future sermon themes
(for those planning ahead)
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blogs regarding music for 'traditional' worship:
A Mysterious Stanza in 'Wondrous Love'
St. Bach
Improvisation Corner
How I Survive: Four solutions to the problem of the constant need for church music
part one: improvisation / two: composition / three / four
for praise bands:
What Key is this thing in, anyway?
My very first praise band keyboard lesson
What does a keyboardist do in a praise band?
improvisation 101 / 102 / 103 / 104
Making a lead sheet: some observations
Making a lead sheet: more observations
the ultimate lead sheet
On Christian piano music:
An Interesting Conversation
Modulation and the Gospels
Too many Notes?
The Sacred Text?
other blogs (2011)
Half the Argument
Squirrels and the Church Fathers
Helping the Poor
Seriously, ...who is my neighbor again?
It Must Be a Sign
Actually, they did ask directions....
other blogs (2010)
Truth or Dare
Letter from the Recording Angel
One-note Theology
The Art of Persuasion
Yes, But Not Really
Crèche Politics
other blogs (2009)
The Imitation of Thomas a Kempis
Could it be...Satan?
Salt of the Earth
You who are evil
The Sower
Comfort ye
other blogs (2008)
What it's really all about
Can they do that?
Jesus for Messiah '08
A Letter to Martin Luther
Not to be rude, but...
The God-Sellers
note: clicking on the titles in blue will allow you to listen the to music for each week. (most) Pieces still under copyright, however, will not be posted, nor will pieces involving other performers (for logistical reasons).
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Music for January 22 Gregorian Album: I. Gigout Fuga XIX Telemann Improvisation on "O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing" Kseniya Chumachenko, guest organist |
Music for January 29 improvisations I'm out of town the weekend of the 22nd, and making it up on the spot on the 29th. Sorry there isn't anything to listen to this time. Check out the archives (new stuff coming in February) |
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How I Survive: Four solutions to the problem of the constant
need for church music (part two: composition) posted December 28, 2011 As if to correct for the speed and ease of my first method, improvisation--making it up on the spot, composition is for me just the opposite. It takes time--gobs of it, and is for that reason a luxury I can't afford very often. Improvisation is a tool used to get by in emergencies, though it can also be elevated to a high art. Or it can be used merely to kill empty space during a service when silence is seen as an enemy or to drown out the noise of the traffic outside while the pastor is praying. It is simply the art of musical conversation and for this reason alone I am convinced that any one of you reading this could do it at some level, though I realize many of you find the thought impossible. On a page, in short lessons in boxes, it is not easy to interact with a student's psychology and provide feedback, but in person every one of my students has done some improvisation; often reluctantly at first. Generally the first part of the lesson is spent in trying to overcome the standard obstacles to thinking musically, among which are that the student doesn't think they are creative, that what they are doing isn't very good, or general discomfort with not having a map to tell them what to do. Then there is a breakthrough and the excitement of finding out it can be done after all. Often in life the first obstacles are the hardest to overcome; once some results are in the incentive to keep going is increased. But at first it may be unrewarding. This is why there are so many people who were gonna or used to. Improvisation is still a bit of a high-wire skill because you have to make a quick decision about where to go next and trust it; there is no time for reflection or regret. Composition, by contrast, offers a chance to think about what you want to say, and to rephrase it or throw it out altogether if it doesn't satisfy. Since I spent many hours goofing off as a child, honing my skills at playing things which were not on the page, and later on, choosing to improvise every week as a defense against the kind of music I would have had to play otherwise, I was eventually able to competently make up enough music to get through entire services, an invaluable strategy for surviving graduate school with no time to practice for church. As a side effect, though, I developed a reluctance to actually write anything down. For a start, that takes time. And then, from a philosophical point of view, composing to me seems like a completely different animal. |
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Actually, They
did
ask directions… This is one of those communicable email forwards that has been flying around the internet for years: “What would have happened if it had been three Wise Women
instead of three Wise Men? It ought to be unworthy of the attentions of this blog to refute this bit of doggerel—it certainly will be unwelcome to persons who find it funny. It is of no help that someone has attached a doxology to the email in which the women come in for similar stereotypical punishment: as vicious gossips, vindictive shrews, and so on. There is no equal time where crude caricatures are concerned. As is usually the case when we are trying to be funny about something by way of general complaining, we don't want to be bothered with contradictory evidence, even if it is staring right at us. And we certainly wouldn't want to let an accurate reading of the gospel get in the way of a little man bashing. At any rate, you can send your emails, headed ‘oh, lighten up’ to ‘ireallydontgiveaflyingfig@pianonoise.com.’
