The Minor Third

I think most people recognize that songs and music in the minor key are sadder than the major key. The first though I've had is how often are contemporary worship songs in a minor key. If we go back to the Victorian hymnbooks I can recall easily the presence of these especially in the Easter passion season leading up to Easter Sunday. Just a quick reflection as I've been sorting CDs to keep, Fauré Requiem the transitions between major and minors is startling and emotive. The transition in the last two movements Libera Me, in a minor key in a lower octave, to In Paradisum, in a major key in a high voice, is positively sublime.

The minor third is the clue to understanding sadness. Meagan Curtis of Tufts University has found the minor third progression is not merely a musical thing but occurs in human speech patterns portraying sadness. (At least in American English). So here I return to my old question so why isn't anyone writing worship songs with minor thirds or minor keys and if I've missed them why aren't we using them? Life has its joys and sadness, light and darkness.

psalm 100

I was reworking psalm 100 for a small worship service recently.

Shout! Shout! Yell it all out.
I'm happy Lord
That - your glory, your majesty
your joy fills the earth
Everyone embrace the very fact
That- we are his artworks and his craftsmanship
We are his family,sitting and eating at his table.

Shout! Shout! Yell it all out.
We are thankful, grateful,
witnesses full of feelings of seen grace.
For the Lord is good
and his love endures forever.
For the Lord's faithfulness fill all of Time.

Videotape Radiohead

I've been absent from blogging for over a month which has been a signficant amount of time for me. The problem is dial-up and bad connectivity and time to change provider. Sorry I'll be remedying things.

Sometimes the people you hang out with are great and I'm really blessed. I've been playing my electric cello at CATM for services avbout once a month and I really enjoy working with the pastor Matthew who also is the music mover and shaker. Infact a great worship arts and video maker as well. He ended up in the Radiohead video last summer, the older guy with the beard.

For The Audience of One- Chapter 9

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One. Today is Spring and a time of new birth which is partially why Easter is near.

Read Chapter 9 For the Audience of One

How's your prayer life? Is what you're doing in public match your private life? How honest is your worship? Be honest here. God already knows.

1. What touched you in this chapter? What really caught your attention?
2. What upset you? What challenged you?
3. How to you respond to Mike's model of leadership and David's leadership?
4. Be honest, do you want to be a Samuel – Mike's version?
5. “God is less bothered with what I perceive as being the sins of the church and more concerned with my personal, well-ignored faults.” (page 132) Let God speak to you.

For The Audience of One- Chapter 8

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 8 Creativity in Worship

Monotonous is boring but in fact means one tone, shade, or color. Are you willing to be more colorful, have more varieties and styles?

1. What do you notice about Mike Pilavachi's language in this chapter? How is his image of worship different from yours?
2. What is the difference between creativity and imitation?
3. What is the strongest image from this chapter? Why is it so?
4. Rather than focus on self, can you imagine encouraging other's creativity.
5. Read Revelation 4;11 slowly aloud as a prayer and wait quietly for God's response.

For The Audience of One- Chapter 6

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 6 Prophetic Intercession

Honesty is so important especially with an omniscient God, a God who knows all. The honesty is for us and not for God. Openness reflects that vulnerability that God expressed in coming to earth and even relating to us.

1. What surprised you reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are your expectations for worship?
3. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
4. Which stories upset you or made you pay attention.? Did they name something for you?
5. Read Psalm 42 slowly three times, read it aloud and pray for either yourself or someone you know.

For the Audience of One - Chapter 5

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 5 The Fruit of Worship – Holiness

Real freedom and hope comes in God and in Christ Jesus. With a willingness and desire for change. worship becomes what it was meant to be.

1. Do you agree with the idea that worship is for us and our feelings? Or Mike's position?
2. What is your current understanding on the purpose of worship?
3. What do humans need to do in worship?
4. How do you feel to be described as a broken pot? Can you accept it? If not why not?
5. Read 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 and ask God what it means to contemplate or to reflect Him.

