Comments on: How to Write a Worship Song

By: Seth

Seth — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 01:52:12 +0000

Nice. Actually this song is more interesting than most of CCM. Most American hymns stick to diatomic progressions and pentatonic melodies, too. The progression isn’t necessarily the reason for the suckage; it’s the laziness of the lyricist, most times.

By: Selapm

Selapm — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:36:30 +0000

Irrefutable proof that Liturgy becomes non-existent when pop culture shows up.

By: jim

jim — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:10:33 +0000

South Park nailed this in their parody of Christian rock: just google “Faith Plus One”, the band Cartman formed, where he took regular songs and inserted the name Jesus into them.

Instead, I’d suggest Lutheran chorales and good old Anglican hymns for Sunday service.

By: Craig Payne

Craig Payne — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:14:21 +0000

Ah yes, the I-V-vi-IV progression. At our church, the guitarists call it the “With or Without You” worship mode (especially with the delay or echo effect on). It gives our worship “The Edge.”

By: pentamom

pentamom — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:48:17 +0000

Anyway, he’s not setting up a comparison to hymns. I think he’s just pointing out that there’s a certain monotony to how worship songs are done. That doesn’t have to be “in contrast to hymns”; it could just be “in contrast to how a larger proportion of worship songs could be better.”

By: pentamom

pentamom — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:46:51 +0000

Vincenzo, in the rhyming part, he throws in a reference to that — one of the “rhymes” he suggests isn’t even close, but is very cliche.

It’s true that in hymns the rhymes are more repetitive, but the overall lyric content is much more diverse and complex, especially in stuff written before the mid-19th century. They just manage to make sure that the words at the ends of the lines are rhymable.

By: Vincenzo

Vincenzo — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:00:20 +0000

This video has at least one thing backwards: modern worship songs frequently avoid using consistently rhyming lyrics (even of the loose “above”/”enough” variety). Look at almost any Hillsong song for example. I’d guess that your average hymn is more likely to contain rhymes than your average praise song. And because hymns tend to use a stricter standard for rhymes, their rhymes would be more likely to consist of pairings you’ve heard many times before.

By: Cloistered

Cloistered — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 02:58:03 +0000

Thank God I am a Lutheran (ELCA).