You’d have to be living in a worship leader cave to not recognize the resurgence of hymns in contemporary worship.
Hymns are here to stay. And as worship leaders, it’s important that we use them.
Some of the most popular Christian artists are covering hymns that have gone viral in church services across the world.
You’ve probably led these in your church:
- “Amazing Grace (my chains are gone)” by Chris Tomlin
- “Jesus Paid it All” by Alex Nifong
- “All Creatures Of Our God & King” by David Crowder
- “Holy, Holy, Holy” by Gateway Worship
- “Cornerstone” by Hillsong
Why the obsession with hymns? I can think of a couple reasons:
It unites the generations – older generations love hymns and the younger generation appreciates them when they’re brought up to date with modern music and additional choruses.
Rich theology – there is a poignancy about hymns that communicates transcendence. The lyrics, the meter – it all communicates the beauty of a God who was and is and is to come.
They work – simply put, hymns always work really well in corporate worship. The Scriptural truth ignites a fire in the heart of the church. The redeemed love to declare it!
The purpose of this post is to encourage you to write your own. Maybe you’ve already done so. Maybe you’ve never considered the idea. It may be easier than you think.
I’ve written a couple myself: “I Surrender All” off my first project “Near” and “O For A Thousand Tongues” off our new project “Undying Love” coming out later this fall.
5 Steps to Crafting Your Own Hymn Arrangement
You can do this. And I’m about to show you how:
1. Pick a Hymn – Start with one of your favorite hymns. Or, use a hymn that your pastor or congregation really loves. Don’t worry about how many times the hymn has been covered. There’s room in the Body of Christ for multiple arrangements 🙂
2. Alter the Chord Structure – Oftentimes what separates a class hymn from feeling modern is the chord structure and meter. It’s hardly ever the lyrics, which even though they use big words, communicate a sense of history and transcendence.
Experiment with unique chords. Add additional measures so the song can breathe. Speed it up or slow it down. Decide based on what is most congregational.
3. Add a Simple Chorus – If there’s any weakness in hymns, it’s that they don’t breathe. They can be wordy and cluttered. Write a simple chorus to the hymn that allows people a chance to ponder the truth.
Take the main idea and write a repeatable chorus. All the aforementioned hymns have this. It’s like adding an exclamation point to your musical sentence – take that hymn to another level.
4. Create a Unique, Musical Motif – A bad song with a strong arrangement doesn’t make a great song. But a great song is improved by a solid arrangement. Spend some time crafting a unique musical motif (or riff) that sets your song apart. You want people to identify your song immediately.
5. Test it Out – Before you engrave your hymn arrangement in stone, test it out in a few different worship contexts. See how people respond. Gather some feedback on the strength of your melody and the uniqueness of your chord structure.
Hymns will never die. They are a testament to the history of salvation and the endurance of the Gospel. Let’s teach them to the next generation.
Question: What is hymn that you would like to “bring up to date” and create your own arrangement? Or, if you’ve already arranged one, tell us about it. Let us know in the comments!
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I’ve been playing with Pass Me Not.
Not familiar with this one. Who is the author?
Fanny Crosby 🙂
Awesome tips – I’ll add a couple more:
6. Get inspiration from hymn albums by other Christian artists. My favourite albums are from the following artists: Bart Millard, Avalon, Bryan Duncan (Quiet Prayers), WOW Hymns, Passion, Ascend the Hill.
7. Give the hymn order some variety. When we sing I Surrender All we usually transition from a contemporary song, but we start with the Chorus, Verse 1, Verse 2, Chorus, Chorus (Acapella), Ending. This can be a refreshing change from the normality of Verse Chorus Verse Chorus.
8. Transpose into a more congregational friendly key. This point also applies to contemporary worship songs, but it equally applies to hymns.
I’ve arranged multiple hymns in a more contemporary arrangement and we find that our older generation respond exceptionally well to them. My favourites are currently “It Is Well” (slower contemporary style) and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” (upbeat country rock style)
OK – am getting carried away now – but it’s currently a passion of mine.
9. Use contemporary worship song elements to enhance the hymn arrangement. Use key changes to build and chorus repeats with acapella. Add ending repeats. Start soft arrangements with a single instrument and build to all instruments or start loud with all and give middle verse/chorus less instruments and a different feel.
Great tips, Greg. I think it’s also nice to medley hymns with modern songs. Helps to bridge the gap.
“It’s hardly ever the lyrics, which even though they use big words, communicate a sense of history and transcendence.”
I appreciate you saying that. I understand why some will simplify the lyrics, but my preference is to keep them. We have everyone from “average Joe” to “mr. intellectual” in our congregation, and a danger is if we always cater to Joe and not the other.
I had the opportunity to co-write a new take on “Tis So Sweet”. It was a bit of a happy mistake. I was looking at the lyrics only and for a moment could not remember how the original melody went (I didn’t grow up singing hymns much). I started singing a melody in 3/4 using the hymn’s lyrics. The rest is history and will show up on our church’s recording later this year.
Chris, that’s awesome. Did you add a chorus to the hymn or just keep it simple?
We did ours a little backwards: we actually used the hymn lyrics for the chorus and wrote our own verses.
