Songwriting Workshop: Who Are We Singing To, Anyway?

God loves it when we sing to Him, and He loves it when we sing about Him, to each other. But while God always knows the intent of our hearts, our congregations don’t. If we give them a song that illogically switches the object/audience around (the person to whom we’re singing), we will make it harder for them to enter into worship.

If your song is about God, to the congregation, then make that clear throughout the song. Don’t switch from

• “His love is strong” to
• “You own the cattle on a thousand hills,”

or they will think you’re saying they own the cattle on a thousand hills. Which might be true if you’re singing to Wyoming ranchers, but not many other folk.

Your song can have more than one audience, but you must make the switch obvious. For instance, your verses can say, “Let’s sing to the Lord,” and then your chorus says, “We sing to you Lord, we love you.

Can you think of a song that switches audiences, in a way that isn’t confusing? Why does it work, even with the switch?

How To Broaden Your Songwriting Range

How do you keep from composing music that sounds just like every other song you’ve composed, especially given all the strictures of congregational song?

First, if you always write in the same key, try writing in a different one. Try different tempos and rhythms, too. Most contemporary worship songs are in 4/4 time – try 3/4, 6/8, or 7/8. And broaden your range of listening experience by searching for music outside of your immediate preference. In an interview here at My Song In The Night, Stephen Altrogge of Sovereign Grace said,

“I listen to a lot of different music — Coldplay, the Beatles, Matt Redman, Mumford and Sons, the Police, Mutemath. I’d say that the main thing I’ve learned is that a good song is good no matter what the production and a bad song can’t be saved by good production. When I listen to the Police, they have a distinctly 80′s sound. But their songs are just incredible. So if you’re going to write songs, make sure that they’re good songs. Don’t count on the music or the production to save you.”

In another interview here, Bruce Benedict of Cardiphonia added,

“It truly is amazing how many different tunes have been written to the major hymn meters such as Common Meter (8.6.8.6) and variations on 8.7.8.7.  The two main things I do to keep things fresh is to write music to as many different kinds of meter as possible and to research and explore the various ‘countries’ of folk music that have fed into church music.  Each of these worlds has a different body of melodies that feed off of major or minor keys and various time signatures (3/4, 6/8, 4/4) which all produced very different sounding melodies.

“Like in most art, you tend to produce the richness of what you take in.  If you are serious about writing great congregational songs then you have to familiarize yourself with all of the various musical traditions that have produced great congregational music.”

Explore the world of hymnody, as well as popular music and the folk music of the past. Don’t get too crazy with obscure time signatures and difficult intervals or your song will not be singable, but feel free to experiment.

The Simple Trick To Writing Effective Song Melodies

Many songwriters compose melodies by strumming guitar chords, allowing chord changes to lead them to the notes that work with those chords. There is nothing wrong with this method, but people don’t sing chords. They sing melodies. If you play chord changes on guitar or keyboard, and then you impose melodies on top of the chord progressions, you may end up with a boring melody (or a melody that sounds like all your other melodies, if you tend to play the same chord progressions).

Chords are important, for sure. They “harmonize” with the melody, helping to evoke certain emotions. But melody is primary. So try this method of melody-writing:

• First, compose the catchiest, most delightful melody you can, a cappella (without instrumentation).
• Next, speak your lyrics aloud. This will help you hear the natural rhythm of the words, which may help you revise your melody as needed.
• Last, find chords that will best support your melody, and bring out the emotional tones you’re looking for.

If you’re not a musician, you may want to work with a musician to find the right chords. This can be a co-writer, or just a musician in your church or band. If this person isn’t a co-writer, consider paying the musician an upfront fee for their time.

Finally, make sure your song “works” with just one voice and one instrument. Vicky Beeching says,

“I believe that if a song is going to be useful to the global Church, it needs to work with one voice and one acoustic guitar (or one piano). Most churches are not huge and have a small handful of musicians. Often it’s just one person up front leading on one instrument. Make sure your song doesn’t hang on some big musical riff, or the drumbeat, or the fact that a huge choir is singing it. Does it work when it’s stripped right back to one guitar and one vocal? If not, I’d say the song is too reliant on instrumentation and probably isn’t ready yet. Keep working on it until it stands strong on just one instrument and one vocal. Try the song that way at a smaller meeting, or a home group. A great song will work just as well in that simple setting, as it does with a huge band.”

