Categories
Colin

Catching up with Colin

I’ve had to put off writing new songs with Colin the last few months while I get everything in order at the church. But now that my Christmas planning is all in place, I’ve got a little time to write tunes for the lyrics that have been piling up in my inbox.

While Colin and I usually split duties–he’s the word guy and I’m the music guy–this time the lyrics he emailed me were accompanied by a recording of some melodic ideas. It was clear Colin was going for an old-time Gospel sound, and hey, I cut my teeth on that back at Apponaug Pentecostal Church in Rhode Island, so I just channeled all those childhood musical memories and out came “I Will Love You” (MP3, PDF)

Categories
Colin Congregational Songs

A Child Is Born

This is the time of year when I catch up on all the projects I’ve put off while preparing for Christmas services. Now that the services are basically planned and ready to go I give myself the Christmas present of sitting at the piano for long hours doing creative work. Here is the first to be completed: A Child Is Born (MP3, PDF), written with Colin Gordon-Farleigh. It’s a melodic Christmas song that makes a nice follow up to our Emmanuel Now.

Categories
Choir Church Congregational Songs

Incarnation

Christmas is a time of incarnation. Of course, the most important incarnation is the Incarnation in which God took on flesh in the form of Jesus. The most negative aspect of Christmas incarnation is when we step on the scale at the end of the season and see the results of all those holiday parties, Christmas cookies, and festive meals: too often we have incarnated in the sense that we have “taken on flesh.”

But this blogpost is about a different kind of incarnation. Two of my compositions went from being ideas in my head, to being notes on paper, and have finally “taken on flesh” in the form of performances and recordings. “A Mark of Grace” began it’s life last year around this time as a hymn of response for Neal Plantinga’s sermon and Cain and Abel at the 2010 Calvin Worship Symposium. “The God of Abraham Praise” is newly written, and was spurred on in part because of Adoro Music’s new series of instrumental arrangements for congregation singing, Everything that Has Breath.

These latest incarnations of my work took place at last Sunday’s Lessons & Carols service at Church of the Servant.

Categories
Colin

Darren Mullan’s Forever Friend

A few years ago, I wrote a song with Colin Gordon-Farleigh called “Forever Friend.” Our Australian friend Darren Mullan has just turned it into a countrified classic. Take a listen to the low resolution MP3 here, or head on over to cdbaby where you can download a high rez MP3 for all your forever friends.

Categories
Congregational Songs

The God of Abraham Praise

Church of the Servant’s Lessons & Carols service is this Sunday at 6pm. I usually try to write something special for the occasion, and this time it’s an arrangement of the hymn “The God of Abraham Praise” which is paired with the scripture reading about God’s promise to Abraham. I’ve been working like a crazy person trying to finish it in time for tomorrow’s rehearsal. Now I’m done and the strings get to work like crazy people practicing it for Sunday. For their, and your, edification is Maestro Finale conducting the Synthetic Orchestra in a rousing rendition of The God of Abraham Praise.

Categories
Rock and/or Roll

Word of the day: fleeting

Simon and I were working on his Word Masters words yesterday, and one of the words he had to define was “fleeting.” We always use the words in a sentence, usually including potty humor. As we were deciding whether or not a fart could be fleeting I remembered the phrase “a fleeting tear rolls down her mind’s eye” from a song called “Maria” that I wrote in college using the poetry of a URI student named Claire Attracta Dugan.

In honor of Simon’s recent perfect score on a Word Masters test, in celebration of the word fleeting, and in memory of a youthful Greg who was more influenced by the Psychedelic Furs than he knew at the time, here is the Amphibians performing Maria.

Categories
Production music

Nostalgic Recollections

Once again, Greg has been hooked by a call for recordings. This time, it looked like this:

Heartfelt and nostalgic instrumentals: Music needed for film scene. Instrumental Classical or cinematic music tracks. The music should be heartfelt and nostalgic. The song will be used in a scene where a man reflects back on memorable moments as he packs up his deceased wife’s belongings. This is a very emotional moment in the movie and the music should help with the delicate balance of loss and nostalgia the man is feeling in this scene. Instrumentals only. Slow to medium-slow tempo.

