Category: Demos

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Hallel Psalms Psalms

Psalm 113: From the Rising of the Sun

I finally decided to bite the bullet and do FAWM. What is FAWM, you ask? It stands for February Album Writing Month, and people who take part make it their goal to write 14 songs in 28 days. You can check out my page here: http://fawm.org/fawmers/gregscheer/.

For this year’s FAWM, I plan to write music around the “Hallel” Psalms (Psalms 113-118). For each Psalm there will be a song (that’s 6 songs), padded by instrumental interludes (7), and interjected Hallelujahs (5), for a total of 18 pieces of music. Part of the reason I decided to take the FAWM challenge this year is that I feel the need for a big project to keep me excited about life. It also coincides with a Cardiphonia project centered on the Hallel Psalms, due at the end of the month.

Now, on to the first post:

The first half of Psalm 113 is lots of beautiful creation imagery, but the second half contains some things that don’t fit as neatly into a modern worship song: God raises the needy from the garbage dump and places them among princes; he gives the barren woman children. I boiled this down to three themes in verse 2: God gives us a place at the table, a place in the kingdom of God, and a place in God’s family.

People at fawm.org get the MP3, but you, dear readers, get the PDF, too!

[Trivia for those who have too much time on their hands: this isn’t the first time I’ve set Psalm 113 to music. A few decades ago I wrote a whole cantata based on the Psalm for a church in Elterlein, East Germany.]

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Church Congregational Songs Contests Demos

We Are the Children of God

This summer I got an email from one of my blog readers alerting me to an upcoming song contest. (Thanks, Dean!) The contest is run by Grandfather Home for Children.  You really should check out their website, because they do wonderful work with abused and abandoned children.

As the deadline approached, I started looking through my songs to find some things that fit their three categories: traditional hymn, contemporary song, and children’s song. Sure, I found some songs that fit the bill, but I felt that I was taking the easy way out by submitting only old songs. (In Ninjago terms, I wasn’t unlocking my true potential.)

I started to think about the kind of song an abandoned or abused child would want to sing. I didn’t think an orphan would want to sing about being an orphan, even though there are lots of Bible passages about God being the father of the fatherless. Instead, I thought they’d want to sing about belonging and being part of a family. And of course, that’s what we all want.

Then like a bolt of lightening, it hit me: I need to write a simple children’s song about being a child of God. Not only is it cool that God adopts us as children, it’s even cooler that this makes us siblings–blood relations in Jesus. The great thing about this song is that it’s a song we can all sing–we’ve all been adopted into God’s family through Christ–but, of course, it has an even deeper meaning for the context of Grandfather Home for Children.

MP3, PDF

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Arrangement Church Congregational Songs Demos Global

All of My Heart (Adoração)

Update 1/15/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve taken it upon myself to introduce the Brazilian writing duo of Rubem Amorese and Toninho Zemuner. They write beautiful, singable, meaningful songs. In Portuguese. But with a resolute will and the help of Google translate, I forge on, transcribing and translating some of their songs.

The latest is a simple song called “Adoração.” Because the song is so simple, the translation was very difficult. Every word had to be just right. As a matter of fact, I’d like a little feedback. Here’s the first verse in Portuguese:

Te adorarei, te adorarei
Com todo o meu coração;
Com toda a sede do meu viver,
Com todo o meu ser.

Te adorarei, te adorarei
Com todo o meu coração;
Com toda a minha razão e amor,
Com todo o meu viver.

As you can see, the first two lines of each half verse are identical. Normally, the fourth line would rhyme with the second line, but in this song they’ve bound the two half verses by rhyming the last line in each half verse. This creates an unusually long wait for the rhyme completion for a simple song. I respected the integrity of the original and followed their pattern. At first it didn’t sound right to my ear, but after I spent some time recording it, it began to feel more natural. Yak, yak, yak. See for yourself.

Listen to their original: MP3

Look at the translation: PDF

Listen to my demo at the link above.

Look at the leadsheet at the link above.

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Church Congregational Songs Demos

Open Our Eyes to the Word of Life

Bruce Benedict and Cardiphonia crew are releasing another compilation. This time the theme is liturgical music. I’ll post a link to my song, “The Body of Christ” that will be included on the CD when it’s released in a few days. In the meantime, here is a brand new one that didn’t make the cut: Open Our Eyes to the Word of Life.

It’s a prayer for illumination to be sung before the reading or preaching of scripture. Even though it’s a compact little song, the lyrics include each person of the Trinity and conclude with the idea that we should not only be hearing the Word, we should be doing it, as well. Not bad for 18 measures. The first part of the song can be sung as a round, a cappella or using the chords in measures 21-24. But the likelihood of people singing a new song as a round is low, so I added a “Hallelujah” round after the main text. This can be sung directly following the first part of the song, as it is on the demo, or it can be separated and sung elsewhere in the service.

Give it a try: MP3, PDF

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Arrangement Choir Church Congregational Songs Demos Finale demo

One Generation, orchestra demo

Today’s post swerves from the musical valley of last week’s deacon dance ditty into the higher ground of a majestic orchestral arrangement. Aesthetic whiplash? You betcha.

One Generation is one of my big hits. “Big,” “hit,” and perhaps even “one of” are relative, of course, but it has been published a few times and even sung at weddings, so I count it as my “Freebird.” In any case, there are a few events coming up where they plan to sing One Generation and have large ensembles on hand, so I thought it was time to orchestrate it. I wanted to dress it up so that it felt more majestic than the everyday praise song, so I added a fanfare and splashes of color throughout. Also, knowing that most people won’t have full orchestra, I created multiple options (choir/piano, congregation/strings/piano, etc).

Here’s a rough demo as performed by Finn Alley: MP3. If you want the score and parts, just let me know.

