music
- “Creed” - Derek Webb
- “If I Stand” - Sidewalk Prophets
- “Calling Out Your Name” - Andrew Peterson
- “I See You” - Audrey Assad
- “Land of My Sojourn” - Jars of Clay
- “Ready For the Storm” - Leigh Nash
- “Wounds of Love” - Mitch McVicker
- “Cry the Name” - Jill Phillips
- “Peace” - Andy Gullahorn
- “The Love of God” - Matt Liechty
- To my ear, he played three wrong notes the entire evening, all of them before intermission. (Impressive, given the ridiculous number of notes he plays)
- Either his piano is waaaaay too bright or he plays everything too loud. His performance has very little sense of dynamics. Everything starts at a solid forte and ends up somewhere around fortissimo.
- The guy never stops using the sustain pedal. He mentioned during the concert that he only took a few classical piano lessons, and that all he ever wanted to play was pop music. If he’d taken a few more classical lessons, a good teacher would’ve beat some better pedal technique into him. As it is, his sound is uber-muddy.
- The dude has the most dramatic arm movements as he finishes a song of anybody I’ve ever seen play. Were I to try to do a parody, I think all I’d need is a few chord structures and those arm movements and I’d have it nailed. Might have to try it sometime.
My musical find for the week: Ólafur Arnalds
I started an Arvo Pärt station on Pandora earlier this week and one of the artists that kept coming up was someone by the name of Ólafur Arnalds. Having never heard of Arnalds, I set off to learn more, and to listen. And I liked what I found.
Arnalds is a young (still in his 20s!) Icelandic composer/musician whose sweet spot musically is sort of minimalist ambient instrumentals. Think Sigur Rós without all of Jónsi’s vocals and turned down a couple notches on the intensity meter. Or think happier Phillip Glass, or what you’d get if you crossed Brian Eno’s ambient stuff with Jim Brickman’s piano and harmonies. However you get there, his music pretty well hits a sweet spot for me, especially as these grey fall days start to fade to winter.
Side note: if you’re pedantic like me, writing about ambient European musicians will also make you learn to find all the accented letter character key codes. You have been warned.
Music to Work By: Rostropovich and Britten play Schubert
A good bit of my day-to-day work involves reading and reviewing large documents and sets of engineering data. To help that work along, I often listen to music, but really need it to be instrumental music, since music with words can be distracting from the words I’m reading.
One record I keep coming back to and so will highly recommend today is Schubert: Sonata for Arpeggione (bowed guitar) & Piano, d.821 / Schumann: 5 Pieces in the Popular Style (Volkston), Op. 102 / Debussy: Cello Sonata performed by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Benjamin Britten.
The highlight of this record is the Schubert sonata. In three movements comprising almost 28 minutes of music, Rostropovich explores the full range of the cello, and his interplay with pianist Britten is nothing short of magical. I wasn’t aware before listening to this recording that Britten was an accomplished pianist, but his technique and style here are exquisite, with nuances in dynamics and tempo that perfectly complement the cello.
Recorded in 1968 and remastered and re-released in 1999, the audio quality here is fantastic; you could quite imagine that you were sitting in the room listening to them perform. The occasional bow sound, creak of the cello, and finger sounds on the neck and while playing pizzicato are all there in the ambiance. The piano and cello are never muddy, but always sweet and distinct.
Highly recommended stuff.
Ragamuffin: Music inspired by the Movie
I haven’t watched the Ragamuffin movie yet. Having known and loved Rich Mullins for the last 20+ years exclusively based on his music, I’m not sure I’m ready to have a moviemaker tell me what I should think about him as a person. But along with the movie today came out an album of music “inspired by” the movie - basically an album of Rich Mullins covers, with a couple old Rich demo tracks to round out the record. The artist list (including Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips, among others) pretty much guaranteed that I’d buy it. And I did.
The track listing includes:
Some preliminary thoughts on the songs:
If I Stand - I’m not familiar with Sidewalk Prophets, but their take here is a solid remake of Rich’s original. Not much variance from the old track here; even the piano riffs remain by the book. Good vocals, though. Nothing to complain about.
