A Long List of Don'ts

Dean McIntyre, the Director of Music Resources in the Center for Worship Resourcing at the United Methodist General Board of Disciple (quite a title!), has written an interesting piece called Fifty Ways to Guarantee Poor Congregational Singing. It is quite a list but boils down to being mindful of your music choices (fits the liturgy, lectionary etc.) with accompaniment that encourages congregational singing. 
It is almost impossible not to try and keep score as you read down the list. . .  how does your church measure up to McIntyre's suggestion?

Fellow Travellers

I was excited to stumble on Wendell Kimborough's blog called "The Church Music Blog". Wendell is the worship leader at an Anglican church plant in Washington DC. Here is what he says about his blog (and his ministry):

"this blog has been making one sustained argument: that the most important thing music should do in church is get people to sing.  I am trying to paint a picture of corporate worship in which the people in the pews are co-creators of a beautiful sound together"

 So I encourage you to check it out.

Recording a Singing Church

Red Team has just started the process of recording a new album of the songs we sing with the congregation at Ashland First. I am going to try and produce an album which is true to my theological vision of a singing church. This means:

1. All the singing on the congregational hymns/songs will be by a group, not a solo vocal.
2. This group will be representative of the whole congregation - in age, sex and ability. (OK, in the interests of quality I should probably say "somewhat representative")
3. We are going to use the talents we have to hand in the congregation which means we will have an unorthodox mix of instruments. 

I know that I will fight some of my natural producer's instincts on these rules and will probably have a number of compromises -- one I have made already is that I shipped in a drummer which we don't have on a regular Sunday.

It is interesting to consider that most recordings of "church music" are built either around a solo vocal (contemporary praise and worship) or an accomplished choir (classical music). Black gospel music is, of course, built around both. Where are the voices of the congregation?  It makes it difficult for congregations and musicians to imagine what this music would sound like - church music where the voices of the congregation praising God together is the music of the church.

The Difference between Praise Choruses and Hymns

Here is something making the rounds of the interwebs -- it made me smile.

Hail the Day

Ascension Sunday and there was quite a volume of singing in the sanctuary of First United Methodist Church, Ashland this morning.
A number of forces came together to encourage congregational singing:
1) Two of the three hymns were known to the congregation and are very 'singable'
2) Red Team, in its current unamplified incarnation, has reached a critical mass of singers - three on melody, two altos, two tenors and two basses.  I think I have discovered that--when unamplified-- a group of people singing is a good way to encourage a group of people to sing!
3) Libby spent a lot of time with the arrangements to make sure that our odd little ensemble sounded good. It is a strange assortment: clarinet, trombone, accordion, violin and two guitars.
--
Check out the volume of the congregation:
Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise
The Head That Once Was Crowned With Thorns

The final hymn was the South African, Hallelujah We Sing Your Praises.
I think we sound good but we didn't do enough to make the congregation feel comfortable -- and the interesting clapping at the end probably didn't help (memo to self: sort the clapping out before you start!)

Learning from Folk

A new hit with an unknown oldie

Nothing much to report other than our discovery of a GREAT old hymn that I dug up via YouTube for today's lectionary reading (Jn 15:1-8). What I heard was an old American hymn called "I am the Vine" with those beautiful open fourths and fifths. A bit more googling found me the score. Libby and I worked on it with guitar and accordion and suddenly we had something that sounded like it belonged on the Cohen brothers' True Grit! We took it down a whole step to make the chorus a little more comfortable.
This morning we added Mary and Allie's fiddles.
I was sure the congregation would learn it quickly -- when I listened back to the recording I was amazed to hear the congregation come busting in on the first line after the fiddle had played the melody once.
Check it out: I am the Vine
In introducing the song, I asked people to let me know after the service if they had sung it before -- no one had.

We also did a couple of other unusual numbers: the spiritual Lord I want to be a Christian  and Sidney Carter's Lord of the Dance set to the Shaker Tune SIMPLE GIFTS. I didn't think Lord of the Dance was unusual until the organist who has been at her console for around forty years told me the congregation had never sung it before.