How to Write a Mediocre Worship Song
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Thu, March 29, 2007
- Viewed 328
- (8) comments so far
Number One- Start with a melody that sounds like another melody. This is especially effective if you model it after another mediocre melody. Make your melody only different enough to keep you out of a copyright infringement suit. Otherwise, hew as close as possible to what has been done before. “My Sweet Lord” was a good example of this at one time.
Number Two- To make up for the derivative melody; wrap it around some very odd chords. If you’re in the key of C, say, try throwing in a C, G#maj7, B6, F#m combination. This is what I call the “search for the lost chord” and is popular among high school boys working on their first songs.
Number Three- Free yourself from the restrictive song structures of the past. Move away from the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, and chorus form into something that wanders without repeating itself. If you must have a chorus, change the words or the timing every time you repeat it.
Number Four- Say something in the lyric that others have said many times before and better. Borrow lyric ideas, if you can. Songs that refer to “amazing grace” or “the king in majesty” are especially good starting points. Reading through hymnals and chorus books will help you cull/steal ideas from other writers that you can dull down and repeat mindlessly.
Number Five- Use Christian phrases in common usage in the English-speaking world. Don’t change them (millions of happy Christian can’t be wrong.) Here’s a list to get you started; - washed my sins away - He lifts me up - I just came to praise the Lord - saved - born again - glory
Number Six- the reverse of Number Five- Don’t use any phrases that Christians would recognize. Make your metaphors so esoteric that only you and your closest friend from junior high get the meaning. This approach also helps if you want to reach a wider audience with your song. The less your lyrics can be construed to talk explicitly about God the better.
Number Seven- Don’t say just one thing in a song. Say two, or three, or even four things. Wander from idea to idea. Start by singing about your past sinful life, then move on to how wonderful nature is, then sing about the people of God and end up at the Second Coming. If you can make it all sound like it could be either, a) a worship song or, b) a love song, even better.
There are three more ways here...
Bob Kilpatrick writes, "Having written hundreds of mediocre songs, I consider myself an expert. Consequently, I have deigned to share with you my tips on how to write a really mediocre song. These are road tested and guaranteed to work..."
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Peter Hamm on Thu, March 29, 2007
Number 7 is my favorite! I just love it when somebody gives me a song lyric or song and asks what I think and they have filled the song with every possible thought they’ve ever had about God, nature, man, the situation in the Middle East, and modern consumerism.
I’ve wrote my share of those. They are all destroyed now.
Dave on Thu, March 29, 2007
On the other hand, a couple of much-loved hymns come pretty close to number 7 - “It Is Well With My Soul” and “How Great Thou Art” move through several (somewhat related) topics and end up with the Second Coming. But they’re still pretty good songs.
Dave
Peter Hamm on Thu, March 29, 2007
Many of those hymns have the advantage of being the FIRST time we heard some of those words strung together… so they get “grandfathered in”…
But… there are a few of those even that I don’t ever want to sing/hear again.
S. K. Johnson on Mon, April 02, 2007
Is there some point to this?
mike on Fri, April 04, 2008
I have recently used essay service. I have received an essay on worship songs. One of the sources cited was this article. Very useful article.
Subway Coupons on Sun, May 04, 2008
this is an interesting post
http://subway—coupons.blogspot.com
interpretation on Thu, October 16, 2008
“Number Five- Use Christian phrases in common usage in the English-speaking world. Don’t change them (millions of happy Christian can’t be wrong.) Here’s a list to get you started; - washed my sins away - He lifts me up - I just came to praise the Lord - saved - born again - glory”
I love the number 5
Belicer5 on Thu, May 20, 2010
I even warm up to Billy when, on a slow night and to make up for a particularly unwarranted attack on my abilities, or so I imagine, he tells me about his glory days as a young man at “coronary school” in Brooklyn, where he dated a knockout Puerto Rican chick - or do you say “culinary”? I finish up every night at 10:00 or 10:30, depending on how much side psprint review work I’ve been able to get done. Or maybe you lose your home because you’ve been living with a mother or a sister who throws you out when her boyfriend comes back or because she needs the bed or sofa you’ve been sleeping on for some other wayward family member.
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