Love Builds Up

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Permalink Reply by Charles Wolff on February 2, 2012 at 2:14pm

Keith -

I'm not sure if you intended this as a 'worship' song (congregationally sung) or a 'performance' song, but since this is the Worship forum, I'll assume the latter... and whenever I see a 'worship' song that uses 'you' to refer to Christians, I tend to shy away from it.  It's a message to the congregation, but the congregation is going to be singing it... to me, the mechanism of 'worship' songs is that they put words into the congregations mouth to help them express their worship, their feelings.

So if this was my song, intended for worship, I'd be looking at whether I could re-cast it so that the Christian is "I" and "me."  I don't know whether this particular message would work with that sort of recasting - "When I think I know the Truth
I know I'd best take care / abecause knowledge puffs up like a thick cloud of smoke and vanishes into thin air."  If it's intended as a performance song, then the casting works, you just need to be careful it doesn't get too 'preachy.'

So, okay, all that was before listening, and when I tried to listen, the player crashed on me after about three seconds.  So the only thing I can say about the music right now is that the "love builds up" theme of the song seems like it should be hopeful and energetic and from the first three seconds of the intro, it seemed like it was slower than I'd expect... sorry I can't say more about the music, if I can figure out how to make it play I'll follow up...

Permalink Reply by Charles Wolff on February 2, 2012 at 2:24pm

Okay, restarted firefox and I was able to listen all the way through, and my impression is still that this ought to be a lot more upbeat... it sounds like the instrumental track was done in Band In a Box - can you try just bumping the tempo up a ways and seeing if it works that way?  If this is, like, 105 bpm, see how it sounds at 125 or 130.

One other observation on the music, a lot of the phrasing puts the first word of the text on the '1' beat and I wonder if this would work better if you moved a couple syllables out before the 1 and made a point of putting an important word on the '1'.  I.e., instead of "IF you think you KNOW the truth..." try singing it like, "if you THINK you know the TRUTH..." (hope that makes sense).

Umm, hope this was helpful one way or another...

Permalink Reply by Keith Amano on February 6, 2012 at 3:22am

Howzit Charles,

yeah, my wife agrees it could be bumped up. 

Playing with the phrasing is a good idea.  We actually did try different things, especially because we were trying to stay together.  Turns out I'm the worst one for staying in synch with everyone else!  :)

Aloha!

Keith

Permalink Reply by Keith Amano on February 6, 2012 at 3:21am

HI Charles!  Thanks for the comments and ideas.  I haven't really been restricting what I post since it's not like there's a huge amount of traffic here.  I do realize that some people have something more specific in mind when they think of "praise and worship" so I understand some of my songs may not suit them.  There are psalms, hymns, and praise/worship songs that do employ "you," especially songs that take God's point of view or try to maintain the biblical writer's point of view (The Letters, for example).  I think it's fine, however, for people to recast a song for however they want to sing it, so long as they are maintaining the spirit and content of the song.  In this case, I was trying to use I Corinthians.  ALoha!  Keith