This discussion does highlight one of the differences between a song that is congregational and one that isn’t. Even though people can learn difficult songs through repeated listenings (most rock concert prove that), writers can serve more people by writing melodies and singing them in such a way that it makes it easier for people to learn them, not harder.There are two forces at work here: the composer's desire to write complex and meaningful songs, and the congregation's skill and flexibility. On the composer's end they face a tricky battle: how to write a compelling song that's easy to learn without dumbing it down to the technical level of Mary Had a Little Lamb. On the congregation's end: they all need to be able to sing it. If the song is supposed to be a congregational song everyone has to be able to sing it, no matter what each individual's musical background is.
This dicotomy generally leads to a lot of middle-of-the-road quality worship music, which in turns leads people to dismiss worship music as simplistic drivel.
A friend of mine once had worship music explained to him thusly, "There's a reason most worship songs are written with G, C and D. It's familiar. Why should a musician purposefully make their music more difficult for those that are trying to worship?"
There's some merit to that idea; however, it severely limits musical expression for those with some skill or—worse—makes worship uninteresting. And on the other side of that, if your congregation or—far worse—your worship band cannot handle the tempo and awkward cadence of that latin-fusion song then why sing it?
Thoughts on this?
Bonus question: Are there songs your congregation tries to sing that they just don't quite get?
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Comments (5)
1. It's amazing how some songs aren't sung as written because they've been learned from a particular CD, or at a particular conference. Our congregation had problems with the 2nd verse of "Over all the earth" because of a CD where it's actually been sung incorrectly (ie actually discordant with the music).
2. Hillsongs is a good source for melodically interesting music. Most of it is learnable, although some bits are not immediately obvious.
3. For the most part, people tend to cope with most melodies, but struggle with awkward rhythm. The exception to this is melodies with wide ranges, for instance "Majesty" by Delirious? which has a low verse and high chorus. Making the jump between the 2 is tricky, and changing the key tends to result in at least one half of the congregation struggle to sing some bits altogether.
4. If there are "weird" melodic sections, these tend to evolve into more normal patterns if you don't have a strong melody section in your band.
That's all for now ;)
I think that a skilled worship leader will be able to continually grow in writing songs that are both qualitatively creative and that naturally engage the congregation at the same time.
But, there is a wide range of subjectivity in music which adds to its beauty but also includes a difficulty in judging worship music. Some people prefer Christian pop and others can better enjoy the more complex indie sound and still others that prefer classical music; there seems to be respective churches that implement them all. Yesterday I visited a church that sang a one line chorus of, "No one should be left out". People had their eyes closed and hands raised to God as they repeatedly sang this phrase over and over again. I wasn't sure if I should have called that unskilled, or not my thing, or both.
It should devote the majority of its repertoire to well-know music, typically hymns, so that congregants can sing along.
If the congregation can't sing most of the time...is it really worship?
Music that doesn't lend itself to congregational singing is better suited to accompanying the offering or some other ministerial function.
It is also false to assume that complexity is either a by-product or indicator of musical skill.
Simplicity of style and melodic singability are the true hallmarks of musicality.
However let's not confuse this with simplistic or repetitive tunes.
In the words of the TV cartoon "King of the Hill"...
"You're not making rock music better...you're making Christianity worse!"
Amen.
People can handle more than you think. I would rather people write challenging songs and give the congregation a couple of weeks to learn the tune, then write cheese so they can sing it perfectly the first time.
I also think that there's other ways you can make a song interesting: instrumentation, the drummer, arrangement, etc.
I can play "How Great is Our God" and bore people to tears, but I could also figure out a way to play it 50 times and keep people's interest.
The best example I heard is the worship band for 722, after they played Louie Giglio got on stage and said, "Wow, that was like Rage Against the Machine meets Worship music...cool!"
Most worship leaders are too busy or unmotivated to think of creative arrangements.