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So Greg and I got together this morning for a little bit of songwriting. It was pretty productive - we wrote three songs we're really happy with (not complete songs - most with only scratch lyrics, but melody and general gist in place).

 

New for us was writing with a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano: we found all sorts of new directions being inspired off this beautiful instrument.

Our normal process is that we jam until we come up with something we like, all the time recording on our laptop or phone to make sure we don't miss anything. Then we try to fit other ideas around it until the shape of a song comes into being. We listened to some CDs for inspiration (Meshell Ndegeocello, Neil Finn's Pajama Club), drank some coffee, and chatted about where we wanted these songs to go. Not sure if anything from today will end up on an album - there's still a lot of work to do: refining melodies, fine tuning lyrics, trying to make the song as a whole sit together. But it was good to get the creative juices flowing. We find it's good not to be too editorial at this stage - we can come back later and work out which bits are stronger than others.

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Really interesting article this month from Eternity magazine on Hillsong's lyric vetting process. I remember being quite surprised talking to Hillsong songwriters about how hands on their pastors are in the songwriting process.

Senior associate pastor Robert Fergusson writes:

“It’s a huge act of trust and submission, for someone who writes international award winning songs to submit their songs to us … it’s a great act of humility. I’m constantly honouring people like Darlene Zschech and Reuben Morgan who are happy to do this.”

It's a reminder to us here at Garage Hymnal (who are by no means international award winning songwriters!) to make sure we're humbly seeking feedback from godly people on our lyrics (thanks to Mark Peterson, Rob Smith, Philip Percival, Bart VandenHengel, Cedric Tang, Dave Parker and others who have offered suggestions on our last few albums). [update: I very carelessly left Peter Rodgers of this list, many apologies!]

http://www.biblesociety.org.au/news/inside-hillsong-music-120202-1 

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We normally think about copyright as protecting authors' rights to cash. But there are two far more important purposes behind copyright law - the right to correct identification of the author, and the right not to have your work changed without permission.

I'm reminded of the story of 'In Christ Alone'. The organises of the Chelmsford Clergy Synod on 4th May 2006 changed one of the lines of In Christ Alone.

The original line was 'Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied'. They changed 'wrath' to 'word' - 'the word of God was satisfied'. Rev Chris Newlands, the Bishop’s chaplain, admitted that it was changed to be more inclusive. Obviously speaking about God's righteous anger at sin rubs some people up the wrong way.

But the songwriters understandably objected - and since then requests to change the words of the song have been knocked back. They are, by law, well within their rights to decide what their song will say.

After all, it's their name connected to the song, their teaching authority behind the words, and their reputation at stake. To change these words is a bit like me walking into a book shop and substituting a couple of pages of Don Carson's latest masterpiece with some ideas that I think are better. Don would be, rightly, outraged. It's no different with songs.

Copyright can be abused, but I'm glad that people can't change songs without talking to the author. I'm glad that heretical groups can't take the NIV and publish a version which looks the same except for some 'improvements'. Copyright can serve us well in an era of mass production.

Of course, accidents happen. We realised recently that we have been singing the wrong words to Richard Bewes' adaptation of 'I Vow to You'.

"I vow to you, my Saviour that where your feet have trod
I will serve and always follow you my Jesus, my God"

The correct lyrics are:

"I vow to you, my Saviour, that where your feet have trod,
I’ll serve and follow faithfully, my Master and my God! "

I would like to thank Rev Bewes, Jubilate Hymns, and Hope Publishing Co. for their graciousness in helping us to rectify their oversight. You can get the whole hymn at www.jubilate.co.uk.

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The thing about creativity is that you need to make space for it.  If you clutter your life and mind with busyness, routines, tasks, chores, and noise, you are not giving creativity a chance to breathe.

So in October 2010, as we set about writing the new album ‘Unity’, we each dedicated good amounts of time to letting creativity breathe in our lives. Contradictory though it may sound, we were disciplined about creativity. Although songs sometime come to you very quickly in the writing process, our experience is that this is more the exception than the rule. An initial idea or lyrics may come very quickly, as may the shape of the song. But lots of hard work is required to distil those ideas into a coherent piece of art that takes you on a journey and gets under your skin…

We met in pairs and threes and wrote over tea in our living rooms. We took trips to a couple of beach houses in threes and fours, and let the environments inspire us. The songs sometimes started with half-finished ideas we had lying around, sometimes with a simple melodic fragment, sometimes with a lyric, and sometimes just with a drum groove. With ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’, for example, it was just the suggestion of writing a song in E flat that gave birth to the song. It was wonderful for us to approach songwriting from so many different angles and to be reminded anew that no approach is more correct than another. Even more than that, we were reminded anew that we are just the vessels for these songs – they came from God.

With more than double the number of songs we’d need for an album demo’d up, we convened in January this year to decide which songs would make the album. There were so many factors to consider. Was the song saying something unique theologically? Could a church sing it? Was it catchy? Would it help create a balanced album, or did it sound exactly like the rest of the songs? After a tough voting process, we entered the pre-production period with a list of thirteen songs, aware that we could cut a couple if needs be – not because the songs wouldn’t be good enough, but because often in the pre-production process, it emerges that, for any of the reasons above, a song just may not fit an album.

But it is hard to put a full stop on writing a song. The writing continues up until the moment you press record… So in the next blog we’ll take you inside the pre-production room!

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