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!
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 12/29/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
A lot of music ministers lament the never-ending grind of planning worship services, week after week, without a break. Yeah, it’s easy to get a little jealous of school teachers with their summer breaks, but frankly I like the challenge each week brings. I enjoy digging into the service’s scriptures, teasing out themes in the music. I especially savor the search for settings of the lectionary Psalm that will fit both the congregation and the day’s music ensemble.*
Which brings us to today’s post. The lectionary called for Psalm 124 in yesterday’s service. You would think that Reformed folk would have lots of songs based on this one, because the Psalm includes the words that often begin Reformed worship: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
Alas! There are a few songs based on those words, a few metrical Psalms, and my octavo for choir and narrator. But nothing that fit the Guitarchestra. So I wrote a new one to fit the occasion. The lyrics are below and the PDF leadsheet is downloadable on my website (see link above). In some ways this follows the lead of my recent setting of Psalm 137, using the basic themes and images of the Psalm as clay that is then molded into a somewhat different shape. Still faithful to the Psalm, but taking some creative license.
1. If God had not been on our side, When cornered by our foes;
When there was no place left to hide, To whom could we have gone?
If God had not been on our side, When anger flared like fire;
They would have swallowed us alive, If God had not been on our side.
2. If God had not been on our side, When troubles surged like floods;
We would have watched the water rise, And waves mount up like walls.
If God had not been on our side, We would have had no hope,
been swept away in deadly tides If God had not been on our side.
3. If God had not been on our side, When hunters laid their snares;
Their steely teeth would snap us tight, We wouldn’t have a prayer.
If God had not been on our side, We wouldn’t have escaped;
But our God made the earth and sky, our help is only in his name.
*I know this makes me sound super holy. Don’t feel bad. I get tired of the weekly grind, too.
The thing about kids is that they don’t care who you are. If they like a song, they’ll sing it, if they don’t, it’s erased from their mind immediately. So when I found out that Luke was requesting my song, “As the Deer” as a bedtime song, I knew I had achieved something substantial. Here’s how his Dad described it:
Nearly asleep, Luke asked grandma to sing him one last song during tuck in time, “As the Deer.” When she said that she didn’t know that one, he started sleepily singing.
Update 1/15/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’ve broken a lot of new musical ground in my time–writing the first endlessly looping Vine praise song, for example–but I’m pretty sure this first will be one for the history books:
The first congregational song with a curse word.
Before you get all in a bunch about parental advisory hymns, let me point out its theological appropriateness. “So Far from Home” is a setting of Psalm 137, which includes the imprecation: “Blessed is he who dashes their babies against the rocks.” What is an imprecation if it’s not a curse? In this case, I decided to recast Psalm 137 in a modern context, replacing harps with guitars and the Psalms oppressors with the modern forces of human misery: slave traders, pimps, and wars.
1. We sat by the river and played our guitars, Dreaming of better days. If memories are fires, then songs are the spark, But they’re both starting to fade. They are starting to fade.
How can we sing the songs of the Lord Here on foreign ground? How could we raise a song of joy When we’re so far from home?
2. We sat under willows and taught them our songs; The wind played the branches like harps. Tears in our eyes, laments on our tongues, And such sadness in our hearts. Only sadness in our hearts.
3. God damn the slave traders, pimps, and the wars that have taken our sons and our daughters. God bless the children huddled for warmth, cause the night is getting colder. Oh, the night’s getting colder.
Bruce Benedict and the Cardiphonia gang are taking on the ambitious goal of producing a series of albums that cover the whole Psalter. This time around they are tackling Psalms 135-150 in a two volume collection. I contributed two songs, the first of which is a setting of Psalm 149, “Let’s God’s People Sing a New Song.” My goal was to make the recording sound like something by Polyphonic Spree. I don’t know that I achieved that, but it’s certainly more epic than my usual fare. Here are the fine folks who helped me bring on the epic:
Joel Klamer, alto saxophone and trumpet
Becca Klamer, harpsichord and backing vocals
Kurt Schafer, accordion
Cal Stapert, recorder
Johnny Simmons, drums
Sarah Bratt, Lis Hatfield, Erin De Young, Marie Bloem, Sine Nomine String Quartet
The FDA says: Limit your use of 80 mg Simvastatin. But you can use Psalm 80 all you like.