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The Ultimate Lead Sheet posted November 17, 2011 Doug and I are in quest of the "ultimate lead sheet." By that I mean, what is the best possible way to take all the "stuff" that goes on a page for your praise band to read and make it easy to read and understand, easy to figure out, without leaving out anything critical? For our drummer, Gavin, large words are important. He's also a lead singer, so he needs to be able to see the lyrics, which mean they need to be big. I mean, really big. I mean really, really, really hugely enormously retirement community trifocally godzilla size....just kidding, Gav. The guy can see fine. It's just that the music stand is about three feet in front of him (past the drums), so letters an eighth of an inch high aren't going to do it. And I imagine that's kind of important for the other singers as well. They don't need chords on their sheets, they need words--alone. Which is probably their idea of the perfect lead sheet. One without all the unnecessary musical clutter and highly visible words. The down side to that is that you'd have to have two versions of every lead sheet, which clutters up the library. So it probably won't happen anytime soon. What about the rest of us? Well, besides some basic information about the key, tempo and meter, which never appear on lead sheets, I like to see the chords arranged in basic groups. Usually, a song consists of a pattern of three or four chords repeated over and over. I'd like it to be obvious which four (or three). Put them all on the same line. Adjust the lyrics if necessary. Of course, it never hurts to actually place the chord changes over the words on which the chords change, but a lot of lead sheet writers/copiers aren't so careful. Usually the chord changes are predictable and you can guess. Then there is the court of appeals which is listening to a recording. We keep one handy whenever we're working on a new piece. I'd also like to see some extra space between the verse and the chorus and the bridge (or the channel or the pre-chorus or whatever funky thing they're calling it), just the same way I put space between paragraphs so your eyes don't glaze over reading this. Aren't I a nice guy? Gavin's come up with a good way to do lead sheets. The songs he writes usually have large lyrics on the left side of the page. The chord pattern for the verse is listed one time (ie, "GABC") off to the right. The same thing is true for the chorus. If it is a repeated progression, you just cycle around the series of chords you see until that part of the song is over. It allows the words to be big, the chords to be big, and makes things look less cluttered. It doesn't tell us how fast the changes are, but then, neither do most other lead sheets, and we've got the composer in the room. Gavin thinks like a bass player, so sometimes the chord symbols are really about what's in the bass (for example, a G chord with a B in the bass-- a G/B, in other words-- is written as "B"). I imagine most bass players would prefer things this way, but that would require a third kind of lead sheet). You can see why, when a chord shows up on a lead sheet as a G#dim7/D. Turns out it's really a D chord. You never know when you get your stuff off the internet. It might be done by somebody who really knows what they are doing, or it could be a 13-year old excitedly commenting "This is my very first lead sheet." Doug, our electric guitar player, and administrative director, who gets our sheets together (sorry), decided he'd take a pass on that real-life example by our 13-year old enthusiast. Things really get fun when the song is eight minutes long and repeats the various parts in combination over and over. The right-hand margin of the page usually gets festooned with penciled notes "VCVCCBVCCCCBVVCCC" (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus--you get the idea). We try to keep our lead sheets from being more than two pages long, which can be a conflicting demand in some extreme cases. Usually by the time we've played the song 85 times we don't really need the sheets anyhow, but then we're bored. There are ways to deal with that, too, but some things need to stay in Vegas--er, church |
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| It Must Be a Sign posted October 7, 2011 |