Calling Out Your Name - If you’d told me that Andrew Peterson would be the guy on the record bringing in electronic elements, I’d not have believed it, but here it is. He sets up a gentle electronic loop that serves as a solid base for a really nice remake of this song. Peterson’s creativity never seems to wane.
I See You - I wasn’t familiar with Audrey Assad before today, but I’m gonna have to fix that. She took a rather repetitive song here and made a beautiful track out of it.
Land of my Sojourn - This one was a real disappointment. This is one of my favorite Rich songs, but all Jars of Clay did with it was thump a single bass note, put the guitar in an open tuning and slide around the neck from there while Dan Haseltine did a real low-key vocal. I know the JoC guys know more chords than that - wish they would’ve used them here.
Ready For the Storm - Rich didn’t write this one, but Leigh Nash does a really nice job of covering the tune. Not much new here, but a solid remake. (She also skips the Picardy third in the final chord, so that wins her bonus points with me.)
Wounds of Love - Mitch McVicker is an obvious choice to cover songs on this record, having been a good friend and collaborator of Rich’s. This one, though, feels like he’s trying to hard. There’s a little bit of everything on this track - a hammered dulcimer here, a string section there, and he turns what was a low-key, heartfelt song into a more intense rock track that drags on far too long before an awkward ending. I wasn’t sold on it.
Cry the Name - Jill Phillips. What else can I say? This is the one track on this record where the artist took the song and really made it their own. Jill takes Rich’s rather upbeat, 9/8 rhythm song and dials it back to a 4/4 ballad with her husband Andy Gullahorn playing guitars and singing backups. Of all the songs on the record, this is the one that sounds a lot less like Rich and a lot more like the recording artist, and that’s a good thing.
Peace - I can’t imagine anybody I’d rather hear do a cover of this song than Andy Gullahorn, and he doesn’t disappoint. He manages to replicate a lot of Rich’s piano riffs with layered acoustic guitars, then blesses us with his calm, sure vocals on top. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect to hear from Gullahorn, so if you’re a fan of him, you’ll be a fan here.
The Love of God - I’ve got no idea who Matt Liechty is - a quick Google search doesn’t even turn up a proper artist homepage - but he seems far out of his depth being included with the other artists on this record. He pushes this piano ballad too hard, and his vocal chops aren’t up to the standards otherwise present here. I love this song, but not this version of it.
If you’ve read this far you may have noted that I haven’t said anything about Derek Webb’s cover of Creed. Honestly, I haven’t been much inclined to listen to anything by Derek after his recent shenanigans, so this track will probably sit unplayed for a while until I’m ready.
In conclusion
Unless you’re a die-hard completionist, I’d say this is a record where you could save a few bucks by just buying some selected tracks instead of the whole thing. I’d recommend “Calling Out Your Name”, “I See You”, “Ready for the Storm”, “Cry the Name”, and “Peace”. Skip the others, or go back and listen to Rich’s versions instead. Sometimes the original is best left alone. You can find it on iTunes today.
OK, this is pretty cool
I know this has been all over the internet already, but I’m going to post it here anyway. It’s a video of a group called Árstíðir singing the 13th-century Icelandic hymn Heyr himna smiður in a German train station. The acoustics… amazing.
This reminds me of a college choir trip when we stopped at the Illinois Memorial at the Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi. We sang a hymn in there that reverberated for what seemed like an eternity… such a cool experience.
Somehow, given the choice between lots of voices in big stone buildings made to reverberate and all the microphones and audio equipment we usually use on a Sunday… most of the time I think my preference is for the voices.
This Time I Can Stay - reflections on the music of a friend
I want to take a little time today to tell you about a guy I know named Andy. (He’s got a weird Dutch last name, so for the purposes of this post I’ll just call him Andy.) Last week Andy announced a fairly major transition in his life (for which I’m very happy for him) and it caused me to reflect on how he’s impacted my life over the last decade. So, forgive a friend a little nostalgia.
