Collaboration Projects
This Semester I am working in collaboration with my Church, to write a worship piece. Following our beliefs and the nature of the collaboration, the guidelines for the piece are not overly strict. The main request of the church was that it be an empowering and emotional worship song. The exact nature of the request was me watching several '30 Seconds To Mars' Songs and being told "Kinda like that but with better lyrics". The ideas present in the song were to be that of war and victory rather than a love song of sorts, which conveniently is more what I write. Although I was presented with such an aggressive song, I felt the one I created would have to be toned down slightly to suite the atmosphere of our church. The Christian Rock songs that had similar elements to that which I was aiming for include 'With Everything' by Hillsong and 'Spirit Break Out' by Kim Walker-Smith
As per my usual Christian Rock writing technique I began by writing the lyrics while I was at church which, while some would call this irrelevant to my writing ability, I think the right atmosphere and setting helps. In christian music, it is hard to create unique lyrics as the overarching theme is a constant and the source of inspiration and reference, that is the bible, I would assume is also a constance. As such I can only say that I have tried to incorporate my reading of the source and emotions to create a work that is as much attributed to myself as it is to my inspiration. I then listened to several '30 Seconds to Mars' albums, taking note of any patterns, points of interest and similarities with the songs commonly played at our church. From there I decided upon my chord progressions and drum patterns. The melody I made by imitating and practicing certain parts of '30 Seconds to Mars' Songs and emulating a similar feeling in my own piece.
As all pieces I record for church are merely Demos until performed and recorded by them, I don't expect what I am working on right at this point in time to properly emulate the feeling and emotions of how I envision it. I can not accurately predict the final sound of the piece, but I am certain it will neither sound how my Church nor myself envisioned it to sound. In my opinion it doesn't hold a strong enough impression or aggression, and it currently doesn't have as much emotion as I would like. The emotional aspect I am not as concerned about fulfilling however, as I know the capabilities of my church band and understand that the setting, a large auditorium with dim lights and 700+ people can strongly change the atmosphere and emotional impact of a song. The Thirty seconds to Mars song I chose as the main reference for my song was 'Kings and Queens', a less violent song of theirs that I believe has strong emotions. Many worship songs have the ability to build up to the point where a people feel the desire to practically cry out the lyrics, but can revert back to mere whispers in seconds. This, I feel has not been achieved entirely in mypiece, but has the capabilities to build up to that point with a bit of manipulation, possibly slowing the tempo, adding more instruments, creating an extra tag similar to 'With Everything' and he introduction to 'Kings and Queens' where lyrics are replaaced with 'woah's.
Church Collaboration
Musical Collaboration
This collaboration to me felt less like a collaboration and more like helping a friend. Late into the semester I met with one of the Bachelor of Performing Arts students who had a performance a months time from then. Her Musical was a satirical comedy about a woman in her late twenties who had just had her boyfriend walk out from her at her younger sisters wedding and was seven minutes long with two songs each two minutes long. She came to me with a royalty free Guitar and Drum Kit sample she had put together on Garage Band and a recording of the vocal part. The only problem was that neither matched eachother. We spent most of the time together figuring out how to make them match and writing up a rough lead sheet for her to read, however in the end we had to change the melody. Due to my still somewhat lack in understanding Jazz music, this collaboration did not go very smoothly and I found it easier to just change the melody of one if the songs rather than adapt it all to work together.