i praise you through the ages
you remain unchanged
you paid the price now i am forgiven
i am free to walk in peace
with your love poured into my heart
i can give to those in need
the day will come all will see your beauty
and your perfect holiness
every day drawing ever closer
through the blessings and failures
i trust in you glorious redeemer
to make me whole
my hope renew
i praise you through the ages
you remain unchanged
I trust in you glorious redeemer
to make me whole
my hope renew
this song was inspired by the vision of a river of praise flowing down through the centuries and the unchanging nature of God as redeemer, sanctifier and hope to all generations
Hi Michael, in my opinion one of the most important things to nail before writing a song is 'what do you want it to be about?' If the think of the strongest worship songs around at the moment they're all structured very tightly around one small phrase or concept - think 'Blessed be your name' 'In Christ Alone' 'How Great is our God' 'Jesus saves' etc - you only have to hear those few words and you've got to the heart of the song. It means the song is thematically consistent and the writer can unpack a concept in depth throughout it.
Unfortunately, this song is rather scatter-gun in its approach - it's called 'through the ages' which kind of implies it's going to really dig into what it means for God to be unchanging through eternity, but you only really stick to that theme for the first two lines. After that you're covering the cross, giving to the poor, the second coming, the trials of life... etc which means it's very difficult to get a handle on what it's about, or follow a consistent thread throughout the song. I'd recommend going back to the drawing board with this, doing some study on God's unchanging nature, and unpacking that in more depth.
Musically I can only think of one song that's longer than a simple refrain that only uses one chord progression throughout, and that's 'Blessed be your name', which gets away with it because the melody is tiered and rises from the verse to the pre-chorus to the chorus and still further to the bridge. Other than that, pretty much every other worship song in common today uses more than one riff, and for good reason - it's very difficult to write something over one riff that doesn't end up being a bit dull, which I'm afraid this is in danger of doing. Given that C and Am7 are closely related harmonically you're effectively writing a song over two chords.
I'd suggest if you want to grow as a song-writer to spend some time analysing worship songs that you think really work - look how the lyrics, melodies and harmonies are structured, see how ideas are developed etc. Also I'd recommend having a read of 'God Songs' by Paul Baloche and Jimmy and Carol Owens, it's about the best book on worship song-writing around.
Hope that helps and I don't mean to be negative, but I do think you need to invest a bit in your song-writing skills before aiming to write congregational songs, it's a tricky thing to do (hence this forum!) and we all need to be learning from each other and from other sources all the time to improve what we do.
thanks again matt, for ministering to me once more so powerfully and gently,
you've really inspired me to reach higher, i guess that's why you're a worship pastor.
i think song-writing should be primarily an act of obedience rather than artful conformity to successul formulae,
sometimes we can try to satisfy the mind with cleverness and the heart with emotion, but our spirit remains unmoved and unchanged because simple obedience was lacking.
i love the way "here i am to worship" covers themes of illumination, salvation, sanctification, adoration, creation and redemption in 2 short verses yet anchors it is the chorus of true and simple worship.
this song tried to anchor itself in "i praise you" and cover redemption, forgiveness, works, eschatology, trust and hope.
i hope that practise will get me over the congregational hurdle one day.
nice start on this song. i think you have musical gifts and will write some great songs in the near future.
the music is nice and i love the pitched harmonics.
for me this one just needs a bit of focus on the lyrics. if you are trying to cover so many topics in one song the song may struggle to have a clear message. it would be stronger to stick to one of the topics you are trying to cover ie 'redemption' and write a whole song on that and really unpack it.
it might also help to look at other popular songs and see how they make the chorus stand out more than the verses, at the moment all the sections of this song blend into one.
dont be discouraged you have a good heart and loads of gifts and passion keep going for it with your songs.
thanks for that, Gavin
you are the kind of godly and sensitive man of the kingdom that He loves to prosper,
God cares deeply about the truth we speak and how we speak it to one another.
Bless you,
michael
Church: Canterbury Baptist Church / Christ Church Dartford
Country: United Kingdom
Joined: 21-07-2008
Status: Offline
Hi Michael,
"i love the way "here i am to worship" covers themes of illumination, salvation, sanctification, adoration, creation and redemption in 2 short verses yet anchors it is the chorus of true and simple worship.
this song tried to anchor itself in "i praise you" and cover redemption, forgiveness, works, eschatology, trust and hope."
