Jonathan Roe
From Brighton Assembly of God
13 October 2008 - 5:39pm
I have been working on a hymn arrangement of "My Jesus I Love Thee." I have always liked this hymn, but have always felt it was missing something. I worked on a chorus and this is what I came up with. I would appreciate your feedback on the song as a whole. I put together a "rough" vocal for you to listen and than quickly laid down some guitar, conga, and some keys. I have posted the words below for you to look at. Thanks for your feedback and feel free to be brutally honest. My feelings won't get hurt one bit.
My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
Chorus
I love You, I love You
In our secret place, I'm captured by grace
And I long to love you more
I love You, I love You
Leaving all I have, I heed your command
So my heart can follow You
I love Thee because Thou has first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
If you want the chords or are thinking of using it, please let me know so I can send it to you.
It look's like you don't have Adobe Flash Player installed. Get it now.
gavinball
From Fishponds Baptist Church, Bristol, UK
13 October 2008 - 5:54pm
hi jonathan,
lovely recording, great sound and atmosphere.
i dont know this hymn but i struggle with the thees and thous really as its old fasioned language.
then you bring in a modern chorus with i love yous in it and it all feels a bit strange like the chorus has been in a time machine and gone forward a few centuries!
if you wanted to be consistent to the hymn you would do well to keep the 'thees' in the chorus.
could work well with a few tweaks.
God bless,
gav.
Hi Jonathan
I love this hymn and I think this could be great. A few thoughts:
I wonder if the melody run down should come on sooner on the second line - it's about a beat behind where I expected it to be. In terms of the chorus generally, I would try and iron it out and make it even simpler. I think you're on the right track, but because the verses are quite wordy, it almost feels like your chorus needs to be very simple.
'In our secret place, captured by grace' - what about in 'the' secret place - because in one sense the place of intimacy in corporate worship is always communal - it's somewhere we go corporately as well as privately.
I also wondered about I long to know you more, rather than love you more.
Anyway, I'm splitting hairs a bit because my main feeling is that it's great and could be heaps stronger if you had one simple hooky chorus that's melodically engaging and responds to the theology of the verses.
Well done mate - keep going!
Thanks for the input Al. I definatly like the idea of making the song a little more communal. I also liked the idea of simplifing the chorus. The hymn kind of speaks for itself, and so the chorus just needs to be a more appropriate respnse. Thanks for the feedback.
New Song
Forum Latest
