(listening to Barcelona)
so i recently took an interesting direction with life:
i decided to do an intense study at one chapter of one book in the bible
which did i choose?
Pslam 139.
as timeless as it is with the great words of King David, i came to a few realization about David. he lived a tough life, and through it all, he still praised God. after being hunted by Saul, sought after by his own son, David had a a lot to whine and complain about.
but through it all, he still praised God.
i've heard so many times that this passage is a great one to learn how to pray, and how happy it is, saying "you know me" and "i can't escape you"
but i saw it differently.
i saw it as a threefold feeling towards God (and this is my interpretation of it.
1. God is great (v. 13-16)
2. God deserves everyone's praise (v. 1-6)
3. Life is hard, and when we don't want to follow God's plan, and we try to hide from Him, he will still be there. (v. 7-12 & 17-22)
so out of these small lesson i did i wrote three songs fitting each part. granted there is some layover between the two, but it is how i feel David was feeling at the time of writing each one of these.
at least it's how i would have felt two write that.
I Will Sing (point #1)
v1.
come listen to a song
playing from heart to heart
join in with each one now
and sing
v2.
all nature cries out
for you
every heart, every soul
every life
pr ch.
while nations declare You aren't here
ch.
i will sing for You, i will live for You,
i will run to You, i will sing
v3.
everyday i pray that You will be here,
You will move me
every night i pray that You will use me
You will use me, You will use me
br.
You are our God
Like a song (point # 2)
v1
open skies, touch the stars
our God is here, God is ours.
open skies, touch the stars
our God is here, God is ours.
pre ch.
everyday we run away knowing
we're running away from You
ch.
our lives are like a song
and they're waiting, waiting
our lives are like a song
and they're waiting, waiting,
to be sung
v2.
sing out loud, c'mon dance with heart
our God is real, God will start
a movement in you and me
we will sing "we are free"
br.
when we fly on the wings of the morning
when we swim to the farthest shore
we will know You are there
God Of This City (point # 3)
v1.
God, where are you? i need you now,
my broken body is crying out
i need you now
reach, my hand is reaching yours
longing for your touch and cure
i need you now
ch.
God of this city
God of this city
God of this city
Please hear me
v2.
wait, i feel your presence inside my heart
You sent Your Son and You took the dark
You are my God
Now, I feel your hand start to guide mine,
the shining love of a God divine
You are my Hope
(with God of This City i decided to take the standpoint of how i felt when i was reading the psalm. i think it adds a small portion to something that David said so well.)
tell me what you think.
tyler
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About Me
- tylermeettalyor
- enough could not be said to describe a person's personality. each avenue we walk through in life will show another perspective on our family and friends in which we would not have noticed before. in any sense, the phrase "about me" would never be coherent. my about me could change any second.
First, let me say again, I love this blog format. It gives me time, when I have time, to thoughtfully respond and let's the whole world in on the conversation. That can't help but make our songs better! Woohoo!
ReplyDeleteSecond, I think you need to make individual posts for each song. It's too hard to make comments on all three scrolling up and down, figuring out which one to reference.
Third, I absolutely love your approach: pray, search the scriptures, follow in the footsteps of others who have loved God and learn from their prayers and songs and try to draw inspiration from them and sing a new song inspired by them.
As far as a general overview, I think you've got some great material to work with there. It's hard to say too much without hearing some of the melodic ideas.
I don't know if blogger has an option that you can turn on that people can actually see the blog post on the same page as they are writing their comment, but I guess I can switch back and forth between tabs for now. Actually, I'm going to make some more comments, separated by song here.
I will sing.
ReplyDeleteTheme:
I love the contrast between "While the nations say you aren't here... I will sing for you!"
I may go overboard on this, but I am captain obvious/cheesy and I think we could still work on concentrating the meaning into a little tighter them along the lines of what I said above. I see several great themes here and I think it would give a lot more punch to see which ones really fit in 1 song. There may be parts of several here, to my eye, thematically speaking.
Cadence:
Also, it's hard to tell without the melody, but if you just visually look and read through verse 1 and 2, it's hard to see that they have similar rhythm, cadence or length. know what I mean? Same with verse 3. If, by contrast, you look at "we wait on you" for example, you can clearly tell that verse 1 and 2 are related. Some of that is because of the repetition. Look at some of your favorite worship songs and see what I mean. Especially if this song is meant as a congregational song, if you learn the first verse, you want to ideally be able to jump right in and sign along on the second verse because it is musically so similar and obvious. Not sure if that is going to happen here.
I do especially love the visual imagery of a song playing from heart to heart.
I'm pretty sure you sang some of this to me and I remember loving some of the melodic hooks. Oh yeah, baby!
I wish the roads weren't all iced up or I'd meet you at the church and we could sing through these ideas and do some co-writing!
Hang in there bud!
jason
"Like a Song"
ReplyDeleteAgain, man you are the king of beautiful visual imagery. verse 1 is beautiful that way. I also love the whole idea, especially expressed in the chorus and verse 2. I'm not convinced they both belong in the same song, but they are both gorgeous!
I'm not sure that I can sing
"everyday we run away knowing
we're running away from You"
I'm still mulling those lines over.
Reading this makes me want to dance and fly and swim! woohoo! I want to hear the music!
I love the vulnerability and hope i this song. It has a great advent kind of them in the waiting part (so did the last one, come to think of it!)
ReplyDeleteAlso, see how the verses on this song are much more similarly shaped? There you go! Great job.
I hate to tell you this, but I'm not sold on the chorus. For one thing it reminds me a little too much of Tomlin's "God of this city" (actually written by
Andrew McCann
Boyd Aaron
Ian Jordan
Peter Comfort
Peter Kernaghan
Richard Bleakley
I just looked it up on CCLI, still Tomlin knows how to call them!)
Next, the important thing OT wise was that our God is not like the gods of the pagans who had a god of this valley and another one for that valley, one for this town and another for the city on the hill, one for this country and another one for that country. One for the sky and another for the underworld. The contrast between that and the Israelites who believed there was just One Almighty God was stark.
On the other hand, God is not just a superficial, disinterested, uninvolved, apathetic, far away God, but he is right here, right now, and wants us to let him in and be involved in every moment and every corner of our lives.
Soooo... back to the song. I would like to see the chorus say something more like...
I am lost here, Lord without you
Come and heal me.
I am nothing, Lord without you.
You are everything I need.
or something along those lines
:)
I think my responses are longer than your blog posts. Hmmm...
Again, thanks for posting all this. Hopefully my feedback is helpful and not discouraging to you.
I think you have a ton of potential as a songwriter and lots of these things are so subjective, but I think it's better to have some feedback than none and especially from someone who really cares and has some similar skill.
Keep up the great work!
jason