I took the challenge, not only because I thought I could complete this request by the cut off of midnight tonight, but because I’m trying to build my catalog for production libraries. A sparse, reflective instrumental could prove useful. It was also an opportunity to see what I could get out of Logic’s orchestral patches. So far it seems to be successful. My sister pronounced it lovely, but sad. My mother said, “that’s nice.” And Theo breaks out in melodramatic wailing every time he hears it.

So grab a kleenex, people, because I leave no heart string unplucked on this one: Nostalgic Recollections MP3

Categories
Production music

Home

Yesterday, I received an email:

Our client is looking to license a song for an upcoming TV commercial.  They need a song with lyrics that have the mention of “Home” in it, preferably where it’s resolving in the musical phrase (at the end of a line). The spot will be witty and humorous.  Be creative with it; it could be classic rock, folk, any genre is in play really.  There are two :15 spots, but we encourage you to submit pieces that are longer, :30 up to full songs.

I’ve been trying my best not to look at these, but I did. And I remembered that last week I had blown off some steam by playing around with a mic and some delay effects, and had ended up with a rhythmic “home” sounding phrase that was oddly compelling. Some ideas were floating around my head as I drove home yesterday.

This morning, I tried my best to ignore the ideas that continued to bounce around my brain, but finally I gave in. All told I spent about 2 hours from idea to completion. (“Sounds like it” you say.) I have no great expectation that this will get chosen for the commercial. If I were a betting man, I’d say that it will be another in a string of ignored recordings (ignordings?). But failed experiments can teach you something, right?

Take a listen to my latest failed experiment, “Home” and let me know what I should learn from it.

Categories
Congregational Songs

Rejoice!

On January 18, 2005, while giving Theo a bath, I had an idea for a song. It was a bouncy, happy affair* with a refrain** that proclaimed “Rejoice in the Lord always.” That little idea has been languishing on the Island of Misfit Song Ideas until recently, when Calvin College’s focus on Philippians*** brought it to mind again. I decided to finish it up in the hopes that it would be useful to some of the people who are studying the book and planning worship services around its themes.

Like the book of Philippians, the song is an exhortation to live faithfully and joyfully, even in suffering. I use the “through many dangers” verse of Amazing Grace as a bridge, because it sums up the themes so well. The bridge, by the way, is the recording debut of my fellow COS staff members Rebecca Jordan-Heys and Jan DeVos. You never know what you’ll get roped into when you show up to COS early on a Monday morning!

Take a listen to the MP3 demo or read the words below. As always, comments are welcome.

V1
The power of resurrection
Is sometimes bound in chains.
Give your living and your dying
To the glory of Christ’s name.

So keep on pressing forward
With confidence and faith.
Whatever lies before you
[I know] the way will be paved with grace

CHORUS
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Again I say
Rejoice in the Lord always
Again I say, rejoice!

V2
Rejoice! Do not be anxious.
Rejoice, and do not fear.
Take comfort that he hears you
The Lord is always near

And Jesus Christ our Savior
Will fill your hearts with peace.
The one who began this good work
Will make your joy complete.

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Through many dangers, toils and snares
we have already come.
T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far…
and Grace will lead us home.

CHORUS

*(as bath time songs often are)

**(on the minor V for those who care about such things)

***If you ever play charades on books of the Bible and you get “Philippians,” you can act out “flipping pans” and it should work like a charm.

Categories
Congregational Songs Production music

OCD?

I’m beginning to think I have OCD: Obsessive Compositional Disorder. I just can’t say no to a compositional challenge. Take this one that arrived in my email inbox Friday night:

DEADLINE: ASAP
TV series needs CHILDREN’S CHOIR religious and “early to rise” theme music.
1) Songs such as “Jesus Loves me” but very unpolished sounding, sung by a children’s choir. It’s supposed to sound like a small group of kids are singing this – impromptu – in the background of an auditorium.
2) We are also looking for more children’s choir hymns. Any religious songs you have sung by children are welcome. They really want a song about “early to rise..” or “getting up in the morning”  or “morning prayer”.  Any kind of rise and shine theme’s.

I knew I could come up with something for that, so I set to work and had a song finished by the end of the evening. Saturday morning I spent a few hours recording some basic tracks and I prepped them for mixing later that night. The next morning I got up early and laid down some bass tracks before church, and today I finished a rough mix. Wednesday night I’ll add the COS Youth Choir, and who knows? Maybe we’ll end up on a TV show!

But if you can’t wait until then, you can listen to an MP3 of the rough mix.