Categories
Colin

If Only I Had Wings

I was feeling a little droopy this morning, so I decided to write a little music. After all, nothing cheers the soul like notes. Right? So here’s a new song in collaboration with Colin Gordon-Farleigh called “I Only I Had Wings.” You can view the PDF or listen to the cheesomatic-computer-automated MP3. By the way, if anyone wants to record their own rendition of this–or any song posted here–rest assured that I’ll gladly listen to it and most likely post it to my music blog.

Categories
Colin

Your Forever Friend

Poor Colin. I told him over a month ago that I had a draft of a new song and that I’d get him the completed song soon. Well, lately “soon” for me can take months. But soon has finally arrived! Listen to an MP3 of “Your Forever Friend” or play it yourself using this handy-dandy PDF.

Categories
Church Finale demo

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Here’s a little something I whipped up this afternoon: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Okay, “whipped up” and “this afternoon” makes it sound too easy. I’ve actually been carrying around a rough draft of this in my backpack for the last 6 months and finally got a chance to complete it yesterday and today. The recording is one of my trademark cheesy Finale playback renditions, but it gets the point across.

Categories
Church Congregational Songs Finale demo Retuned hymn

A Great and Mighty Wonder

Due to popular demand (okay–one request) I just wrote a piano accompaniment for my Christmas song “A Great and Mighty Wonder.” I also took the opportunity to update the text a little and write out a descant. The descant is kind of cool in a musically geeky sort of way–it uses the refrain of “O come All You Faithful” as counterpoint to this song’s refrain. (Do I smell a Christmas medley?) You can hear a demo MP3 here or download the lead sheet and piano score at my main site.

Categories
Choir Church

Jesus, Precious Jesus

In an earlier post I introduced a song called “Jesus, Precious Jesus” and promised a choral arrangement. Here it is. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad trait, but this song can range in performance style from a simple praise chorus accompanied by acoustic guitar to slow and funky Black Gospel. In this choir arrangement I took somewhat of a middle road, using the lush harmonies of Gospel but keeping the rhythms fairly straight. It’s a little sweeter and flashy than more typical style, but it’s growing on me.

Categories
Colin Demos

What Did You Mean?

At this point I’ve written over 30 songs with Colin Gordon-Farleigh. This latest is a ballad called “What Do You Mean?” I decided to do something different with this post. Usually I just make an MP3 of Finale playing back the score, but this song doesn’t sound right with a machine’s rigid playback. So here is a recording of yours truly singing “What Do You Mean?” in one take into the built in mics on my Mac. Not enough for you? Here’s the music for you to play at the piano.

Categories
Congregational Songs Retuned hymn Uncategorized

Abba Father

Calvin College’s chaplain Andy De Jong is doing a chapel series on the Lord’s Prayer. He asked if I would compose a new tune for a text by Thomas Troeger called “Let All Who Pray the Prayer Christ Taught.” It turned out to be quite a challenge. It’s quite a thick text which doesn’t lend itself naturally to the meditative spirit you’d expect from a song about praying. So I put Troeger’s text in the mouth of the leader and gave the congregation a simple “Abba, Father” as a response. Here’s the demo. I hope you like it. More importantly, I hope that Thomas likes it, because I’ll be working with him next summer at Lake Junaluska. I can just imagine our first meeting: “Greg Scheer. (silence) So you’re the guy who ruined my song.”

Categories
Choir Church Live Psalms

Psalm 114: The Hills and Mountains Tremble

This Sunday at Church of the Servant we sang a brand new song of mine, Psalm 114. I was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially in light of the fact that I had studied the Psalm for quite a while before I really connected with it.

The Psalm tells the story of the exodus in poetic form. Once I latched onto the idea that Israel’s history is not just the events of a long ago people but part of the living story of all of God’s people, I quickly arrived at a way to represent this musically: the first half of each verse tells Israel’s story as it appears in Psalm 114, the second half of each verse reflects on ways in which God continues to work in similar ways today, and the refrain answers with overarching them of the Psalm: “The hills and mountains tremble, the rivers stand in awe, for in this pilgrim people is the presence of the Lord.”

Listen to the recording of the service or email me for the score.

Categories
Church Demos

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You

Last week I finished an arrangement of “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You” for use in my church. How dare I mess with Beethoven, you ask? Indeed. A few years back I decided that I could no longer bear to hear praise bands butcher Beethoven’s fine tune. And since it had already been adapted for the hymnal, I thought I’d arrange something that would work for praise band. Since then I’ve written a lead sheet, a piano accompaniment, and string parts. You can find the piano music at my main website for a short time, and the demo you can find right here.

Categories
Rock and/or Roll

You Can Talk to Me

Back in 1993 I released a cassette (yes, that’s how one did it in the last century) called From the Hand of… Greg Scheer, a collection of my folk/jazz/rock songs performed on acoustic guitar, bass and vocals (me) with Elizabeth Way on violin. It included a song called “You Can Talk to Me,” which I somehow ended up singing in my friends’ Jeff and Kathy’s wedding, which I somehow mentioned to my friends Andrew and Jessica, which they somehow are now interested in hearing, which may somehow entice them to work it into their wedding, which will mean that I’ll somehow have to remember how to play it.