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I jog past their church a lot so I see the sign every few days. About a month ago it read “The 10 commandments are not multiple choice.” Now I’m not a big fan of church signs in general. Usually I find them rather clunky and cute, like somebody’s dad trying to be cool at a party and not managing very well. It is the church trying to be Hallmark (which is all they’ve got room for on those signs anyhow) but only managing to be a knockoff. So my reaction to this sign was not bound to be generous. But this sign, this one in particular, had one other thing going for it. It seemed to tap into the judgmental side of the Christian experience. The one that non-churchgoers like to point to as the number one reason not to get involved. My reflex action was to envisage a sign at our own church which said, “There are three versions of the 10 commandments in the bible. Which one are we talking about?” I imbibed large quantities of Mark Twain in middle school so I have a bit of sarcasm in my blood stream. And it wasn’t just the rigidity of the sentiment that got me, it was the simplicity of it. So often we find judgmentalism coupled with ignorance. So I thought I’d take a run in that direction. Which version are we talking about? |
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How I Survive: Four solutions to the problem of the constant
need for church music (part one) posted September 2, 2011 |
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Persons whose vocation involves providing music for the church quickly become aware of what an enormous demand there is for music. Sundays come around regularly, 52 times a year, never stopping to take a breath, and, if you are an organist, that typically means three new pieces every seven days. And this doesn’t take into account any weddings or funerals that may have sprung up during the week, or, particularly if you are Catholic, masses on Saturdays, masses on Wednesdays, masses on special holy days, and so forth. If you are concerned about quality, the demand is more stringent; quality and quantity are not fast friends with each other. To be able to play well, and especially to be able to play quality pieces well, means time and effort. Compounding the problem: If you are an amateur musician who works at a bank 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, has to drive the kids to soccer practice and keep the house clean besides (company’s coming!), or your spouse fell ill this week or you just took the family on vacation or you had to go to your niece’s wedding in upstate Andromeda, you might have had almost no time to practice at all. But Sunday comes anyway. This article is about the four solutions to this ‘problem’ as I’ve come to know them. I’m going to discuss my ‘solutions’ in the order in which they developed in my own practice, which, curiously, may seem like descending order of difficultly, or ascending order of practicality—or familiarity—for many of you. They are as follows: improvisation, composition, use of the so-called ‘classical’ repertoire, and expediency. |
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michael@pianonoise.com
| Music for 2011-12 at Faith UMC in Champaign, IL USA |
mp3 files from our
north sanctuary
Michael Hammer, organ and piano
(last year: 2010-11)
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January 8, 2012 Baptism of the Lord Sunday from Gregorian Album: VIII. Gigout Christ, our Lord, Came to the Jordan Buxtehude |
Wes Wilkey’s Series on Methodism
“Five Strengths of United Methodism”
(Ordinary Time between Baptism of the Lord and Transfiguration, 2012)
January 15, 2012
"We Are Connectional"
2 Corinthians 8:1-19
from Gregorian Album: VII Gigout
from Sonata no. 7 in C: Rondeau
Mozart
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January 22, 2012 "We Are Missional" James 1:22-27 out of town (guest organist) |
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January 29, 2012 "We Are Socially Conscious" Micah 4:1-4 |
| February 5, 2012 "We Are Balanced" 2 Peter 1:16-21 Sonata in G, k. 283: I. Allegro Mozart Ave Verum Corpus Mozart/Liszt |
February 12, 2012
"We Are Working on Perfection"
1 John 4:15-21
Come, Holy Spirit, Creator God
J. S. Bach
Sonata in Bb, k.333: Allegretto
Mozart
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February 19, 2012 Transfiguration Sunday Radiant Pinnacle William Grant Still |
February 26, 2012
First Sunday in Lent
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March 4, 2012 |
March 11, 2012
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March 18, 2012 |
March 25, 2012
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April 1, 2012 |
April 8, 2012
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April 15, 2012 |
April 22, 2012
| April 29, 2012 |
May 6, 2012
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May 13, 2012 |
May 20, 2012
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May 27, 2012 |