I can completely see where you're coming from with that, it's true that there are songs around like here I am to worship that do cover more than one topic - yet anchor themselves in a single point. However, looking at the lyrics to "Here I am to Worship", you'll see the anchor so to speak is planted very firmly - it's the chorus that's all about coming to worship God, and that chorus is repeated a fair few times to make it clear that that's the heart of the song! I think one of the reasons it doesn't seem to work for your song so well is the lack of structure - it hasn't got that centralised, anchoring point that personally I think it could do with. You do repeat the first two lines towards the end, but I think it needs more than that, it really needs a whole chorus dedicated to the theme of the song, and one that appears centrally rather than at the beginning and the end.
There's some very good suggestions and hints made above - one thing I will add (that you're welcome to disregard if you don't think it's helpful!) is this. When you're writing a song next, you might want to see if you can start with the chorus. Think of a central point you want your song to be about - it doesn't have to be complicated! Then try to structure you chorus as heavily as possible around this concept without straying too much. After you've got that in place, you can then structure verses around it which support and relate back to this chorus.
The example that springs to mind of this really centralised chorus kind of song is Happy Day - I've obviously no idea if that's the way Tim wrote it, in fact I'm sure he had a far better way than I've suggested above! But regardless, if you look at the lyrics, the chorus is really simple with a clear cut true and brilliant message. Then looking at the verses they all support this message by showing us why it's a happy day - "Endless joy, perfect peace" "You have rescued me" "Jesus is alive" "Life eternal" are just a few of them!
And in doing that I hope I've echoed one of Matt's points which was to look at other famous worship songs and how they work. It really does help! :)
those are great points, i think the heart of the problem is that i rarely spend more that 10-15 minutes writing my songs, as they come spontaneously out of an atmosphere or mood of worship, with words and scripture flowing in such a way that ministers powerfully to me and i guess i want to share that experience!
there's clearly lots of scope to make the song more structured and "congregational-friendly"
fundamentally, i think the starting point of "what do I want the song to be about" with the emphasis on "I want" is a dead end, you may end up writing something that ticks the intellectual and emotional boxes but leaves the Lord cold.
you may even enjoy the praise other songwriting technicians but doesn't it say about a certain crowd "they loved praise from men more than praise from God".
Hi Michael, interested by your comment that you rarely spend more than 10-15 minutes writing a song... I typically take at least a few months, and one that I've recently completed has taken over two years from first concept to completion.
I'm obviously not working on the song day in day out for months (they're certainly not that good!!) but I'll typically get an idea for the song, think about it, chew it over and maybe do some Bible study around it. Then ideas of lyrics start to come, I'll write a load down (far more than I need), and put a first version together. After playing it to a number of other people and getting some feedback I'll take it through maybe another three or four major revisions before calling it finished.
Having heard song-writing seminars by Matt Redman, Stuart Townend, Graham Kendrick and Tim Hughes I know that they all have similar song-writing processes - I think it was Tim who said that Chris Tomlin's song 'Forever' took 5 years from first idea to being finished and becoming one of the most popular worship songs in the world.
I don't know how relevant you'll find this, you've already said that you're not interested in following formula's, which is of course your decision - but there is maybe something to think about that pretty much all the most used songs around at the moment are written over much longer periods of time than 15 minutes. I do often sit down for 15 mins and come up with a bunch of lyrics and some melody ideas, but my general approach is that that is the beginning of a song, not the end of it.
Couple of other general points - of course, not every song we use needs to be a complicated three verse & chorus & bridge marathon, there is a place for very simple refrains which can come spontaneously. There is also a place for songs that do come in a big flash of inspiration ('Healer' off the latest Hillsong album is a case in point) but I'd suggest that they are actually quite rare. Most of the songs that really feed the church and enable them to worship have been thought about and wrestled with over an extended period of time.
