Comments on: Worship Leaders & Pastors - Should We Change Musical Settings?

By: matt blick

matt blick — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:30:03 +0000

I was just reading the introduction to the methodist hymnbook (as you do!) and it said there that the original versions of wesley’s hymnbooks were either lyrics only or purely tunes, with no harmony at all. When you consider that, as Bob said, the tune you’re used to may not even be the original tune surely it becomes a question of “what I’m used to” rather than “what is the ‘correct’ way of doing this hymn?”

I always thought it is amusing that the editor(?) of the psalms included all those musical directions about the setting/orchestration/tune of some of the psalms only for God in his Sovereign providence to make good & sure that the information about what all those terms mean would be lost & we’d never be able to play them as ‘originally intended’ anyway!

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 17:29:17 +0000

As an intermediate level guitar player, I find that the greatest difficulty I have is less with harmony than with rhythm.

In order to sing hymns accompanied by guitar, I need to either learn a much more advanced form of guitar playing, or dramatically alter the rhythm of the song. Syncopated strumming doesn’t work at all with the regular rhythm of traditional hymn melodies, and regular guitar strumming just sounds awful, because it’s the same chord three or four times in a measure.

So I end up altering the rhythm of the songs, but keeping as much of the musical intervals as possible.

By: Holly Magnuson

Holly Magnuson — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:43:17 +0000

Bob,
Thanks for this. I’m in a church where the Pastor wants to “contemporize” the hymns and where some of my band and worship team, and congregation want the tried and true. Your comments about is it serving the people or just cool chords is SO key. Thanks

By: Bob Kauflin

Bob Kauflin — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 21:50:31 +0000

Alex,

That’s great to hear that you were affected by New Attitude. It’s also great to hear that you sing the harmony. Maybe you should stop by and visit my church sometime and help us out!

By: Scott Hill

Scott Hill — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:10:23 +0000

While I have musical training I still depend on my ear for most of what I do. I didn’t start learning music until later in life but was taught to sing harmony by my mother at a very young age. So I still rely almost solely on my ear for harmonies.

That being said, I actually appreciate the challenge of finding harmonies when I hear an arrangement outside the normal harmonies I am used to.

By: Alex Stredic

Alex Stredic — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:50:09 +0000

I sat in your lecture at new attitude on worship, and i felt like it was the one message(well plus eric simmons) that i walked way from new attitude with ,that changed the way i thought about my walk. just wanted to let you know that, as far as this post, i grew up in a family, and community, that sang gospel music. And by that i mean Mahaliah Jackson, and James Cleveland and the mississipi mass choir type gospel music. And i sang in a quartet with three other boys my whole life, and i just cant function inside of music without harmony. Whenver i hear a song, even if its by a solo artist, i immedietly hear potential harmonies to the songs and often times have a hard time singing along to the melody cuz what i hear is the harmony. SO its hard for me to imagine an entire church singing the same part. what is that like?