Recording da vinci writing music context

Thats right I recorded Leonardo Da vinci writing about the musical context of his church. No not really. But thats what I've been doing. Recording, watched the da vinci code today, and wrote a thing for the musos at our church to help them think about our musical context. There has been a push from the leadership of our church for us at night to just play louder and faster. This thing I wrote was designed to maybe tackle the question of style in a more effective manner. Here's one little bit...

It would be naïve to suggest that night church music should just be played faster and louder than in the morning because that doesn’t take into account the range of different types of lyrics we sing. We sing sombre songs about the price that Jesus paid for us, we sing celebratory songs proclaiming the fact that Jesus has risen, we sing songs of encouragement to one another to keep running the race, and we sing songs of praise to God for who he is and what he is doing through history. One style of music can’t capture all of these different types of emotions, and it certainly won’t do to just speed everything up and play it all louder.


Anyway. I think people found it helpful. Keen to hear your thoughts about style. Does it matter as long as the words are good? Is 'Now Unto Him' too fast? What do you reckon?

by the way running home has a myspace. It's url is www.myspace.com/runninghomeband

Posted byDan at 10:16 PM  

3 comments:

Dave Miers said... 2:21 AM  

1) i agree that faster + louder doesn't always = good.

2) loud (and still good quality) is a different issue from faster.
i think it's appropriate to play loud but not nec. fast.

3) try to convince leadership of why louder + faster doesn't always = good
but still need to submit!

4) now unto him - i sang it growing up in baptist church - it was good... but i think the 1990 faster version is pretty good. the words match the music better than the old school one.

5) mars hill music is fantastic - but not all fast - but it is very good quality and very tight.

6) i like your reflections on words matching music. it's appropriate that a psalm 100 or psalm 150 song is happening and fast and loud

Anonymous said... 10:29 PM  

Maybe the leadership needs to quick to listen and slow to consider what they are asking and why..Just because these people are leaders does not make them right 100% of the time.
The main thing is that the song portray's the message or story to the listeners that the writer intended to have done its job properly.

Dave Miers said... 7:45 AM  

Anonymous - who are you???

Don't be afraid to put your name to the post.

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