Filed under: Uncategorized
Our rehearsal times at CCEC are OK. We run them at 4 on a Sunday arvo. We only have about an hour before the band have to prepare for the set that night. We try and do something a bit different that can allow the band to try out creative ideas that a normal practise doesn’t have room for. Too often Sunday night practises are stressful because of the time restrictions. The four o’clock pracs are supposed to be less stress so more creative juices. We also have a look at the Bible and sing together. Its hard to fit everything into an hour – especially because musos love being late for stuff. How do you do your rehearsals? Do you only practise just before church? How can I make ours more effective?
Filed under: Thinking Music
This is a no brainer, but understanding where contemporary music has come from and why we do it may help us in being more intentional about the songs we choose and sing. Contemporary music comes from two different movements in history that converged in the 1970s. The first of these was the movement among churches in the last century to move from Hymns in corporate worship to ‘gospel songs’. To start with these new ‘gospel songs’ were quite good. They had simple riffs and taglines that people could remember and they were gospel focused. This wasn’t always the case. As the secular world developed it’s 20th Century individualism and humanist thinking, church music followed a similar trend. The popular gospel songs stopped being about the gospel and started being pithy moralist dittys that said a lot about nothing. Look at songs written in the 50s and sixties and sadly, this is the trend that you will see.
At the same time another movement was becoming a catalyst for change. That was the Hippie movement. Many hippies in America and elsewhere became disillusiond with their ‘free’ lifestyle and through the work of university groups and others, many young people started turning to Jesus. This is what has been called ‘the Jesus movement’.
New converts that were part of the Jesus movement found themselves excluded from traditional churches through a disapproving undertone that churchgoers gave to these new christians. The music didn’t suit them, the clothes and ‘starchy formalism’ didn’t suit them and so they formed their own communities. They created their own music based on the pop folk tunes that were big in the sixties and seventies. These new songs were stronger lyrically and soon churches began to sing them instead of the older gospel songs.
Contemporary music is designed to be culturally contemporary. It should be moving with culture. It should be relevant. Contemporary musicians should be to a certain degree listening to contemporary music in order to stay contemporary and engaging. This was the way contemporary christian music was designed anyway.
In Australia, things were a bit different to this and so there are different implications. Australia is culturally behind America. That means that for many of our curches we embraced this contemporary music but we didn’t go through the process of working out why to do it. The Jesus movement didn’t occur here to the same extent so the imediate need for contemporizing didn’t exist. What this has meant is that we have contemporary music with a hymn attitude. We treat contemporay songs the same way as we treated hymns. Are there ways that you can see that still happening – even now?
Filed under: Thinking Music
Filed under: Uncategorized
I spend a lot of time devoting myself to defending the place of hymns in our church context. I have all the arguments and reasoning down pat and I’m sure that I rant about it probably too much! What can happen then is that we forget why we do Contemporary music. Sometimes you can get so good at arguing one way that you forget why you do things another way.
I think that often churches that want to be contemporary miss the point of contemporary music and why it is so useful. Over the next week I’ll put up a few posts that outline the question – ‘why comtemporize (I love making up new words)’.
Contemporary music has heaps of historical, cultural and musical implications that people don’t take the time to think about and so just charge in without being intentional just because everyone else is contemporary. I’ll try and put something up this afternoon or tomorrow on ‘Why contemporary music is different and how to use it well.’
Filed under: Uncategorized
People (songwriters and cruisos) seem to find the creating majesty of God the primary muse for their reflection. What that means is that above all other things, people love to sing about the creator-ness of God. Another pillar of modern Christian song is an emphasis on vague statements about God’s God-ness. eg (I’m trying to make one up without bagging out any particular song) “You are High and wonderful, my God”.
I believe Christian song should be primarily reflecting on the cross. Heres why.
2) We can only worship God because of the cross. Heb 13:15 says that our sacrifice of praise can only come through Jesus. It is only through his blood that any of us dare approach God. We should be consumed for presuming to come before God and praise him, but we are not because Jesus death has made us holy in his sight.
Keep writing and singing songs about the cross! There are so many more reasons why but these three were the first I could think of. We should be cross people. We should be cross singers. May we keep being cross centered and may Jesus work there be our primary muse to his glory!!
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m on a bit of a resource frenzy at the moment. I thought it would be good if I stuck up here a bunch of sites I’m looking at that could be helpful in different ways..
Andy M posted abut hymns and comtemporizing (is that a word) them. One group that are brilliant at this and have already written new music or updated old music to hundreds of hymns is Indelible Grace.
They have a hymn book that is free to download with guitar chords, lead sheets and vocal sheets.
Another site worth checking out is Cyberhymnal. I have a link to them in my sidebar. The site is really daggy and the midi files that play over the top of some of the pages are atrocious. It is a good site for finding out information about hymns that you love though.
For sound and thinking about tech stuff… there has been a good post up on the Garage Hymnal blog this week about sound gear. I also found a cool blog from a guy who runs the sound team at Covenant Life church in the states. Interesting stuff.
For thinking about theology and music… I’ve been greatly encouraged by the free lectures you can download from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary school of Worship. There are heaps of great gems here. Particularly listen to the lectures from Dr Harold Best, Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend, and David Peterson. Great stuff.
All that should keep you going for a while.
Filed under: Uncategorized