Secondly and finally I'd disagree with the idea that thinking about a song makes it less worshipful. We are called to love God with our minds as well as our hearts, and as I'm looking through a thesaurus, or using a rhyming dictionary, or looking on Biblegateway for more references that clarify the point I'm trying to make - I am worshipping by doing that. I'm striving for the words and phrases that most fully convey the truth of who God is, the words that most connect with people's emotions to allow them to express worship to God, the melodies that most easily sit with the words and cause people to remember Biblical truth throughout the rest of the week.
There is of course a place for just sitting down and pouring your heart out to God in worship, it blesses him and it blesses us. However there is IMO generally quite a gulf between that kind of spontaneous outpouring and a song that will be useful in a congregational setting to teach, encourage, bless and enable people to fully express praise to God.
As I said I don't know how relevant you'll find this as it seems you have a distinctive way of writing which is of course fine, I just wanted to clarify a bit more about where I and maybe others on this board are coming from in suggesting revisions and restructurings for your songs. Hope it helps!
Church: Canterbury Baptist Church / Christ Church Dartford
Country: United Kingdom
Joined: 21-07-2008
Status: Offline
Hi Michael,
"i think the heart of the problem is that i rarely spend more that 10-15 minutes writing my songs, as they come spontaneously out of an atmosphere or mood of worship, with words and scripture flowing in such a way that ministers powerfully to me and i guess i want to share that experience!"
This makes a lot of sense actually in that you seem to have some good ideas down, and if it's meant to be a outpouring of the heart or words spoken to you by God set to music then that's great! As Matt said it's a blessing on both parts and music is a great way to express things.
If you want to leave ideas like that then that's absolutely fine! But I agree with Matt in the sense that if you want to make them congregational then you need to spend a lot longer than a few minutes structuring ideas, putting things together, etc. so that the congregation can clearly relate and "get" the song, so to speak and thus use it to glorify God.
In terms of "what do I want the song to be about" - you're completely right that the I want bit has the potential to leave the Lord out! I could've put it a lot better. What I mean by it is, through prayer / experiences / feeling called to write about something / whatever, I think it's important to first decide on a central theme - thinking about it I'd probably rephrase it to something like "what should the song be about" or "what should be the song's message". You're definitely right that the focus shouldn't be "I want"! Hope that's made it a bit clearer :)
Worship Central's first ever UK Tour visited 9 cities across the UK, with over 8,000 worship leaders, musicians and worshippers gathering for the events.
chords are: Cadd9 G Am7 G
this song was inspired by the vision of a river of praise flowing down through the centuries and the unchanging nature of God as redeemer, sanctifier and hope to all generations
the verses flow through:
hebrews 13:8
ephesians 1:7
john 8:36
malachi 2:6
romans 5:5
2 corinthians 7:1
romans 13:11
psalm 51:10
Hi Michael, in my opinion one of the most important things to nail before writing a song is 'what do you want it to be about?' If the think of the strongest worship songs around at the moment they're all structured very tightly around one small phrase or concept - think 'Blessed be your name' 'In Christ Alone' 'How Great is our God' 'Jesus saves' etc - you only have to hear those few words and you've got to the heart of the song. It means the song is thematically consistent and the writer can unpack a concept in depth throughout it.
Unfortunately, this song is rather scatter-gun in its approach - it's called 'through the ages' which kind of implies it's going to really dig into what it means for God to be unchanging through eternity, but you only really stick to that theme for the first two lines. After that you're covering the cross, giving to the poor, the second coming, the trials of life... etc which means it's very difficult to get a handle on what it's about, or follow a consistent thread throughout the song. I'd recommend going back to the drawing board with this, doing some study on God's unchanging nature, and unpacking that in more depth.
Musically I can only think of one song that's longer than a simple refrain that only uses one chord progression throughout, and that's 'Blessed be your name', which gets away with it because the melody is tiered and rises from the verse to the pre-chorus to the chorus and still further to the bridge. Other than that, pretty much every other worship song in common today uses more than one riff, and for good reason - it's very difficult to write something over one riff that doesn't end up being a bit dull, which I'm afraid this is in danger of doing. Given that C and Am7 are closely related harmonically you're effectively writing a song over two chords.