If I trace the story I actually end up a little further back than my getting to know Andy. I go back to the early 2000s when I became a fan of a Christian folk rock band called Caedmon’s Call. (My brother had tried to get me turned on to them in the late 90s but, as usual, it took me 5 years to catch up with his musical tastes.) I dug into Caedmons' music, and got fanboy enough to start participating regularly in an online fan forum. Yeah, I was hooked.
Then came a fateful day in 2001 when Derek Webb, one of the founding members of Caedmon’s Call, announced that he was leaving the group. His replacement? This guy called Andy. Off to the fan forum I went to find out about this Andy guy. Apparently he’d fronted a band called The Normals back in the late 90s - again I was out of the loop. But he had an acoustic record out, so I got it and really dug it. Heck, he even posted in the fan forum every now and again. Very cool.
Fast-forward to fall 2005. I went to see Andrew Peterson play an outdoor show and was crazy excited the night before when I found out that Andy was coming along with him. I blogged about it and even posted a few (pretty scary) pictures. I was on cloud nine.
With summer 2006 came the release of Andy’s record The Morning. With this record I felt like Andy was writing with the voice I wish I could find. Every song hit home with me. I made my first road trip to Nashville to see Andy play a release show for the record.
I followed Andy’s career very closely after that. I drove all over the Midwest to hear him play shows. I set up a fan website. I sponsored a coffeehouse show here in Cedar Rapids. I bummed my way on to a house show road trip he took and rode along with him between a few shows. I hit him up to do lunch when I was in Nashville and hung out at a studio for a couple hours while he recorded vocals. I probably blurred the line between fan and crazy stalker a few times, but in the end I’m pretty sure I can still call Andy my friend.
In the fall of 2011 Andy had another wild idea - a concept album about an astronaut on a long solo trip through space. To make Leonard the Lonely Astronaut really complete, Andy wanted to build a rocket ship set in which to record. I spent another weekend in Nashville with a bunch of friends helping build. The great thing about that weekend is that while it was basically all about (and for) Andy, it helped cement relationships between a bunch of his fans that showed up - guys and gals that continue to be a rich online community even three years later.
Andy’s had a tough few years since the Leonard record came out. A water line broke in his house while he and his family were on a month-long trip and he spent most of the next few months rebuilding. Work was harder to come by. He had the opportunity to tour as a part of Steven Curtis Chapman’s band this past fall which was great for paying the bills but kinda tough on family life. (Andy and his wife have three daughters just a little younger than my own three.)
Two weeks ago Andy had a big announcement. Today (April 30) is his first day as an Artist and Repertoire guy at Capitol Records. It’s a far cry from his indie days - he’ll be working a regular job in a regular office with a salary and benefits and the whole deal. This will keep him from touring much any more, but will have the advantage of a steady income and the opportunity to be home with his family every night.
I couldn’t be happier for Andy in this new phase of his life. Last night he played an online hour-long “concert” from his living room, streaming to fans across the world. (Hey, I know folks from Canada and Brazil who were logged in, so that counts as “the world”, right?) He seemed happier and more relaxed than I’ve seen him in a long while. His daughters flitted in and out of the picture as he sang, at times singing harmony parts to songs they’ve undoubtedly heard a hundred times. It was a beautiful thing.
He finished off the night with a song from his early days with The Normals, called “I’ll Be Home Soon”:
Life it just goes on when the traveler’s gone
And that’s the hardest part, for time has no respect
For a lonely man with a longing heart
‘Cause once you’re where you’ve wanted, everything’s so fast
But I’ll be home soon I’ll be home soon And if you have a place where you belong
You’re a lucky one, for time was meant to waste
A laugh with good old friends or walking hand in hand
I can’t believe I’ll be there and this time I can stay
But I’ll be home soon
I’ll be home soon
I’m a richer man for the music and community that Andy has helped bring into my life over the past decade, but I’m so glad that he now has the opportunity to set some of it aside and just be a husband and a dad. His wife and three daughters will be glad that “I’ll be home soon” is a message they’ll be able to hear every evening around 5:00. We’ll hear more music from him before he’s done. And hey, it’s only a 10-hour drive to Nashville. Next time he plays a local show, I’ll be there.