Update 10/1/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.
After a sluggish round of correspondence (due to travel for me and a new teaching position for Naaman) we’ve finally brought “Restore Us, O God!” from draft into final form. I think it was worth the wait. Particularly unique is its Klezmer-ish feel that captures the lament of the Psalm well.
I was excited enough about it that I didn’t let the Guitarchestra leave rehearsal last night until they recorded it with me. Two times through and you get a pristine recording like this: that’s the magic of Gstra!
I think you’ll be excited enough about it that you won’t want to wait until December 20, 2015 when it comes up in the lectionary next. Go ahead. Sing it now. MP3
Update 12/11/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’ve featured the music of Wendell Kimbrough before, and today he makes a return appearance. An honor to be sure…
Earlier this year his setting of Psalm 104, “Oh, Rejoice in All Your Works,” won the COS New Psalm Contest. It had its church premiere in January and we’ve sung it a few times since then. This Sunday, Pentecost, the lectionary called for Psalm 104. As fate* would have it, the choir, piano, and a brass quintet were scheduled to lead that morning, so I arranged the song for those instruments.
I was really pleased with how it sounded. Sometimes the transition from guitar-driven folk song to piano-led congregational hymn can be awkward, but in this case, it brought out a whole new majestic side to the song. I hear a best-selling choral anthem in this, don’t you?
*or providence, depending on how you roll theologically.
In Psalms for All Seasons is a setting of Psalm 133 (Behold the Goodness of Our Lord, PfAS 133A) that seemed just right for the Guitarchestra this past Sunday. The melody, DETROIT, comes from the Kentucky Harmony hymnal. Like a lot of early American hymn tunes, it has a rugged beauty that just won’t let you go. These tunes often benefit from a more rustic arrangement, rather than the smooth voice leading you find in hymnals, so I provided one.
Here you can see me rehearsing the song this past Sunday, shadowed by the youngest member of the Guitarchestra, James.
“By the Babylonian Rivers” is one of my favorite songs from Global Songs for Worship and one of my favorite Psalm settings in general. We used it at COS last week and I decided that the line “Lord God, hear your lonely band” fairly demanded an instrumental interlude. I wrote one, and Kurt (accordion) and Emily (violin) took it home: MP3.
One of the fun things about having a few songs in hymnals is that I’m introduced to new people via my music. I recently got an email from Jonathan, a music director in Madison, Indiana, asking for permission to introduce “People of the Lord” to his congregation. “Sure,” I said, “as long as I can add the newsletter article and recording to my blog.”
It’s fun to see churches using my music, but what I was most impressed by is that this music director is committed to teaching his congregation new music, introducing a new hymn from Glory to God each month! You can read his monthly updates here: http://www.madisonpresbyterianchurch.org/page/music_ministry.
As I continue to sing through our new hymnal, Glory to God, this month another Psalm paraphrase struck me as being particularly well constructed. “People of the Lord,” #632, is a setting of selected verses from Psalm 78. I think my favorite aspect of this setting is the asymmetric meter. This is just a music-speak way to say that the beats are not all of the same duration. The time signature for this piece is 7/8 (cleverly apropos to a setting of Psalm 78) and is broken down 2+2+3 or short-short-long. The use of asymmetric meter in a Psalm paraphrase hearkens back to the Genevan Psalter. Another wonderful aspect of this Psalm setting is that the verses work in canon. The verses are written from the Psalmist’s perspective and sung in unison (or canon). Unison singing indicates the singular perspective of the Psalmist. The refrain is sung from the perspective of the people of God and is sung in parts. The part singing, then, indicates the plurality of the people of God. Here is a link to a youtube video of the Psalm.
Update 12/11/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at 