From David: Today I have the privilege of featuring a guest post by Jon Nicol who blogs over at Worship Team Coach. Jon spent some time in Nashville, learning what it takes to be a professional songwriter. He shares his insights here. Be sure to follow him on Twitter.
After talking about it for 5 years, I finally overcame my fear and started traveling to Nashville to write, network, attend workshops, and just soak up whatever mojo is in the air down there.
I wanted to be a professional songwriter.
One of first lessons I learned there was this: I’m not writing for me. I always had to keep in mind someone else would be singing this. And there were rules about that–don’t make the artist look bad, keep the range singable, don’t get political, keep the theme universal.
Also, write something fresh and unique.
No wonder most songwriters drink 🙂
This aspect of the Nashville approach to songwriting is frustrating, but necessary. And it’s something we as worship songwriters need to grasp:
Our songs are for other people.
Here are some Nashville “rules” that could serve us well as we think about writing worship songs for other people:
Memorable
People are only going to sing this once a week. It has to be something they catch quickly. A catchy melody is a given. But here are some other ways to do make your song memorable:
- Have a great title and lyrical hook.
- Keep your songs short. But wait, many worship songs are 6 or 7 minutes. Heck, some Jesus Culture stuff clocks in at 12 minutes. But that’s an arrangement thing. If you stripped away all the repeats and instrumentals, most of those songs are only 2 or 3 minutes long.
- Don’t bore us, get to the chorus. Most modern country tunes hit the chorus within 30 seconds, tops. Here’s a good test, if you find yourself getting even slightly antsy to get to the chorus of your own song, just imagine how twitchy a congregation will be.
- Write short phrases. Even a song as lyrically rich as In Christ Alone follows this. I don’t think any phrase in that song contains more than six words (and don’t confuse a phrase with a sentence). Getty and Townsend feed us an elephant, bite by bite.
Accessible
A saying that’s thrown around a lot in Nashville is, “It’s Walmart, not Hallmark.” This is applied religiously in the country genre, but the CCM writers down there don’t stray too far either.
Should that really apply to worship music?
Look at Gungor or John Mark McMillan’s lyrics. They’re far deeper and poetic than your average praise choruses. But when we write for our congregations, we need to think about the “wide middle.”
There are handful of people in my congregation who would love a steady dose of Gungor and McMillan’s stuff. But most in the wide middle would have a tough time with the metaphor and abstract. Can we change that? Yes, but they won’t go from “how great is our God” to “sloppy wet kiss” in one Sunday.
Re-writable.
Hit songs aren’t written, they’re rewritten. You’ll hear that ad nauseam at any songwriting seminar you attend. And a huge part of the rewrite process is being open to critique and feedback.
It hurt (badly), but I learned more from my songs being bludgeoned than I ever did from seminar bullet points. Unfortunately, many worship songwriters refuse critique. Their songs are somehow inerrant manna falling from the carb-free bakery of heaven.
We just have too many blind spots not to let others give input on our songs. What we think is clear and memorable might actually be a cluttered confusion.
And here’s the deal: if we don’t let our songs be critiqued and reviewed by others before we use them in worship, the congregation will certainly give us the feedback we neglected to get.
I’d rather have a few trusted advisors tell me my song is horse dooky before I have hundreds of worshipers staring at the projection screen with that gazed-look in their eyes.
Question: Have you found these Nashville tips to be effective in your songwriting? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
For further reading, check out some more free resources from Jon.
Just a little curious. As songwriters, don’t we want to step outside the established way of thinking to make better music? I realize we don’t want to dumb down our lyrics for our congregation, but eventually doesn’t worship music start to sound the same? One of my biggest struggles is a desire to write music that accomplishes some of the goals mentioned without sounding like everything else on the radio. Even as a worship guy, it’s sometimes tough for me to listen to christian radio, because it all seems to sound the same. While I realize there are great folks in Nashville and they create great music, are we letting them set the standard for what worship music should sound like? Just asking?
Thats a very valid question there Jeff, Michael Gungor brought up this issue recently and it started a lot of conversations. http://gungormusic.com/#!/2011/11/zombies-wine-and-christian-music/
I dont understand how trying to be memorable, accessible & re-writable as Jon suggests would point music to sounding the same. There must be a another reason.
Maybe we need to turn off the radio?
