Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Here Is My Loops For "Mighty To Save"

This is the loop that our team uses for the song "Mighty To Save."
There are a lot out there, but I wanted to put our own spin on it.

It follows the Hillsong version except that we don't do the long drum intro. The click starts 2 bars of nothing, then the drum riff starts for 2 bars only, then it is the full band intro on the D chord and the song goes exactly like the recording from there. Key of A, 76 bpm.

I made a loop, synths and pads, and bass sub stuff. You can use all three together or whatever you need for your team. We like this song, we don't do it a whole lot just because it is so popular, but from time to time this song is appropriate.

So here you go...

Loop 76 bpm (left click; right loop)
Synth and Pads 76 bpm (left click; right pads/synth)
Bass Sub Synth 76 bpm (no click)

I used a Yahama mo6 on the whole loop and fender rhodes and pad, I used Albino 3 for the synth arp and bass arp and mixed it in Pro Tools.
Hope you can use this, if you have any questions about it Facebook me.

Friday, February 5, 2010

How to change up your worship songs.

I believe as a worship leaders, we need to add our own flavor to songs we sing every week, so it's fresh. If you get on CCLIs website you will find that these 5 songs are sung the most in churches every week.

1 How Great Is Our God Tomlin, Chris \ Reeves, Jesse \ Cash, Ed 4348399
2 Mighty To Save Fielding, Ben \ Morgan, Reuben 4591782
3 Blessed Be Your Name Redman, Beth \ Redman, Matt 3798438
4 Here I Am To Worship Hughes, Tim 3266032
5 Everlasting God Brown, Brenton Riley, Ken 4556538

Rightfully so, these songs are loved by our communities.

As a someone who was trained in jazz, the idea of playing/singing the melody and the tune exactly like the original artist is foreign, illegal, and Windows 7. We develop our own ways interpreting melodies and harmony, that is the fun part, it stays fresh and alive and improvised!

However in the church setting, there is not much you can do as far as the melody is concerned. People have heard it on KLOVE (in between, them begging for money) and know how to sing it a certain way.

Still, we can play around with the chords, or harmony as long as it doesn't effect the melody. A lot of churches do their own arrangements and their own dynamics, but for the most part across the board all of the churches I have been to, play and sing "How Great Is Our God" like Chris Tomlin.

Let's take that one for example. The basic chord structure is C Am F (G). It is pretty simple. This is what I did to the chords for a few weeks at our community.

C.................................Bm7b5.E7.Am
The splendor of a King,...............clothed in majesty
.....Gm7.......C7.....F
Let all the earth rejoice
.......................Fm
All the earth rejoice

Chorus
...........C...................Bm7b5....E7
How great is our God, sing with me
..........Am.......................Gm7.....C7
How great is our God, and all will see
.........F............Bb7............C
How great, how great is our God

Now this may be complicated depending where you are musically, but that is ok. AND by adding new harmonies you can pick and chose which ones to make it easier for you or your team. However these changes do not effect the melody, and I can tell you that the chorus really works with the changes over "sing with me, & and all will see." TA DA new life to a song we have done forever!

Let's take a more simple version of what I am purposing. "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman. The basic chord structure is |B|F#|G#m|E| and then |B|F#|E|. It's pretty much that way the whole time. So to make it more of our own and less the same, here is what we did with it.

For the first two lines of the verse it is the normal progression, then for line 3 and 4 of the verses we used |G#m|F#/A#|B|E| and then |G#m|F#/A#|E| because those lines are talking about how God is still blessed in times of lament. You can do this on the pre-chorus as well, you can do it where ever! Or not do it. That is the point, it is your call, make it!

There are other things we did with it later in the song, but for now you can see/hear/feel that just changing the 3rd and 4th lines of the verse breathes new life into a song we have done for years.

More on this later. And if you have questions about how it works, facebook me. I'm happy to help. PS sorry about the periods, it wouldn't line up correctly without them.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Kingdom Come

1. I remember being at the Willow Creek Art's Conference and hearing Brian Mclaren say that there needed to be more songs about the Kingdom coming on earth.

2. I listened to numerous different artist's version of this advice. Many are great.

3. I don't know that alienation is always the best way of promoting a song, but I don't really care. I wrote this song as a response the doomsday preachers of our time. The Left Behind series, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, and others who make there money by promoting fear. And by preaching of the coming apocalypse, instead of spreading love.

I think every thing is going to be good, but we all have to get together and spread love. That is what this song is about. Here is a demo that I recorded in my house over the last couple weeks. My brother Jason played the bass, and I played everything else. The kick sample is from Dusty Merrill.

So take it and listen to it. And if you are one who leans more towards fear instead of love, hopefully you can sing this chorus and it will start to change that.

Share it. Not the song. Not my name. Share the idea. The idea is more important. We could give up and let the cards fall where they may, or we could stop worrying and start spreading love. Let's make love till kingdom come, it doesn't have to be fear and death and fire. The choice is ours.


Kingdom Come Demo copyright 2010 Jeremy Batten

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Our loop "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus"

I have decided to go a different direction with this blog. I am going to talk about Art and the Church still. I am reading a lot of things that are shaping a lot of things I have thought for a long time. I am being vague. But let's talk about a song that totally worked on sunday at our church in Fairmont WV.

Here is our arrangement for "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus." I made this with Pro Tools and my Yamaha mo6 workstation.

The loop is here

We do 5 verses. "I have decided to follow Jesus" verse twice. Then the verse "though none go with me, still I will follow" Then verse 4 is "The cross before me the world behind me."

The last verse is "I have decided to follow Jesus."

The loop is 68 BPM. The chords are |E|E|A|A|C#m|C#m|E B|A|A| repeat.

Intro: two bars of loop
Verse 1: loop, vox, & ag
Verse 2: add bass whole notes and cymbals
Verse 3: add drums kick and snare on beat 4 and the last two bars build to full on, add all other instruments.
Verse 4: full on
Verse 5: ag and vox.

This arrangement seemed to work great. I love this song, and don't think it is a children song but a song for Worship. I hope you can use it.

Cheers.