I'd suggest if you want to grow as a song-writer to spend some time analysing worship songs that you think really work - look how the lyrics, melodies and harmonies are structured, see how ideas are developed etc. Also I'd recommend having a read of 'God Songs' by Paul Baloche and Jimmy and Carol Owens, it's about the best book on worship song-writing around.
Hope that helps and I don't mean to be negative, but I do think you need to invest a bit in your song-writing skills before aiming to write congregational songs, it's a tricky thing to do (hence this forum!) and we all need to be learning from each other and from other sources all the time to improve what we do.
www.RESOUNDworship.org
Free New Worship Songs
.
thanks again matt, for ministering to me once more so powerfully and gently,
you've really inspired me to reach higher, i guess that's why you're a worship pastor.
i think song-writing should be primarily an act of obedience rather than artful conformity to successul formulae,
sometimes we can try to satisfy the mind with cleverness and the heart with emotion, but our spirit remains unmoved and unchanged because simple obedience was lacking.
i love the way "here i am to worship" covers themes of illumination, salvation, sanctification, adoration, creation and redemption in 2 short verses yet anchors it is the chorus of true and simple worship.
this song tried to anchor itself in "i praise you" and cover redemption, forgiveness, works, eschatology, trust and hope.
i hope that practise will get me over the congregational hurdle one day.
hi michael,
nice start on this song. i think you have musical gifts and will write some great songs in the near future.
the music is nice and i love the pitched harmonics.
for me this one just needs a bit of focus on the lyrics. if you are trying to cover so many topics in one song the song may struggle to have a clear message. it would be stronger to stick to one of the topics you are trying to cover ie 'redemption' and write a whole song on that and really unpack it.
it might also help to look at other popular songs and see how they make the chorus stand out more than the verses, at the moment all the sections of this song blend into one.
dont be discouraged you have a good heart and loads of gifts and passion keep going for it with your songs.
God bless,
gav.
thanks for that, Gavin
you are the kind of godly and sensitive man of the kingdom that He loves to prosper,
God cares deeply about the truth we speak and how we speak it to one another.
Bless you,
michael
Hi Michael,
"i love the way "here i am to worship" covers themes of illumination, salvation, sanctification, adoration, creation and redemption in 2 short verses yet anchors it is the chorus of true and simple worship.
this song tried to anchor itself in "i praise you" and cover redemption, forgiveness, works, eschatology, trust and hope."
I can completely see where you're coming from with that, it's true that there are songs around like here I am to worship that do cover more than one topic - yet anchor themselves in a single point. However, looking at the lyrics to "Here I am to Worship", you'll see the anchor so to speak is planted very firmly - it's the chorus that's all about coming to worship God, and that chorus is repeated a fair few times to make it clear that that's the heart of the song! I think one of the reasons it doesn't seem to work for your song so well is the lack of structure - it hasn't got that centralised, anchoring point that personally I think it could do with. You do repeat the first two lines towards the end, but I think it needs more than that, it really needs a whole chorus dedicated to the theme of the song, and one that appears centrally rather than at the beginning and the end.
There's some very good suggestions and hints made above - one thing I will add (that you're welcome to disregard if you don't think it's helpful!) is this. When you're writing a song next, you might want to see if you can start with the chorus. Think of a central point you want your song to be about - it doesn't have to be complicated! Then try to structure you chorus as heavily as possible around this concept without straying too much. After you've got that in place, you can then structure verses around it which support and relate back to this chorus.
The example that springs to mind of this really centralised chorus kind of song is Happy Day - I've obviously no idea if that's the way Tim wrote it, in fact I'm sure he had a far better way than I've suggested above! But regardless, if you look at the lyrics, the chorus is really simple with a clear cut true and brilliant message. Then looking at the verses they all support this message by showing us why it's a happy day - "Endless joy, perfect peace" "You have rescued me" "Jesus is alive" "Life eternal" are just a few of them!
And in doing that I hope I've echoed one of Matt's points which was to look at other famous worship songs and how they work. It really does help! :)
Michael
cheers Michael,
those are great points, i think the heart of the problem is that i rarely spend more that 10-15 minutes writing my songs, as they come spontaneously out of an atmosphere or mood of worship, with words and scripture flowing in such a way that ministers powerfully to me and i guess i want to share that experience!
there's clearly lots of scope to make the song more structured and "congregational-friendly"
fundamentally, i think the starting point of "what do I want the song to be about" with the emphasis on "I want" is a dead end, you may end up writing something that ticks the intellectual and emotional boxes but leaves the Lord cold.
you may even enjoy the praise other songwriting technicians but doesn't it say about a certain crowd "they loved praise from men more than praise from God".