 

Prosody: When Music And Lyrics Hold Hands

The term “prosody” has several meanings in the fields of literature, poetry and music. When we speak of prosody in songwriting, we’re talking about the marriage of lyrics to music. In simplest form, we achieve prosody when we match triumphant lyrics to triumphant music, and when we match sad lyrics to sad music.

So if you write a lament based on Psalm 13 (“How long, O Lord …”) your music should be consistent with the message of the lyrics, and the emotion those lyrics are intended to convey. Sojourn did this on “How Long,” based on Isaac Watts’s version of Psalm 13:

Some of the common tunes for classic hymns are lacking in prosody. This is especially true of the American “gospel hymns” of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. According to hymnologist Paul Westermeyer in With Tongues Of Fire:

“The Dwight Moody-Ira Sankey campaigns in the last quarter of the 19th century produced a body of hymnody that … contained cheery compound triple and dotted rhythms, enticing mild chromaticism, the almost exclusive use of major keys rather than minor ones, and a lack of dissonance or musical argument to create tension. It developed into the even lighter, semi-sacred, and more commercial music of the Billy Sunday era after the turn of the century, such as … “Brighten The Corner Where You Are,” … It often took over Sunday schools altogether and made inroads into mainstream Protestant services as well. Sometimes songs in this style replaced an entire hymnic heritage …”

Other classic hymns pair jubilant lyrics with somber music. Sovereign Grace’s Devon Kauflin wrote new music for the Phillip Bliss hymn “What A Savior” for this reason, as he told me in an interview here at My Song In The Night:

“I was never particularly excited about the traditional melody associated with it. In our context it didn’t seem to fit the declaration: ‘Hallelujah! What a Savior!’ I really wanted to be able to respond to the truth in the verses, and the line combined with the melody just seemed like a total downer to me.”

Prosody also means matching words like “rise,” “sky,” and “high” with notes that “rise high in the sky.” We hear this in Elevation Worship’s “Be Lifted High,” written by Chris Brown, Jane Williams, Jess Cates, Matt Brock and Wade Joye. The melody soars on “higher” when they sing:

“You be lifted high; You be lifted HIGHER”

To make sure you understand the basics of prosody, answer this question: Should the melody go up or down if you sing “the depths of hell”?

If you guessed “Down,” congratulations – you get it.

Is it ever okay to write sad music for happy lyrics, or vice versa? Of course. Rules are made to be broken. Songwriters most often invert the rule of prosody when they want to achieve an ironic effect, or to convey a sense of “Something isn’t quite right.”

For instance, a singer-songwriter may write lyrics about loss and heartbreak, then compose happy music to create an “I’m ignoring my pain” effect or a “Don’t cry for me – I’m actually better off” effect. But this kind of writing doesn’t work as well in congregational worship music.

How To Compose Melodic Hooks For Worship Songs

How do songwriters emphasize their song title or major lyrical “hook” of their song? Besides the obvious fact that the words themselves should be compelling, the musical section needs to stand out from the rest of the song as well. One common way is to make some of the notes that accompany your title higher or lower than the rest of the melody. Contemporary worship writers most often choose to go higher, but either can work.

You can also create a melodic hook by changing the rhythm. For instance, if the lines before and after your hook line are primarily composed of eighth notes and quarter notes, you can use long, fluid half notes and whole notes for your hook line. Glenn Packiam and Paul Baloche do this on “Your Name.”

You can go the opposite direction as well – compose the lines around your hook with long notes, then craft short notes for your hook. Jeremy Riddle does this on Bethel Music’s “Furious.” He stretches the notes of his pre-chorus, leading into a machine gun-like intensity of shorter notes throughout the chorus.

Finally, don’t make listeners wait too long before you introduce your major hook. Most songs will hit their big hook within about 30 seconds from the beginning of the first verse. This is often true of hymns, too. Whereas the big hook in contemporary worship songs usually comes in the chorus, it often comes midway through each verse in the V-V-V hymn format. You can hear it on lines 5-6 of each verse in these Stuart Townend/Keith Getty hymns (each of which contain 8 lines per verse):

• In Christ Alone
• Resurrection Hymn (See What A Morning)
• O Church Arise

Top photo by Derek Garvey, used via Creative Commons license

How Low Can You Go, How High Can You Fly In Worship Song Melodies?

