.

2,000 years passed since that night
and the only light that fills the sky
are rockets red glare
and bombs bursting in air
under the gaze of satellite
above this maze with restless eye.

Born under a silent star
Live under a silent star
Die under a silent star,
a million miles away.
A silent star, while all the angels sing:

Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis Deo.

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Demos Hymn tunes Retuned hymn

Long-weary Earth

I don’t know who Alexandra Fisher Willis is, but she’s written a beautiful Advent text, “Long-weary Earth in Darkness Groans.” From what I gather, she’s in Lester Ruth’s Theology of Songwriting at Duke Divinity, and she wrote this as one of her assignments. Dr. Ruth, give this woman an A+!

Alexandra wrote this text to the tune LASST UNS ERFREUEN (“All Creatures of Our God and King,” etc). This is a perfectly good choice. It is a tune that the Church has sung and cherished for many years–388 to be exact–but somehow I don’t feel the weight of history like perhaps I should.

I wrote a new one: MP3.

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Demos Psalms Retuned hymn

Psalm 132: Arise, O King of Grace Arise

Update 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

At Church of the Servant, we’re doing a series on the Psalms of Ascent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are certain Ascent Psalms which are slim pickings from a congregational song point of view. Psalm 132 is one of these, as was made abundantly clear last night as I was rushing to prepare music for a Guitarchestra rehearsal that was rapidly approaching.

As I searched hymnary.org, I found a good text by Isaac Watts called “Arise, O King of Grace, Arise,” that teases out Christological imagery from the Psalm in a way that only Watts can do. I valiantly tried to finish setting music to it by rehearsal time, but I was thwarted by making copies, unlocking doors and other mundane tasks.

But today I completed the song, and I want to make sure the good folks of the Guitarchestra have a chance to familiarize themselves with it before the next rehearsal. See the link above for scores. So put down your turkey and get practicing! (People who aren’t Gstra members are also welcome to try it out.)

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Church Congregational Songs Contests Demos Finale demo

A Gluttonous Feast of Rejection, Third Course

Our third course of anticipated rejection is a new tune for “Blest are the Innocents” by Sylvia Dunstan. This text is about the Slaughter of the Innocents, when Herod killed every male under two in the hopes of killing Jesus, the prophesied King. So it’s no upbeat ditty, to be sure.

According to an article in Reformed Worship, Dunstan wrote the text with the 10.10.10.10 tune  SLANE (“Be Thou My Vision”) in mind. The editors of Reformed Worship, who are also the editors of Faith Alive’s new hymnal, feel that SLANE’s positive associations will be in tension with the grim subject matter of the text. In the RW article they suggested using SLANE in a minor key arrangement.

I stayed pretty close to SLANE in my new tune. It’s in C minor, which is the relative minor key to SLANE’s Eb major. It has four phrases in 3/4 time that unfold similarly to SLANE. It’s mostly pentatonic, which is what gives SLANE its folk flavor. The main difference is that I never let my melody peak on the high Eb in the third phrase. This might sound like a small deal, but pentatonic melodies are all about the shape of the line. Letting a melody slowly blossom to the highest note of the scale is a way of really making a melody soar. (Keith Getty, I know what you’re doing.) I decided that for a text of this nature, never quite reaching the melodic goal would convey the brokenness of the subject matter. It’s a subtle touch, but I think it works.

You be the judge: MP3, PDF

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Contests Demos

A Gluttonous Feast of Rejection, Second Course

My second bid for rejection starts with a text by Brian Wren, “We Are Your People.” It’s dense enough of a text that something too groovy wouldn’t fit it comfortably. On the other hand, there’s always a need for tunes that bridge the gap between straight-laced hymn and rockin’ praise tune. What I came up with is chordal enough for a guitarist or even worship band to play, but also even enough that it could be led effectively at the organ. (“Gather Us In,” anyone?)

I like that the tune is more or less modal, yet keeps sliding out of the mode’s center. (You can cast your vote in the comment section as to what key you think the song is in.) What holds things together are the strong sequences that follow a subtle inner logic. They guide your voice to the next pitch even when you don’t understand why. Listen or look and let me know what you think.

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Church Congregational Songs Contests Demos

A Gluttonous Feast of Rejection, First Course

Why am I like this? I’ve been rejected by Faith Alive more times than a bacon salesman at a vegetarian convention, but here I am submitting four more songs to them. It started with an email that read:

Calling all composers, Work continues on the upcoming hymnal Lift Up Your Hearts: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs to be published by Faith Alive Christian Resources in 2013.  As we finish making our selections we noted a couple of texts that we would like to find new tunes for.

