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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.

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Colin

Video: If Only I Had Wings

Here’s a new video of the song I wrote with Colin Gordon-Farleigh, “If I Only Had Wings,” sung by Milli Alaira:

Categories
Rock and/or Roll

Starting Fires

20 years ago I wrote a song about a girl I really liked. She was pretty, smart and talented, all rolled into one. 18 years ago I married her, which was the best thing I ever did. In 2 days it will be Valentine’s Day, so I thought I’d finish recording a song I wrote when we were dating. Back then I didn’t know much about love, and to tell you the truth I still don’t get it right most of the time. But even though it’s hard sometimes, I’d do it all over again.

Starting Fires, mp3

Categories
Psalms Quirky

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Ridiculous Outtake

The Choral Scholars, Norma de Waal Malefyt and I produced a CD with 22 tracks (Cry Out to God!). But we also recorded all the “B Sides” you’ve been enjoying here over the last few weeks, as well as reading 200 some Psalm settings in preparation for the recording. That’s pretty exhausting stuff, and there are bound to be some moments in which things get giddy.

Here, in a “choral scholars gone wild” moment, is our reading of Psalm 2. We were chanting through the Psalm and it occurred to me how funny it would be to not only chant the text “The God whose throne is in heaven is laughing,” but to also chant the laughing itself. You can hear the ridiculous result here.

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Choir Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 145, One Generation

If I were to have a big hit, this would be it. It sort of won the CRC Sesquicentennial hymn contest, then appeared in Contemporary Songs for Worship, and can now be found in Psalms for All Seasons, #145G. But there were already too many of my songs and arrangements on the PfAS CD, so this got cut. After all, you don’t want to overdose on Greg. But here’s a small fix to hold you over until my next blog post.

And thus, my loyal readers, concludes my 16 song series of songs that didn’t make the cut for one reason or another. But don’t lament the one that got away. No, just head on over to the Psalms for All Seasons website, where you can buy the book and CD so you can get all the songs and recordings that did make the cut.

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Arrangement Choir Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 133, How Very Good

I added verses to Barbara Boertje’s “How Good It Is,” but I’ve never posted a recording of the full choral arrangement. Until now.

Categories
Choir Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 124, If the Lord Had Not Been on Our Side

This choral anthem will be coming out on GIA soon. Six years in production, it’s gonna be good… Here’s a recording of a read-through of the choral anthem, sans narration sections.

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Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 127 Rest in the Lord

I finally met Michael Morgan, the author of this text, at the 2012 Calvin Worship Symposium. He’s a friendly guy and a fine organist as well as the author of a mother load of metrical Psalm settings. Here’s a new recording of our collaboration* on Psalm 127, “Rest in the Lord.”

*”Collaboration” in this case means “I took his text and put new music to it and he was nice enough to say he liked it.”

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 114, The Hills and Mountains Tremble

Perhaps I’m too dedicated to setting lesser-known Psalms to music. Maybe I should just stick to Psalm 23. But if you’re going to set Psalm 114 to music, you could do a lot worse than this.

Categories
Choir Church Congregational Songs Psalms

Revenge of the Killer Bs: Psalm 103, From the Dust

Update 2/8/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.

I’ve blogged about “From the Dust” before, but I’ve had no recording of the choral arrangement until now.

This one didn’t make it into Psalms for All Seasons and has been rejected by one publisher to date.* But I still hold out hope that it will find a good home and be loved for a long time.

*However, the rejection letter was personal and touching: Thank you for submitting your work ‘From the Dust You Shall Raise Us Up’ for our review.  We regret that we are unable to accept this for publication at this time. Thank you for allowing us to review your material. We hope that you will give us the privilege of reviewing more of your work in the future.