Thanks, Andy, and blessings on you and your tribe as you start this next phase of your life.
Which artist had the impact?
This interview with Rich Mullins' producer Reed Arvin is months old now, but I thought of it again the other day and wanted to share one revelation in the interview that particularly impacted me.
[Interviewer:] When I was a kid I would just pour over the liner notes to each of Rich’s albums, and I was always surprised to see how few of the instruments he actually played on the recordings. Obviously, he played the hammered and lap dulcimer, but usually you were the one listed as playing piano and not him. [Arvin:] Rich was incredibly soulful musically but he possessed a particular quality many singer-pianists share: he played all over the instrument, all the time. He was used to accompanying himself, you see. He would hammer out double bass notes even if there was a bass player and things like that. So, when you added other instruments, it didn’t quite mesh. Live, this didn’t make so much difference. But on record, it didn’t really work. Also, he had a very elastic sense of time. Making a record is just a different enterprise. But just to sit around the piano while he played and sang by himself, this was beautiful. And we did that sometimes, just for the pleasure of it.
Rich was the formative artist for me as a musician in my teenage years. I memorized his albums, studied liner notes, learned the piano parts note-for-note, played and sang his songs incessantly.
What somehow never occurred to me while reading the liner notes, that never really hit me until reading this interview, is that maybe I owe Reed Arvin a lot more for influencing my piano style than I owe Rich.
The songs and musical ideas were all Rich’s, so it’s not going to tarnish my view of him and his legacy, but it’s still a surprising thought.
Star Wars music on an amazing pipe organ
OK, this is pretty great. Organist Jelani Eddington performs a suite from the Star Wars soundtrack on a massive pipe organ. The organ was built by Wurlitzer in 1927 for a theater in Omaha, NE, and after restoration has been installed at a museum in the suburbs of Chicago.
A little more about the organ:
Mounted on the wall to the left are the 32' Diaphone pipes, and to the right are the 32' Bombarde pipes. A 32-note set of Deagan Tower Bells, the largest of which weighs 426 lb., hang on each side of the room. They are activated by huge solenoids from their own console, the organ console, a roll player, and even the doorbell button. To the rear of the room, the ‘Ethereal’ pipe chamber in the attic echoes softly from the skylight area, while the brass ‘Trumpet Imperial’ and copper ‘Bugle Battaglia’ speak with great authority from the back wall. …
The grand piano connected to the pipe organ is a 9' Knabe concert grand with an Ampico ‘A’ reproducing player mechanism. To the right of the console is a rare Deagan Piano-Vibraharp, which can be played by its own keyboard or from the organ console. Toward the rear of the room is a Spanish art case Steinway model A.R. Duo-Art reproducing piano, veneered in walnut with boxwood, pear and ebony inlay. A remote Duo-Art Concertola roll changer has been adapted to play Ampico rolls on the Knabe, or Duo-Art rolls on the Steinway, at the touch of a button on its control panel.
Crazy. Anyhow, this video itself is impressive:
Practical Worship Leading Ideas
Yesterday I wrote a response to a post wherein someone else argued that church praise bands, by virtue of the type of music they play, speak a special language and have become a worship intermediary for the congregation. I disagreed to an extent, but promised some thoughts on principles for leading worship that can make participatory congregational worship more effective. Here are those thoughts:
Planning
On the planning side we need to carefully consider what new songs we bring into our congregational repertoire. We need new songs. We may find songs that play on Christian radio that are good choices; we will also find plenty there that are not. We will undoubtedly get requests from church members (and leaders!) to sing their new favorite radio song on some Sunday. This may times turn up good new songs; however, it may also be an area where we need to graciously exercise leadership and say no. If a song seems a little bit too simple and too easy for your highly-talented praise band, it’s probably just about right for your congregation.