Unthinking imitation

An enormous danger to the Church is an unthinking Christianity that slips into society's patterns of living without investigating their validity. We should fear bandwagons that draw in participants who haven't really thought through the significance and meaning of a particular movement for their lives. Marva Dawn Truly The Community

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, however the most dangerous form of discipling. Cookie cutter thinking forces others into molds and springs into judgmentalism when they refuse to conform to what we think they should. We do violence because the one who transforms is the Holy One, the mold is not what we think but Christ himself. Max Lucado talks about finding your sweetspot, like in a tennis racket if you play the ball or life out of that zone power, strength and skill come. Enjoyment and pleasure flow from playing there. This is the older aspect of calling. We have corporate callings as communities and also personal ones.

Whether it is imitating or taking on the values and methods of surrounding culture without careful thought to implications and language, or simply imitating and using Christian songs without thinking of the worldview they embody. Just because another Christian wrote a song does not mean we should taking it and use it without adequate theological reflection about its suitability. I am saddened to find people serving outside their sweet spot and they haven't thought about what is happening to them. They are living off their own energy rather than the joy found inside playing from the right place. I continue to argue that a need is not a call - a call is from God and from within the spirit. A calling if found it its life giving qualities. A need is gap someone is trying to fill.

I have never found it work to read a Bible passage, think and pray about it and choose a worship sequence. In fact it is life giving and affirming, to do the preparation, to use the songs and hymns personally and to run rehearsals and ultimately facilitate others. In fact , I miss it currently, though enabling others to get closer and find God is very satisfying. Finding your place, your calling requires energy but when you're playing out of your sweet spot you have life, energy, joy, fun, and you don't feel tired during it. Work is the sweat of the brow and effort and willpower; serving inside your calling brings life, energy from beyond self, and is worship.

With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 2 Thess 1:11

Trapped into Amusing ourselves

The Church stands at a critical juncture in history. More and more persons are becoming dissatisfied with the experience of liberal culture and the Christian community could offer an alternative society. We must ... understand the nature of the technological milieu in which we live in order to grasp more fully the kind of alternative that is necessary ... a myriad of factors have caused persons to become more and more isolated from one another. Marva Dawn Truly The Community

Last week I read about Dr Arig Sigman's article in the Biologist, the journal of the British Institute of Biology, which claimed the lack of real-world social interaction could make you more susceptible to cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, influenza, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus etc. I also read some responses noting the weaknesses in Sigman's research but not refuting it.

But this week Baroness and Professor Greenfield, who is the director of the Royal Institution, a great scientific organization, has voiced her concerns that internet-obsessed children are losing their ability to concentrate and communicate away from the screen. Effectively the children's brains are being rewired. Greenfield is a professor of neuroscience and not a half baked politician. The British newspaper the Telegraph notes that a study from last year has showed that internet use can improve brain functioning and speed up general decision-making but the cost is loss of empathy and the ability to think in abstract terms. Furthermore there are possible connections with autism to be investigate.

It is twenty years since Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. He argued deeper than Marshall McLuhan not merely that the medium is the message but media inherently reduces messages. Thus a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Writing especially about television he comments that things are reduced down to entertainment. We have been reduced to the soundbyte.

I wonder about the internet. My posts are generally short. What am I exactly doing here? I'm trying not to be a blipvert. But the medium does reduce and limit. Rather I suppose I am wondering out loud and hoping someone might start or continue to think critically about the world around them.

Charles Colson, in Christianity Today in 2006 titled an article 'Soothing Ourselves to Death Should we give people what they want or what they need?' Poignant strong stuff.

I admit I prefer traditional hymns, buteven so, I'm convinced that much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend—slippingacross the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book. This trend is evident not just in theater-like churches.

I'm not sure if Colson is over-reacting but he is reacting to something which can be bad. self-indulgent emotionalism. I wrote about worshi-tainment when I started this blog and it still remains high on my radar. Tim Keller writes in the foreword to a book I've just finished (review to follow) that worship without the quality is intrinsically self indulgent because it excludes the stranger and the nonbeliever who have no relationship to those playing/leading nor to the God being worshipped. Whatever the medium, whether music, powerpoint, internet, etc, we need to understand what it is doing lest our ignorance and perhaps even our sins are visited on the next generation. Lest we become merely a reflection of our surrounding culture rather than an alternative.

Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom. All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom. Praise him forever! Psalm 111:10

For The Audience of One- Chapter 4

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 4 The Fruit of Worship – Healing

Again the need for honesty before God is important. It allows us to be open to the healing and transforming power of God. If you struggle here, do talk to others you trust including your pastor. If your church has a healing ministry there is no shame rather freedom if you would take issues to that ministry.

1. What surprised me if anything reading these few pages?
2. What are my expectations of worship and what are the fruits of worship?
3. Are there desires in my life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
4. Can I name the things in my brokenheartness?
5. Go back to read John 8:32 and ask God to give you his freedom.
   

For the Audience of One - Chapter 3

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 3 The Language of Worship

I remember meeting Mike Pilavachi in 1991 and remember a very strong impression of a passionate man. The love of God calls for a passionate response, yet sometimes that's the very thing we're scared of - being out of control.

1. What changes did the touch of God's love in worship bring to those at the Soul Survivor festival?
2. What is your experience of of God's love? What changes has it brought?
3. Is there a difference? In worship what I want and how I want it done?
4. In the challenge of offering all, what am I hanging onto most and what are my feeling attached to it?
5. Read Mark 12:29-31 and ask God to help you open your hands and let go.

For the Audience of One - Chapter 2

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 2 Sacrifice in Worship

Honesty does bring some pain. In fact change generally hurts or upsets. When we avoid things that we know bring us closer to God then we really need to pay attention. Pain can make us deaf or blind - do ask for God's comfort and healing. Don't forget to share what you're reading and praying over.

1. What didn't you like in this chapter? And Why?
2. What do you use in worship to justify yourself in behavior, in choosing what you want?
3. How do you feel about the tension between duty and love?
4. Are you willing to seek God and do things God's way?
5. Read 2 Chronicles 7:1-6 and ask God what he desires for you.

For the Audience of One - Chapter 1

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 1 The Highest Priority

It's all about being honest about ourselves. In the first set of questions I hope you were able to be honest to yourself and God. Well some of those questions have come back in chapter one.

1. What surprised you reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are the expectations for worship?
3. When did you last experience joy, do you sometimes have to will yourself to worship?
4. How do you feel about worship as duty? Is worship a tool or toy?
5. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
6. Read Mark 12:29-31 and ask God about what his desire is for you.

For the Audience of One - Intro

Well I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression.

This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One. I know there are up to 40 copies circulating within a couple of churches and I decided to help people really engage with the implications of worship and worship leading. My desire to help people get to the heart of the matter and perhaps experience a true heart change and even an attitude shift. I'm posting a set of questions about every 5 days, in order that there is a chance for real thought.

Some of us are head people and other heart people and the questions attempt to reach both. Work with both sets; the ones you find easy ones and the difficult ones. I am setting this up on my blog so questions will be posted here once a week to match the chapters of Mike's book. This is because my desire is for deeper reflection rather than rushing through the book and feeling you've done it.

I've said for a long time “Sincerity is not enough. Proficiency is required.” This book and study will lay open your reasons and motivations for worship if you are willing to be honest to yourself. Sometimes the audience of One is not God but the audience of Me or the audience of the fellowship/congregation.

Find others to talk about what you've read and be willing to encourage others to think and examine the implications and God's challenge to your lives.

Read the Foreword by Matt Redman and the Preface.

1. What surprised you, if anything, reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are the expectations for worship?
3. Why are you reading this book? What do you hope for?
4. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
5. Go back to Ephesians 5:10 and ask God to show you.

Posting 301

You too can join the individualized personalized universe and create your own handwriting font for free off this internet site (here) Be warned the site has been flooded by requests especially because of Lifehacker.com from which got the info.

This sort of phenomenon fascinates me. I dislike my own handwriting because it tends to be untidy and slow, and this new font installed in my computer offers a legible version. The odd thing is that I have created a very impersonal personal form of communication. Handwritten letters and card and messages are very personal and often treasured. A typed/printed letter is very formal and impersonal. What is a message printed with my personalized unique handwriting font? Some form of chimera (see mythological beast) or pushmepullyou. (See Dr Dolittle for the latter)

In worship I suspect this is no different from playing canned music at various points during the service. It is precise, has its place and is aesthetically quite beautiful to listen to, but I'm not sure who it's for? In spirituality I wonder if it's the difference between a personal encounter with the divine and listening to a sermon or message or a guided meditation.