I’m all for turning off the radio and listening to some real music 😉
Jeff, this is a great question. I think we can still apply Jon’s points AND make our songs more unique and creative. He’s advocating we be disciplined with our writing and make our songs the best they can be. That doesn’t mean they have to sound like everything else. Heck, you could apply these points to a song and arrange it with a didgeridoo, a clarinet, and a dub step beat. Now that’s an idea!
Jeff – thanks for your question – and it’s a legit one. After taking a break from Nashville trips & writing, I wrote a song that was “just for me.” It was refreshing not to write with Nashville in mind. The song sounded nothing like “Nashville” CCM or country. But as I looked at it, I realized I had used so much of what I had learned in down there, and it was a far better song than what I had written pre-Nashville.
So I’m not pushing the Nashville sound that we hear on K-Love and country music – but the discipline and approach Nashville writers have. Thanks for your comment.
Thanks too for the insight from everyone!
Hey great post Jon, excellent tips! Very well written and good points. You could replace the word “Nashville” with “professional” and have the exact same content. (Hey your website is very cool too!)
So … I live in Nashville, I used to produce music for a living, and I was the worship pastor at a big church on Music Row. We had a lot of songwriters and a lot of worship leaders, many of whom are somewhat well known.
Regarding Jeff’s question on making better music. There will always be a degree of tension with innovation in the church. There will always be some strain between the familiar and the new. You have to first feed the sheep in your community, imo. There is an art to writing what’s fresh but still accessible. Jon addresses this in a practical way, I think.
One problem with an industry mentality (this is not just in Nashville, but through-out the church) is imitating someone else’s success. It’s a “monkey see, monkey do” business. Then what you get is the bland, sound-a-like cliched gupe that Gungor, et al are complaining about. I can’t listen to it either.
This blog had a great conversation about that https://www.davidsantistevan.com/2011/12/innovative/
If worship songwriters would take Jon’s principles and apply them in a local church context, die to some of our artistic self-indulgence, and write something that actually connects with, engages and inspires your community – then you’ll really have something wonderful. God will do the promotion and you won’t need the approval of “nashville”.
Sing to the Lord a new song, ya’ll!
Rob, thanks so much for adding tremendous insight to this conversation. And thanks for the props on the site/article!
A great song with a message can be arranged or written & played differently for a variety of audiences. Preschool class and my girlfriends are easy to write, connect & get input for. Get a song that passes muster with your 4th/5th grade & highschool kids and you just might have a winner. Maybe some groups just have to write their own stuff?
So… I read this blog and the post entitled 11 Tips for Creating More Unique Worship Music, and they both are great! But, for some reason, they are ringing the same bell inside my mind. When I went back to re-read them both, I think I found the reason, and it was in one word in this blog, the word “approach.” It reminded me that I feel really weird and uneasy when I hear that songwriters actually sit down to “purposely” write a song. And then with that purpose in mind, there is a formula employed to write said song. I cannot write a song. No way I can just sit and think up something to write. But every song that God has written through me has come because he sings them to me first. Now, I agree that the song should be singable, it should be scriptural, it should make GREAT grammatical sense, but I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this concept of following a certain model. Also, wouldn’t the purposed model change if the audience were not the assumed audience? I’m an African American woman, worship leader and artist; leading worship and people at a culturally, generationally and denominationally diverse(as far as the congregants backgrounds) non-denom church. I also have my project already out which was specifically birthed so that any and all worshippers could…worhsip. So the style, arrangements, instruments, verses and choruses are all different, based on what was given by God. I let several people critique and even add or delete minor things, but to change the direction/feel of the songs would have been a felony to me.
GW
Glenda, great question. I once heard Brian Doerksen say that God gives us a seed, but it’s our responsibility to make it grow. Songwriting is a sacred trust. It’s hard work. Oftentimes, people use “God gave this to me” as an excuse for not working hard or taking themselves off the hook. I believe God gives songs, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean we don’t work hard on them and use the minds he’s given us. Make sense?
I recorded a few songs in Nashville and it’s who you know and being “MAINSTREAM” that’ll make your records. I see why Shania Twain said sshe was blowing that whole thing out of the water. She did and look what happened but, she had serious money backing her. I had some great country songs I was told but, they said they needed to be more in line with what’s on the radio so they upped the tempos and threw in a bunch of crap taking beautiful lyrics and making them bubble gum. I won’t look back or ahead to Nashville. I’d rather invest heavily in myself and stay true