Just my thoughts, don't take them too seriously!
Hi Michael, interested by your comment that you rarely spend more than 10-15 minutes writing a song... I typically take at least a few months, and one that I've recently completed has taken over two years from first concept to completion.
I'm obviously not working on the song day in day out for months (they're certainly not that good!!) but I'll typically get an idea for the song, think about it, chew it over and maybe do some Bible study around it. Then ideas of lyrics start to come, I'll write a load down (far more than I need), and put a first version together. After playing it to a number of other people and getting some feedback I'll take it through maybe another three or four major revisions before calling it finished.
Having heard song-writing seminars by Matt Redman, Stuart Townend, Graham Kendrick and Tim Hughes I know that they all have similar song-writing processes - I think it was Tim who said that Chris Tomlin's song 'Forever' took 5 years from first idea to being finished and becoming one of the most popular worship songs in the world.
I don't know how relevant you'll find this, you've already said that you're not interested in following formula's, which is of course your decision - but there is maybe something to think about that pretty much all the most used songs around at the moment are written over much longer periods of time than 15 minutes. I do often sit down for 15 mins and come up with a bunch of lyrics and some melody ideas, but my general approach is that that is the beginning of a song, not the end of it.
Couple of other general points - of course, not every song we use needs to be a complicated three verse & chorus & bridge marathon, there is a place for very simple refrains which can come spontaneously. There is also a place for songs that do come in a big flash of inspiration ('Healer' off the latest Hillsong album is a case in point) but I'd suggest that they are actually quite rare. Most of the songs that really feed the church and enable them to worship have been thought about and wrestled with over an extended period of time.
Secondly and finally I'd disagree with the idea that thinking about a song makes it less worshipful. We are called to love God with our minds as well as our hearts, and as I'm looking through a thesaurus, or using a rhyming dictionary, or looking on Biblegateway for more references that clarify the point I'm trying to make - I am worshipping by doing that. I'm striving for the words and phrases that most fully convey the truth of who God is, the words that most connect with people's emotions to allow them to express worship to God, the melodies that most easily sit with the words and cause people to remember Biblical truth throughout the rest of the week.
There is of course a place for just sitting down and pouring your heart out to God in worship, it blesses him and it blesses us. However there is IMO generally quite a gulf between that kind of spontaneous outpouring and a song that will be useful in a congregational setting to teach, encourage, bless and enable people to fully express praise to God.
As I said I don't know how relevant you'll find this as it seems you have a distinctive way of writing which is of course fine, I just wanted to clarify a bit more about where I and maybe others on this board are coming from in suggesting revisions and restructurings for your songs. Hope it helps!
www.RESOUNDworship.org
Free New Worship Songs
Hi Michael,
"i think the heart of the problem is that i rarely spend more that 10-15 minutes writing my songs, as they come spontaneously out of an atmosphere or mood of worship, with words and scripture flowing in such a way that ministers powerfully to me and i guess i want to share that experience!"
This makes a lot of sense actually in that you seem to have some good ideas down, and if it's meant to be a outpouring of the heart or words spoken to you by God set to music then that's great! As Matt said it's a blessing on both parts and music is a great way to express things.
If you want to leave ideas like that then that's absolutely fine! But I agree with Matt in the sense that if you want to make them congregational then you need to spend a lot longer than a few minutes structuring ideas, putting things together, etc. so that the congregation can clearly relate and "get" the song, so to speak and thus use it to glorify God.
In terms of "what do I want the song to be about" - you're completely right that the I want bit has the potential to leave the Lord out! I could've put it a lot better. What I mean by it is, through prayer / experiences / feeling called to write about something / whatever, I think it's important to first decide on a central theme - thinking about it I'd probably rephrase it to something like "what should the song be about" or "what should be the song's message". You're definitely right that the focus shouldn't be "I want"! Hope that's made it a bit clearer :)