This is is already my 301st post in this blog. Seemingly blogs are push and pull technologies, push is called a publish/subscribe model where a client can subscribe to various information sources. By contrast most web feeds, such as RSS and atom are technically pulled by the client. I really can't figure out whether I have become merely an expression of push technology here.

Darker insights into worship as industry

Anything you do and you love it, you're rich. you're a millionaire , man. Hubert Sumlin Blues player

I've been watching "Before the Music Dies" (here). It's a critical analysis of what has happened in the popular music industry and the rampant commercialism which is suggested is threatening and even heralding the death of good and creative music. I think the critique is relevant to popular worship.

"The twenty million people who buy a Britney Spears’ record aren’t music fans they’re popular culture fans." I am becoming sad about the loss of good musicianship. What has happened is art and commerce are mixed up together and it's not a healthy relationship. Commercialism drives but kills the life of music. Commercialism creates certain patterns and reproduction as replication. Therefore only music that matches the already successful is promoted or played. This is reflected in churches as well. But a deeper dilemma exists.

Wynton Marsalis says of students and perhaps this is the problem that I have come across places, in some worship people - "The only thing they are really interested in, is you telling them how right they are and how good they are. ...We live in a country in a massive state of delusion where the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that. ... We're not willing to work to the degree to live up to that."

Marsalis is, I believe right. That makes me so sad that Christian culture is no different from the rest of culture! I have found this problem in some of those leading worship. Erykah Badu in the documentary, notes there are 3 types of artists, those who write from experience and the pain - the blood of it, those who imitate, and those who simply follow instructions. I really wished there were more in front of congregations, who were the first who know the reality and less of the imitators and NO-one following instructions. Mike Pilavach's For the Audience of One, prepared me for this critique. I learned in reading why Matt Redman's songs seem so authentic to me. Get a copy and read it!

Where are those who understand how music moves people? Those with the proficiency to create good music. Those who who are called to lead people in worship and see them change. Those not satisfied with second best.

'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.' Luke 4:8

Presuppostions and Preunderstandings

Every people group of different cultures brings their preunderstanding to the biblical text they are reading. ... [However unlike preunderstanding,] Presupposition is not something we want to renegotiate as we read the text. It is different from preunderstanding that need to be changed. Joey @ Missions and Theology

I find Joey's reflection helpful as I have been thinking about the dangers of syncretism in spiritual practices. Objectivity is impossible rather everything in done in relationship with God even the thinking, however there seems to me that there are non-negotiables which Joey names as presuppositions. (read more of these in relationship to the biblical text here)

My friend Carlin's call towards transcendence still keeps me thinking. It is possible even within contemporary rock/pop based Christian worship but calls for a careful craft. two Sundays ago I tried to contribute that aspect within the worship set with my cello in a brief 2 bar solo. I think I managed it for a moment to point to the beyond, the wholly other, God. After all isn't our presupposition that the goal of worship is the recognition of God as God? The problem is that our preunderstandings get in the way and drawn into the mechanics of performance and confusing our meeting the divine with emotionalism. Intimacy with God is inevitably within the mysterious vastness of God otherwise we merely domesticate God down to our size.

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge. Psalm 48:1-3

Getting it headed right

Last Sunday I got to play my new cello twice and I'm still reveling in the second opportunity. Piano, drums and me and 3 singers and it was fun and stretching. We, the musicians, were all older guys. The drummer played way back with Hugh and Fergus Marsh, both are deeply respected musicians in the local scene. Fergus used to tour with Bruce Cockburn in the eighties and I heard him play Chapman stick at that time.

I actually had fun Sunday afternoon. Because there was clear musical leadership from Matthew, even though rehearsal was only 40 minutes for 9 songs, we functioned truly as a band! In fact I was covering a variety of roles, bass, rhythm guitar, some soloing, pads etc. Interesting learning experience, I realized that I've forgotten my B major scale on the cello! (This is probably the dumbing down effect of a lot of worship bands and songs played in C and D.) I've borrowed from the public library 2 books on improvisation because I think I want to get serious again with music.

Matt just sent me links to "Worship team Hero" (see it here). What is really scary is the accuracy of how bland Christian worship has the potential to become.