Most people in your congregation have a vocal range somewhere between one octave to one-and-a-third. Paul Baloche, Jimmy Owens and Carol Owens write,

“Congregational songs must be written in the common range. That’s the range of the average person, generally from low Bb up to D. You can stretch that a half step on either end if necessary, but preferably not if the notes are to be held out very long. It’s demoralizing not to be able to reach the long high or low notes.”

For this reason, a 1 1/3-octave range should be in the upper limits of our songwriting toolkit. Most worship songs should stick closer to an octave. A full octave is plenty of space for a tune.

Some tunes – particularly quiet, contemplative songs – may only need a few notes. “Here I Am To Worship” has a five-note range, and “The Heart Of Worship” has a range of a sixth. But these are exceptions. For most worship songs, feel free to use a full octave. This will give you something to build toward in your verses, and will make your chorus and/or bridge interesting or fun for your congregation.

So use a whole octave in composing your melody, moving up the scale as your song progresses. As you move up the scale in your verse and pre-chorus, the tension will increase, leading to a big hook in your chorus. Otherwise, if your verse is higher than your chorus, the melody will seem to deflate, and people will lose interest.

As with any songwriting “rule,” this need not always be the case. Some songs seem to promise a melodic jump at the start of the chorus, only to tease us by dipping to a lower note than the final pre-chorus note. As the chorus progresses, we do finally hit the higher melodic notes. Jason Ingram, Matt Maher, Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman do this on “White Flag.” It works because the chorus is short and the high “payoff” lines are worth it.

Next week I’ll write more about “melodic hooks,” the part of a song that people hum and sing over and over.

The First Principle Of Melody-Writing For Worship Songs

Nothing in the songwriter’s craft is more mysterious than the creation of a good melody. It’s not an exact science – its art. And yet without a strong melody, most people won’t pay attention to your lyrics. In an interview with me here at My Song In The Night, John Mark McMillan said,

“The words and the music have to work together to create that vibe, that overall experience.

“Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase ‘The medium is the message.’ Christian music and the church as a whole could pay attention to that. We forget that the words are the last little piece of the message. The real story is told in the things you do and the way you do it.

“I want to put everything into my music so that the music and the lyrics tell a story together — the same story.”

I can’t guarantee that you’ll write a good melody by following “the rules.” Nor can I promise that people will hate your melody if you disregard “the rules.” But there are basic principles that have worked for numerous worship songs. We’ll talk about these principles in a series of posts over the next several weeks. You will increase your odds of composing singable, interesting melodies if you allow these principles to shape most of your songs.

Principle #1: Simple And Singable

Worship songwriters have a responsibility that is foreign to many of the most well respected singer-songwriters and bands you’ll hear on the radio, TV and live shows. Our melodies must not only be interesting, they must be simple enough for the average person to sing. If church congregations can’t sing along after hearing our song just one or two times, we lose.

John Witvliet is director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and professor of worship, theology, and congregational & ministry studies at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. In a podcast interview with Mike Cosper, Witvliet said he asks this question of songwriters and worship leaders,

“Is this song genuinely singable by a congregation? That’s not a consideration for radio or concerts, but it must be for congregational worship songs.

“You must understand that question. You must love that question. You must thrill to hear a congregation singing together. Do you have a passion for it?”

This is why the most lasting hymns and praise songs tend to contain concise, symmetrical phrases, simple melodic lines and plenty of melodic repetition. It’s easy for a congregation to feel an emotional connection to a melody they can easily sing on Sunday and remember during the week.

Also pay attention to the intervals in your melody (the number of scale steps from one note to the next). If your intervals leap all over the place, your song will have a herky-jerky feel that is difficult or unpleasant to sing, even if the entire melody is confined to one octave. Most of your intervals should be step intervals (up or down one scale step). Save your leap intervals for spare moments when you need the music to swell.

Finally, remember that you’re writing for both genders, not just your own. As Vicky Beeching has written:

“Make sure it works for the male and female vocal range – if the song is meant to be sung in church, it needs to be singable by both men and women (who have very different vocal ranges). Gather some guy and girl friends and have them all sing it with you. See if it works for everyone’s voices. If not, try and find a melody everyone can join in with. It’s really tricky to make this work, but many worship songs don’t – and half the congregation will be struggling to join in, or desperately trying to harmonize, to find a melody they can actually reach! “

Next time I’ll write specifically about the melodic range you should aim for in your songs.