The first text listed is “As In that Upper Room You Left Your Seat” by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The meter is 10.10.10.10, which makes the poetic lines long enough that the syllabic stress can be all over the place. The trick is to write music that is fluid enough to accomodate changes in text stress between verses, but not so much that things turn to mush. So I wrote a melody that focuses on the arc of each phrase, and doesn’t worry too much about meter. In fact, I don’t show any time signatures and I’m thinking very seriously about taking out the bar lines.

Take a look (PDF) or listen (MP3), then give the folks at Faith Alive a call and tell them that their hymnal will be nothing without this tune. But still, I fully expect it to be rejected.

Categories
Art Music Demos Live

Budapest

Having just returned from two weeks in Ukraine, with flight arrival and departure from Budapest, Hungary, I thought it would be appropriate to post a recording of a composition inspired by my last visit to Budapest.

This is a demo of the University of Pittsburgh Jazz Band playing “Budapest.” The song comes from a set of songs called the European Suite, which I wrote after returning from a year in Salzburg and vicinity in 1989. The following year I scored the movement “Budapest” for a jazz arranging class.

I would be entirely willing to score the entire set of songs for jazz band. (Yes, jazz band directors, that’s a hint.) Until that time, you’ll need to satisfy your European cravings with this aural bon bon: Budapest MP3.

Categories
Art Music Demos Rock and/or Roll

The Allegro Sessions: Palestrina

Yet another composition about composing, this time I’m asking the question “in the face of so many great composers, should a minor talent like me even bother?” It takes the form of an open letter to the Renaissance master Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, asking whether he composed knowing he would be revered as a musical master centuries later or whether he was content to simply make music for the immediate joy (and income) it brought him.

The thing I like about this song is that it stretches the boundaries of song form. It goes all over the place, but never loses its way. The problem is that it is an absolute bear to play. The poor cello and viola fill in for bass and guitar, with rhythmic double stops that form the backbone of the groove. The violins have solos and fiddle rhythms. And then everyone has to stop on a dime and nail delicate harmonics. It’s a wonder they didn’t walk out on me when I passed out the music!

Take a listen to a work in progress: Palestrina, MP3.

PS – If you’re wondering why I keep composing given the fact that I’m dwarfed by people like Palestrina, it is best summarized by Henry van Dyke: “The woods would be very silent if no bird sang except the best.”

Categories
Demos Rock and/or Roll

The Allegro Sessions: Have I Gone Too Far?

On day two of our journey into the world of Allegro we arrive at another jazz tune. But this time it’s an intimate ballad with ripe harmonies and melodies that stretch to the point of breaking. “Have I Gone Too Far” was written while I was in grad school, compelled by my composition professors to “find my voice,” which was code for “write unnecessarily complex music that would be completely inaccessible to anyone outside our little club.”

I received my compositional indoctrination during the day, and played my guitar around town at night. In fact, this was when I first began writing music for guitar and string quartet, trying to find ways of composing music that were artful but also accessible. During these years of musical tension, I often wrote songs that explored the questions that kept turning in my mind. And the question in this case was, “Have I Gone Too Far?“

Categories
Demos Quirky Rock and/or Roll

The Allegro Sessions: I’ll Be Around

For the last year or so I’ve been getting together with the Allegro String Quartet, a fine female foursome who have been working on some of my rock and roll string music.

As any patron of these pages knows, I am nothing if not eclectic. (I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a feature or a flaw.) Over the years, I’ve written a number of things for strings that combine classical sensibilities with rock/pop/jazz/global aesthetics. Sometimes this has taken the form of compositions for string quartet alone (6, Jig), and at other times the strings are layered into a band (Dreaming). But what interests me most is a hybrid somewhere in the middle. Last week, Allegro and I made four rough recordings of songs we’ve been working on. Each one crosses genres in some way.

First up is “I’ll be Around.” This is a pretty straight ahead jazz tune, and I could imagine Bing Crosby singing it in a 1950s TV special. But this rendition is Bing-less, with me on vocals and guitar as the quartet switches between a tight-harmony solo, pizzacato, and a verse in which they throw themes back and forth between them. The tempo marking says it all: “coy and cute.” Take a listen to I’ll Be Around, MP3.