We also need to be careful about the rate at which we introduce new songs. Back when I was leading on a weekly basis, when it was time to introduce a new song we would sing the song two weeks in a row, skip a week, and sing it again the fourth week before then adding it to our regular repertoire list. I would alsobe sure that every other song we sang those four weeks was a familiar song.
These two suggestions actually complement each other pretty well: if you’re more choosy about what songs you want to add to your repertoire, you won’t feel such pressure to add new songs at an uncomfortable frequency. And you can still manage to work in at least 10 new songs a year, which isn’t bad.
Execution
Lots has already been written on this topic, so I’m unlikely to say anything very new or novel. I love my church’s approach of having a large number of vocalists on the stage; it takes the pressure and focus off of any one or two people being soloists and lets us sing as a mini-congregation right there in the band.
Modern popular praise bands have developed an environment that resembles a rock concert more than a congregational time of worship, and the temptation is there to roll that right into our Sunday mornings. (I’ll leave only one example here.) The issue isn’t that they like to play rock music and that there’s a crowd that enjoys it. The issue is that we often, consciously or not, take it as a model for how our Sunday morning worship should look and sound. And that can be a problem.
If, during congregational worship, the focus frequently gets shifted to a gifted soloist, or a kickin' guitar solo, or some novel and funky instrumentation, it’s a distraction. We’ve verged into concert territory and turned our congregation into an audience for the band instead of regular participants in worship. (There’s still room for ‘special music’, though. I’ll get to that.)
Really Leading
The other key thing we can do as leaders during the service requires a focus on that word: leading. One of the nicest things a person ever said to me after I led music in a service was that they felt like I had really led them; that there was no uncertainty about what was coming next, or what they were supposed to be doing; they were able to just comfortably settle into worship.
Here’s where we can be very practical in our leadership. If we’re introducing a new song, we should say so up front. If a band member is going to sing the first verse solo to allow everyone else to learn the tune, cue the congregation to that fact so they don’t feel the uncertainty of wondering when they’re expected to sing.
There’s still room for “special music” if that’s a regular part of your worship tradition, but set it apart in the service in a way that it’s clear what the intent is. By saying “Julie has a song to share with us now, so please have a seat and listen to the message of this song”, we can prepare our congregation to receive the song far better than if we just have the soloist start singing as if the song were just another part of the worship set.
Physical and verbal cues during songs are important ways to lead, too. Especially in songs where there may be more time between verses - provide clear cues to the congregation as to when to come in. Maybe just call out the first few words of the next line. (The person running your lyrics on the projector will appreciate this, too!)
Wrapping Up
Leading worship is an art as much as a science, but if we can approach it humbly and pastorally we will always be finding ways where we can improve as leaders, with the result being more appealing and engaging worship services. It should never be about us; it should always be about Him.
Do Praise Bands speak a Secret Language?
Yesterday I ran across a recent post from Lutheran pastor Erik Parker provocatively titled “Praise Bands are the new Medieval Priests”. In it Rev. Parker says that praise bands are alienating him from worship.
I just can’t access Praise music anymore, I don’t hear Praise songs as the music of worship. I find myself wondering why I am just standing there, in the midst of a group of people who are also not singing. As the Praise band performs song after song, I am consistently lost as to how the music goes, what verses will come next, how to follow the melody, when to start and stop singing, or when a random guitar solo will be thrown in right when I thought I had figured out when the next verse starts.
Parker recounts a recent church service where he observed that even as the very talented praise band was playing beautiful music, the people in the pews were, for the most part, “not really being a part of the music at all”, but rather just bystanders, “being played at, rather than played with”.
Parker draws the analogy that modern praise bands are the new medieval priests - leading worship in a ‘language’ that few speak or can participate in. As such, he claims, “Praise Bands are incompatible with a worship that is done by the community… they are a performative medium, not a participatory one.”