Why Some Worship Songs Need Not Explicitly State The Gospel

The following paragraphs are among the most apt words for worship leaders and songwriters that I’ve seen this year:

“… some leaders (myself included) have believed that to be gospel-centered, every song we sing has to explicitly state the gospel, or more narrowly, substitutionary atonement. But we shouldn’t be more gospel-centered than the Bible is. The Bible includes all kinds of topics, and our services and songs should address the full range of human experience.

“If the history of the universe is a movie, Christ’s death and resurrection is the turning point of the movie. Don’t let people grow dull by only ever playing the highlight reel. Let them see the whole movie! At the same time, don’t be ashamed of going to the highlights again and again, because without them the rest of the movie doesn’t make sense.”

— from “The Worship Leader and the Gospel” by Ken Boer, a chapter in Doxology And Theology: how the gospel forms the worship leader

• Worship leaders, how are you “showing the whole movie” in your church?
• How are you “showing the highlight reel”?
• Songwriters … same questions. 

Rhyme Schemes – The Technique All Songwriters Should Master

Every songwriter knows that “rhyme” is a big deal. And it seems so simple — make your songs rhyme. But there is danger on the tracks, especially for beginning songwriters who don’t think about the overall structure of their songs at the beginning.

Let’s look at the most popular “rhyme schemes” in modern songs. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of end rhymes in your song (rhymes that occur at the end of your lines). We show this pattern by creating diagrams based on the alphabet.

To create a rhyme scheme diagram for a verse, label the first line “A.” Then label every line that rhymes with that first line with an “A.” Label the next non-rhyming line with a “B.” Then assign the letter “B” to every other line that rhymes with it. If this seems confusing, don’t worry. You’ll see the pattern when we begin to look at sample verses, below.

We create song diagrams to discover inconsistent rhyme schemes, so we can make them consistent. This is because when we begin a song, we make certain promises to the congregation (we could consider it a contract). In this case, the promise is:

Whatever end-rhyme pattern we establish in the first verse will remain through subsequent verses.

Let’s look at the three most popular rhyme schemes:

ABAB (and its variant, ABCB)

Early English hymnwriters often wrote in a rhyme scheme called “ABAB.” Augustus M. Toplady used the ABAB rhyme scheme in “A Debtor To Mercy Alone.” Watch:

“The terrors of law and of God (A)
With me can have nothing to do; (B)
My Savior’s obedience and blood (A)
Hide all my transgressions from view.” (B)

He rhymes “God/blood” on lines 1 and 3, and “do/view” on lines 2 and 4. This is a tight rhyme scheme. ABAB songs are often fun to sing and easy to remember.

ABCB is a popular variation of ABAB. It gives the writer a little more freedom to concentrate on things like plot and theme instead of being too beholden to rhyme, but it still provides rhyme where our ears most expect it – on the even-numbered lines.

Contemporary ABCB songs include “Forever Reign” by Jason Ingram and Reuben Morgan, “You Are My King (Amazing Love)” by Billy James Foote, and “Beneath The Waters (I Will Rise)” by Scott and Brooke (Fraser) Ligertwood. Let’s diagram the first verse of “Beneath The Waters (I Will Rise):

“This is my revelation (A)
Christ Jesus crucified (B)
Salvation through repentance (C)
At the cross on which He died” (B)

Unlike the ABAB rhyme scheme, lines one and three don’t rhyme here (revelation/repentance). But note that “revelation” rhymes with “salvation,” the first word of line three. So we have a nice instance of internal rhyme (rhymes that occur within the body of your verse, rather than at the end of your lines).

Still, less-experienced songwriters than Brooke and Scott Ligertwood might have thought “We need to revise our third line so it rhymes at the end with revelation. Let’s change the third line to:

“Repentance leads to salvation”

This would have given them a “perfect” ABAB scheme, but what a clunker.

AABB

AABB is the easiest scheme for beginners to write. When a poet ends his first line, it feels natural to immediately find a word that will end the next line with a rhyme.

The problem is that this can encourage writers to put too much emphasis on rhyming and not enough on developing a sustained thought across multiple lines. This can lead to songs that are more like a series of individual two-line platitudes than a compelling narrative or exposition. Nevertheless, many great hymns of the faith use AABB well. See Charles Wesley’s classic Christmas carol:

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (A)
Glory to the newborn King (A)
Peace on earth, and mercy mild, (B)
God and sinner reconciled” (B)

Many contemporary praise songs use this scheme well, too, including “Hosanna (Praise Is Rising)” by Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown, and “Our God” by Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jesse Reeves and Chris Tomlin.