75% of your vocalists must sing the melody. A maximum of two harmonies are allowed. These harmonies must be at 50% the volume of the melody. They must also be dragged out longer than the melody, to allow the congregation to hear them.

The accuracy is frightening.

Bonus points if everyone in your band (including vocalists) shows up on time. However, double MINUS those points because the sound techs are MIA. [translation missing in action]

Take the time to read the parody of "Worship Team Hero" - laugh and then cry for its accuracy.

Musicianship - insights from Nodame Cantabile

This is the cover of my very first book of cello exercises by Feuillard. I think I must have been 12 years old when I was working from it.

The last few weeks I've been around a chapel service each day (played 5 of those days) and also in services around a variety of places.

Euge started me thinking about these questions. What exactly is musicianship? and How does it play into public corporate worship?

I think the Japanese drama Nodame Cantabile has had much to help me refine my thinking. See my earlier posts (here) or use the Label Cloud on the right. Chiaki, the archetypical technician, has the skills and technique and the rigor to pursue the composer's intent mostly at all costs. Nodame, the freespirited interpreter, who plays how she feels and plays too freely so that she re-composes while playing from what she remembers hearing. Schubert sounds like Chopin! BUT Nodame has phenomenal technique! She can make a piano sing and still be messy.

There are two levels to musicianship in my mind, however neither are technical because you have to have physical technique before you can play competently. Musicianship is firstly studied craftsmanship - we need to understand in someway the musical context and construction of the piece or pieces we're working with. The harmonic construction and options available if improvising or changing chord structures. A "G" chord is not "G" chord on a guitar there are many different versions and inversions. We need read the dynamics and relative dynamics asked for in the getting louder and getting softer. This is Chiaki.

Musicianship also needs a soul or spirit. Metronome, drum machine or musical boxes are all mechanical in feeling, even with swing. Composers did not and do not mark everything performers need to know. There is breathing and phrasing. There is slowing down and speeding up. There are grace notes, for guitarists hammer-on and pull-offs. I read Bradley Lehman assert that "The reproduction and manipulation of other people's work is not expertise. It's consumerism." Certainly its not musicianship. In the days when I conducted a choir I talked a lot about milking a melody. Musicianship is to be able to take a melodic line and squeeze every ounce of emotional value from it and still stay in time! The chanteuse, the cantabile voice does that. This is Nodame!

Musicianship in public corporate worship goes a step further because it involves accompanying and conducting a congregation. There need to be musical cues to support singers, telling them when to come in and keep them in tune. Musicians have to support and give confidence to those singing. Often if one verse of a song goes badly the congregation loses confidence and sings halfheartedly. Carlin keeps reminding me of the importance of transcendence in worship and this brings in the relationship between texture/dynamics and the content and meanings of words. Sad, fearful, or repentant words tend to be quieter but more intense, happier, praiseful or confessional words louder and perhaps in major keys with very few thirds.

Aesthetic or anaesthetic?

I'm cleaning up going through piles of paper and reading some stuff which arrived a while back. One was a review of a December lecture by Jeremy Begbie called ‘Sentimentality in Christian Art & Worship: What’s Gone Wrong?' I love a collision of ideas having spent 3 late evenings talking with an extremely qualified church musician and former broadcast producer about the state of worship and musicianship. Anyhow Begbie hammers home a deep problem in current worship trends where music and words become bland, flat and meaningless, being reduced to the emotional. Sickly syrup rather than real honey sometimes with only a faint sweetness and other tastes and aromas. Have you ever wondered why so few contemporary worship songs are in minor keys or even use relative minors?

"Three characteristics of sentimentality Jeremy identified three characteristics of sentimentality. First, sentimentality misrepresents reality through evading or trivialising evil; it is selective in what it chooses to notice (“the world is a great place, really”), and projects innocence where there is no innocence (“he’s not so bad, really”). Second, sentimentality is emotionally self-indulgent; it encourages an emotional reaction to reality that is shallow or one-dimensional. Third, sentimentality fails to take appropriate costly action; the sentimentalist screens out darker dimensions, wants emotion without expense."

Visit my music blog and you'll see a similar reflection over a recent worship song. I really desire that worship music and words can cry with me! If you want to read more of the summary of Begbie's lecture go here. (be warned the pdf is 2.35 MB!)