I posted a link to the piece on Facebook last night and got an interesting mix of responses. A friend who has recently been looking for a new church noted that being directed to raise her hands to a song she has never even heard before makes her feel like a bystander rather than a participant in worship.
Another friend who grew up on the mission field in Africa said that music in small African churches that can’t afford a sound system is much more participative than in those that can. As he notes: “human nature being what it is, everyone turns it [the volume] up.”
What Language is that, again?
Full disclosure: I’m a member of a praise band. I have spent nearly all of my adult life either leading or playing in praise bands on a regular basis. So I clearly am unlikely to agree with the full premise of Rev. Parker’s post. However, I think he has identified some concerning symptoms, even if he has perhaps misidentified the true problem.
I share Rev. Parker’s concerns about planning congregational music that is regularly unfamiliar and difficult to sing. I have been a part of rehearsals where a team of professional-caliber musicians have had to work for a solid hour to get one new song learned to the point where we can sing and play it consistently. I have on more than one occasion wondered out loud how the congregation had any chance of singing the song on their one time through it if it took the band an hour to figure it out.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s imperative that we continue to teach our congregations new songs. But when our primary musical influence is Top 40 Christian radio, the songs we’re pushed to select are often difficult songs to sing, often requiring an unnaturally large vocal range and designed for professional vocalists. That concerns me.
A similar issue often exists with song familiarity. If my own experience is representative at all, our ‘best’ worship times come when we sing familiar songs. Familiarity allows us to think less about learning the words, melody, and arrangement, and think more about the message of the song. It’s no accident that a congregation stands mostly silent as the band leads a new song from the radio but then wholeheartedly belts out all four verses of a 200-year-old hymn.
It’s not (necessarily) about the band.
Where I think Rev. Parker gets it wrong is in pointing the finger at the Praise Band as the issue. The praise band is not the issue. Praise bands, playing in pretty much any style, can do music in a way that engages and draws in a congregation, or can do music in a way that pushes the congregation off to be ‘the audience’ rather than ‘the body’.
Rev. Parker makes a fair point that style can distract from real congregational worship. As he puts it, “rock bands are by design meant to overwhelm the audience with sound.” And I agree with him that overwhelming a congregation with sound isn’t conducive to congregational worship. But I’ve also attended services in Parker’s own denomination where more traditional instrumentation was used in a way and at a volume that still served to overwhelm the congregation. So it isn’t strictly about instrumentation or style.
However, there are planning and execution aspects that as worship leaders we can focus on to provide consistent inclusive congregational worship. Rather, though, than turning this into a two-thousand-word post, I think I’ll save those ideas for tomorrow.
Happening This Weekend
I was a bit excited back in November when I bought the tickets. And after living through a very long winter (which we hope is almost over), I’m more than a bit excited to be using the tickets this weekend.
A Valentine's Eve Win
Last night my wife and I went to see Jim Brickman in concert at the Paramount here in Cedar Rapids. This is the second time we’ve seen this age-defying (the guy is over 50 and looks about 30!) pianist perform, and I have just a few observations:
OK, so I’m just a cranky pianist who shakes my head at the popular success of a guy like Brickman. It’s gotta be kinda weird to be able to say (as he did last night,) “this is the song that you’ll hear if you go to the kiosk at Target and push on my face”.
But hey, it was a nice night out, my wife was happy, and we both agreed at the end of the evening that we’ve probably heard enough of Jim Brickman for a while. I’ll call that a Valentine’s Eve win.
Carols for Christmas (reprise)
Last year I recorded some piano arrangements of familiar Christmas songs. I called it, originally enough, Carols for Christmas.
As I explained it last year:
It’s just over 30 minutes worth of music, all piano versions of traditional Christmas carols. There’s not a lot in the way of production - I recorded them using my Casio midi controller keyboard in single takes in GarageBand and did a minimal amount of editing to remove the clunky notes. The perfectionist part of me wishes I had another 80 hours to really refine and polish the arrangements and recordings; the engineer in me has declared “good enough”. The engineer won the debate this time.