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Demos Rock and/or Roll

Come, Sweet Muse

A few weeks ago, Colin Gordon-Farleigh sent me an email asking if I had anything for a New Zealand singer with whom he had been communicating. Toni Gibson is a “classical crossover” artist similar to Australian Grace Bawden, who sang Colin and my song “If Only I Had Wings.” Toni was looking for something edgy to fill out the rest of her upcoming album. She put it this way:

The ‘edge’ that we are looking for is something more classical mixed with rock style. Like possibly a melody line that is operatic and the music which has a slightly dark feel and has a healthy dose of electric guitars to rock it up, but also still balances well with the classical feel of the melody line.

That one paragraph set the course of the rest of my week. I made a quick mock up of an idea to see if I was headed in the right direction. I knew she liked Evanescence, so I combined heavy guitars with strings and piano. Lots of drama. She loved it.

Next I got to the real work of actually writing the song. Toni’s byline at her website is “Angel of Music,” so I decided to write an ode to the Muse. My first draft went well beyond epic, tipping the scales somewhere around immense and gargantuan. It was almost ten minutes long and included an aria-like bridge with a Latin text by Ovid (supplied by Latin guru Nancy Van Baak). Clearly I needed to do some trimming.

During my jog on Saturday morning I edited mercilessly in my head and wrote down the cuts when I got home. (That’s right, I even take my Muse when I exercise.) Next came a few days of recording. (Mostly long and tedious, but lightened somewhat by the joy of using my new mic and homemade shock mount.) Then a few days of mixing, fretting, remixing, re-recording, more mixing, cutting, and polishing. (Amy says I’ve seemed “distracted.”)

At the end of the day yesterday I had the mix to a point that I wanted feedback from my most honest critics: Simon and Theo. (When I played the long version for them a week earlier they told me it was really long and asked if this was still one song.) When I played this latest mix for them, Theo got really excited, did some air guitar, and told me, “This is great, Dad. I wouldn’t change a thing!” So I knew I was on the right track.

The end result rolls together Evanescence and early Heart, and adds a pinch of Metallica, Rammstein, and Hollywood Philharmonic for good measure. Too epic to fail? You be the judge.

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Demos Quirky Rock and/or Roll

Spring Cleaning: Who Can Know What Will Be?

No one said this was going to be pretty…

In this demo of “Who Can Know What Will Be,” you will find Greg at his most navel-gazing of musical moments. And “pitchy,” as Randy Jackson would say. I doubt I’ll ever do anything with this song again, but if I did, I could imagine it morphing into an extended tabla and sitar improvisation at the end.

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Arrangement Church Congregational Songs Demos Psalms

Psalm 125: All Those Who Trust

Update: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

A while back, I was looking for a musical setting of Psalm 125 to fit with our church’s series on the Psalms of Ascent. Like any good researcher, I went to YouTube. There, I found a video of two Brazilians playing a song called Proteção. I had no context for the music, but I couldn’t get the song out of my mind.

A little poking around brought me to a treasure trove of newly composed songs in Portuguese, written primarily by Rubem Amorese, but often co-written with others, most notably the other man in the video, Toninho Zemuner. Toninho has also recorded many of these songs. The man has golden ears and works with extremely talented musicians! You can hear the studio recording of Proteção at Amorese’s website or at their church’s website.

I wasn’t able to finish a translation in time for the sermon series that first led me to the song, but recently returned to it. A few days ago I completed a translation and piano score, and yesterday recorded a demo.

I hope to work with more of these songs in the future, and have been dropping hints at the CICW that a trip to Brazil would be an appropriate–no, necessary–part of my work. For now I’ll have to settle for this being a long distance collaboration, bringing more of Rubem’s songs to English speakers and making my presence in Brazil felt only through “Povo do senhor,” the Portuguese translation of my song “People of the Lord.”

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Psalms

WTS Bless the Lord

My friend Ron, knowing that I can’t say No to a quirky commission asked me to write a short refrain based on Psalm 103 for use at Western Theological Seminary’s graduation. What can I say? Not no, that’s for sure.

The graduation will be held in the massive Dimnent Chapel which has the reverb of the Grand Canyon, so I decided I needed to go easy on syncopations and quick rhythms. Instead, all the rhythms lay pretty flat from the congregation’s point of view, with ample opportunity for a good gospel pianist to put some life in between the notes. Speaking of gospel, the MP3 features the Gospel of Greg Mass Choir. Righteous!

Bless the Lord, MP3

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Church Congregational Songs Demos Retuned hymn

Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory

Update 2/15/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

If you aren’t a musician, you might be led to believe that composers just pluck ripe songs from the muses’ orchard of musical delights.

You would be wrong.

This composition stuff is actual work. Take, for example, my latest creative endeavor. I came across the 1839 text “Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory” by James John Cummins and wasn’t convinced by the tunes written for it. So I wrote one. That was easy enough. But then I tweaked and tweaked until it sang more smoothly. (What–you think that single 4/4 measure is an accident?) And then I entered it into Finale. And then I tweaked a few more things as I saw it on the page. And then I made the best demo I could in the last 35 minutes of my Friday afternoon. (Yes, my voice does crack in verse 4. Cut me a little slack–I did it in one take.) And then I realized that in taking out the Thees and Thous I had messed up one of the rhymes. And then I added a cool echo that Theo really liked. And then I realized that it wouldn’t work without a bass line and maybe some percussion. And then I remembered that Logic Pro got all out of whack when I got a new computer, so I didn’t have a quick way to add more stuff. And then I took out the cool echo that Theo liked. And then it became 9pm on Sunday night and I said “I’m going to upload this thing, warts and all!”

So here it is, straight from muses’ the orchard of musical delights (just not quite ripe), Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory: MP3.