When Tomlin and Louie Giglio adapted John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” into “Amazing Grace (Chains Are Gone)” they kept Newton’s ABAB rhyme scheme in the verses. But they switched to AABB in their chorus:

“My chains are gone, I’ve been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood, His mercy reigns
Unending love, amazing grace”

Did they “break contract” with us? No – although you should use the same rhyme scheme in your verses, you can switch to a different scheme for your chorus and bridge. In fact, doing so may help you distinguish those elements of your song. Most contemporary songs use different rhyme schemes for the distinct elements of their songs (verse-chorus-bridge).

Diagram your own songs. Not only may you discover inconsistent rhyme schemes, you may find out that you rely too much on one or two rhyme schemes. If so, give yourself assignments to write songs in alternate rhyme schemes. Doing so will help you avoid creative dry spells. And it may just give you your best song yet.

Top photo used via Creative Commons license

The Two Types Of Rhyme That Will Make Your Songs Soar

Ask anyone to list some characteristics of songs, and they’ll say “Songs rhyme.” Although this isn’t always true, rhyming is a major reason why people love to sing. Rhymes are fun, and they help us remember lyrics.

Today we’ll look at the major types of rhyme – perfect rhyme and imperfect rhyme.

First, here are three things to keep in mind throughout post:

• The meaning of your song is more important than the rhymes. Don’t force a line to rhyme at the expense of the song’s message.

• Your last line is the “punch line” – it’s important to end this line with a strong word rather than a weak one, even if the weak one would give you a perfect rhyme.

• On a related note, try to rhyme your most important words. This means you’ll have to be willing to write imperfect rhymes, which we’ll define below. For example, “God” is an important word but there aren’t many perfect rhymes for it – especially if you want to avoid the words that have been too well trod as a rhyme for God.

Types Of Rhyme: Perfect and Imperfect

Perfect Rhyme: When most people think of “rhyme,” they think of pairs of words like “true/blue” or “cat/hat.” This kind of “perfect” rhyme occurs when the sounds of the final accented vowel and final consonant (if the word ends on a consonant) are identical. Here are examples of perfect rhymes that often populate worship songs:

• Save/grave
• Shame/blame
• King/bring
• Go/below
• Pray/way

In past centuries, many writers considered perfect rhyme to be ideal. Today, most songs contain a mix of perfect and imperfect rhymes.

Imperfect Rhyme: Otherwise known as “near rhyme” or “half rhyme.” If two words almost sound alike, then those two words form an “imperfect rhyme.”

Because of the connotation of the word “imperfect,” you may think that it is better to write perfect rhymes. But it is better to use an imperfect rhyme than to sacrifice the idea or tone of your song in order to use a perfect rhyme. Also, sometimes if your song contains too many perfect rhymes, it will sound childish, or too much like a greeting card.

Finally, perfect rhymes are more likely to be clichéd because writers have used them so often in past and present times. If you tell me that the first rhyming pair in your new song is “love/run,” I’ll feel better about it than if you tell me it’s “love/dove.” Christian hymnody probably has enough doves of love from above.

Jennie Lee Riddle uses imperfect rhyme in “Revelation Song”:

“Clothed in rainbows of living color
Flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder”

Do you see that “color/thunder” is the imperfect rhyme? The words nearly rhyme because the sound of the “o” in color and “u” in thunder is similar, and also because of an element of imperfect rhyme called consonance (the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in close succession). “Color/thunder” each end with the “r” sound.

Consonance doesn’t have to be present in imperfect rhyme. You can also use assonance, the agreement of vowel sounds within words. “Bright/mine” is assonant because of the long “I” sound. See how Jon Egan uses both assonance and consonance in the first four lines of “I Am Free”:

“Through You the blind will see
Through You the mute will sing
Through You the dead will rise
Through You all hearts will praise”

The words at the end of the first two lines (see/sing) are an example of assonance (the long “E” sound). The words at the end of the next two lines (rise/praise) are an example of consonance (the “s” sound). So, assonance and consonance are each elements of imperfect rhyme.

Photo above by Ben Salter, used via Creative Commons license.