If you’re so inclined, please enjoy Carols for Christmas as my gift to you this season. This download link will let you listen and/or download MP3s from Dropbox.
A Pakistani cover of Brubeck's Take Five
OK, this is likely the most unique cover you’ve ever heard of Take Five. Very cool.
Today I did something I've never done before...
I bought two tickets to a big rock-and-roll show.
I’ve been an Arcade Fire fan for a few years now, but have never seen them in person. This morning their advance ticket sale went live for their 2014 tour, and after a quick consultation with Becky, I bought a pair.
Minneapolis. March 8. Happy early birthday to me!
And yeah, I bought General Admission Floor tickets. Because if you’re gonna go to a big show, why do you want a chair in a fixed location if you can instead be down on the floor?
Also: many thanks to Becky for being agreeable. She’s not a huge Arcade Fire fan, and not always one for big shows. Hopefully she’ll enjoy this one.
Losing something in the modernization
This past Sunday our worship team learned and led a new (old) song - Chris Tomlin’s arrangement of (and new chorus for) the old hymn Crown Him With Many Crowns.
On the whole, I like it. If adding a contemporary chorus is what it takes to get us singing two and a half verses of densely-packed truth in a classic hymn, that’s a deal I’m willing to make.
Aside: the density of theological truth in this old hymn, when compared to what’s in most modern songs, is really stunning. But that’s a post for another time.
The one quibble I’ve got with Tomlin’s update to the hymn, if you’ll allow me to be pedantic for a minute or two, is in the updates to remove the archaic articles. Now, I’m not, in principle, against removing them. Thee, Thou, and Thy aren’t in common usage any more, and a careful update can give the classic text a fresh new feel. But the changes here aren’t so careful, or at least they’ve sacrificed accuracy in favor of rhyming schemes. A couple of examples:
From Verse 1, the original:
Awake my soul, and sing Of Him who died for Thee And hail Him as thy matchless King Through all eternity
And the update:
Awake my soul, and sing Of Him who died for me And hail Him as thy matchless King Through all eternity
That second line is a challenge to modernize, because getting lines two and four to rhyme really depends on having that long E sound at the end of line two. And replacing “thee” with “me” doesn’t actually change the theological content in any particularly objectionable way.
But it changes the perspective of the verse. In the original, the author calls his soul to sing, because Jesus died for his soul. In the update, the soul is called to sing because of the salvation of the author. A minor difference, but (at least to me) frustratingly annoying.
The second issue comes in what was the tail end of the fourth verse in the original, but which Tomlin has repurposed as a bridge in his version.
The original:
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For thou hast died for me; Thy praise and glory shall not fail throughout eternity.
And the update:
All hail, Redeemer, hail! For He has died for me His praise and glory shall not fail Throughout eternity.
And it’s the same problem - what the heck do you use to rhyme with eternity? A friend on Facebook pointed out that the problem (quite obviously, upon reflection) isn’t with rhyming ‘eternity’. Doh!
This time I dislike the solution quite a bit more, because it changes the direction of the lines. In the original hymn, the hymnwriter turns to address Christ directly at the end. “All hail, Redeemer, hail! You have died for me!” But the reworking turns it into an account of Christ’s work rather than a direct stanza of praise.
Again, it’s still not wrong, but it really loses something in the translation.
OK, yes, I’m being pedantic. I’m still happy we sang the song, and I hope we include it in our regular song rotation. But I’m also still tempted to conclude that maybe the better lesson for the modern church would be to learn to sing and appreciate some of these classic hymns without forcing them to fit our modern musical sensibilities. Or maybe I’m just getting crotchety in my late 30’s.
One more fun musical post for the weekend
Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye together on stage having far more fun than any two people should be allowed to have. How can you not enjoy this?
Bluegrass and Bach: Something Relaxing for the Weekend
It’s Friday headed in to a holiday weekend and I’m tired of writing about serious topics, so it’s time to share this video - a 6-minute PBS feature on mandolin player extraordinaire Chris Thile.
Thile, only 32 years old but long known for his bluegrass/folk/Americana, has recently released an album of Bach Sonatas and Partitas played on the mandolin. As you’ll see in the video - he’s fantastic, and Bach’s music translates remarkably well.
This album is available on Amazon and probably lots of other places. I picked it up this morning and I’m looking forward to spending some time with it over the weekend.
Tonight's chain of musical thoughts
Playing this in the van while headed home:
Led to playing this as soon as I got home:
Led to this question: Please, oh please, Andrew Osenga, Cason Cooley, Mark Lockett, et al, won’t you someday soon Kickstart a one-night-only Normals reunion concert?
The end.
New-to-me Music Monday
We made a family trip to the library yesterday, and as usual I came home with a pile of books and media beyond what I am ever to get through in the three weeks I’m allowed to borrow them. I did, however, manage to work my way through the four new (to me) CDs that I borrowed.
In the order I listened to them at work today:
Loaded - The Velvet Underground.
I’d never listened to The Velvet Underground before today. I found them enjoyable in that early 1970’s rock-and-roll way. Nothing too profound, but very listenable.
Chamber Music Society - Esperanza Spalding.
Jazz, anybody? Spalding is another new artist to me, and wowza. The woman plays bass and holy cow can she sing. Fantastic jazz. This one is a keeper.
Live at Leeds - The Who.
I’m typically a fan of live records, but this one didn’t really grab me. Maybe I’m not enough of an aficionado of The Who. I dunno. Turned this one off about four tracks in. Really couldn’t bring myself to care.
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend.
I’ve owned Vampire Weekend’s Contra for a couple of years now and enjoy it OK. But when I heard my friend Dan complain a while back (on some social media - can’t remember which or when) that he hated Contra and hoped that VW’s new record would be more like their older stuff, I took a mental note to explore their other stuff.
And (no real surprise here) Dan was right. This eponymous record is, on first listen, far superior to Contra. Less frantic, more interesting melodies and instrumentations. I wish they wouldn’t drop the F-bomb - makes it less friendly for playing when the kids are around - but on the whole, yeah, this one bears multiple listens as well.
Thus ends Chris’s random update on new (to me) music.
Amazon AutoRip and Pricing Models
Last week Amazon introduced something called AutoRip. Basic premise: you buy a physical CD from Amazon, and if it’s AutoRip eligible, Amazon will give you a digital copy of the CD in your Amazon Cloud Drive, gratis. I presume this is Amazon’s way of trying to push some physical-only CD folks into the cloud, and hey, it doesn’t seem bad for any of us.
What I’m curious about, though, and haven’t seen addressed anywhere, is the impact this might have on the pricing models for digital-only purchases.
Last night my wife headed over to Amazon looking to purchase an older CD of Jim Brickman lullabies - something instrumental for a kid to listen to at night. The MP3 version of the album is currently offered on Amazon for $9.99.
But wait, what’s this?
That’s right, this album is also available with a physical CD and AutoRip. For $8.57. And that CD happens to have free shipping with our Amazon Prime membership.
Which means that it was $1.42 cheaper for my wife to get the MP3 downloads if she agreed to have Amazon ship her a physical copy of the disc as well. Something is wrong with that picture.
While this CD may be an unusual case, it’s by no means unique. The original cast recording of Les Miserables is currently featured on Amazon’s “recently released AutoRip CDs” page at $18.99 for MP3s or $16.99 for the physical CD + AutoRip.
Other CDs on that page have pricing that seems to be more the right way ‘round - a recent Susan Boyle CD is $10.99 Physical/$5.00 MP3, a Toby Keith CD at $11.88/$6.99 - but some are awfully close to parity, such as a Lady Antebellum CD at $10/$9.49 and a Jason Aldean CD for $9.99/$8.99.
Impacts to the pricing model may be one reason keeping Amazon from extending something useful like AutoRip to books as well. It sure doesn’t seem like offering physical + digital cheaper than digital only is a money-making proposition.