Interesting! Hadn’t thought of that before.
Wrote a simple little jazzy chorus to What a Friend We Have In Jesus. My friend and arranger, Rob Chapin, took that and totally jazzed and grooved it out. We start singing the chorus with just voices and piano, then the bass does a cool riff, then we all go crazy. It’s very fun to do this with hymns. I definitely plan on doing more. People love them because they’re familiar songs yet not old and boring.
Cindy, do you have a recording of your arrangement? Would love to hear it!
You can listen to the whole song on my website http://www.cindycolenelson.com or facebook page https://Facebook.com/CindyColeNelsonMusic
Blessings!
I would LOVE to hear it too!
I LOVE singing hymns in more contemporary styles. I lead worship at one church that does not have a screen or modern song book, just the hymnal from my childhood. It has been a lot of fun for me to learn more hymns this way. I can’t do them as written, since its just my and my limited guitar skills, but the congregation is pretty forgiving.
What do you consider good keys for congregational singing? I’m an alto and always find the hymnals to be too high…I am new to leading and organizing worship, and I really appreciate your blog, David. Thanks!
To say that an old hymn is boring and needs to be modernized means one of two things. The lyrics are good and the music is bad, I say go for it. Re-arrange away. Good lyrics are in short supply nowadays anyway. Or it says you have no sense of history. A truly great old hymn does NOT need to be modernized. That’s like saying let’s take the Gettysburg Address and jazz it up a little, or let’s change the smile on the Mona Lisa. Great art is created in a context that includes the aesthetics of its time. If it is great, it will become transcendent and timeless. It will also become representative of it’s time. Why and for who do you feel the need to change a truly great work of art. Do you honestly think you are making it better? Personally, I think the aesthetics and sentiment of worship in times past were much deeper and broader than worship today. Don’t write me off as an old fogey . Any one who has read most of my comments knows that I have a degree in guitar performance and I play in contemporary christian bands. They ask me to do the heavy lifting in guitar songs from artists like Lincoln Brewster.
But, if that is all you know, please develop a sense of history. That is one thing severely lacking
in church nowadays, as in society in general. I would love to be in a song service that had a pipe organ, then an a cappella choir, and then a rocking praise band. Each for what it is. Or do this. Take a nice roast, some mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, and finally some apple pie. Lets modernize it all by putting it in a blender.
Obviously, I like to exaggerate. My point, tread carefully with respect when dissecting a time honored old hymn.
I’ve been pretty conservative when I did rearrangements, and usually did it for a rather unusual reason – the melody was public domain but the harmonization was copyrighted, or similar. I’ve very rarely composed anything from scratch. (None of this is published, yet, but some of it’s stashed away in the dust on my web servers.)
I basically tried to emulate what was typical in the hymnals I have, I have 4 of them. I’d create something rough, play it back on the computer, adjust it if I needed to…lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve just adapted my third tune to have come ultimately from the “Sacred Harp”.
So sorry to say old hymns are “boring”. That was totally the wrong word to say. I agree with you Don, that they are a rich and beautiful part of our history. In fact, I picked “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” not because I thought it was boring but because I love it so much! In our arrangement we left a couple of the verses in there singing them just straight. Sorry, didn’t mean any disrespect for old hymns. I love and treasure them!
Cindy, since you replied, I just thought of this. My wife and I visited a church once, where they did all contemporary songs. But they all sounded 100 years old because of the way they did them. Take an old song, make it sound new. Take a new song, make it sound old. Same problem! It sounded like they wanted to be perceived as contemporary without offending anyone.
It has taken me a while to get to my current position, but that church visit was part of the clarification process for me. I just prefer to hear something as it was meant to be, in the context in which it was created. It is like enjoying an antique. You ruin it’s value by doing to much to it. I like variety, but let everything stand on it’s own merit. No “blender” music. I do enjoy the discussions, but I am not the keeper of the flame. Nor am I as offended as I feigned to be. In fact, every once in a while, a good re-arrangement emerges. The art of music has always been fluid, and great musicians of the past have done their own re-arrangements. So I guess the issue is quality and taste.
Here are a couple of my rearrangements of hymns. To be honest I’ve not been a lover of hymns (or Christmas songs!) and steered clear of them as much as possible, but God has changed my heart over recent years 🙂
http://music.markcullen.me/track/i-need-thee
http://music.markcullen.me/track/when-i-survey-the-wondrous-cross
http://music.markcullen.me/track/how-sweet-the-sound-amazing-grace
Would love to know what you think…
Mark, quality and taste abound in all three. Excellent. I would say, I Need Thee is an excellent arrangement.When I Survey is a complete resetting. I guess it is splitting hairs, rearranging implies elements of the original music remain, and resetting implies a complete new musical composition to established lyrics. I guess I have been jaded over the years by too many bad arrangements. You did really good. I really enjoyed the guitar work, both acoustic and electric. Great electric tone. What kind of stuff do you have in your guitar set up. I know this is not a guitar forum, so answer or not at your discretion.
Thanks for your comments and encouragement Don!
When you say that When I Survey is a complete resetting, perhaps it is just that you have not heard the “Rockingham” melody before? Check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGoFsIlfBaI
(“An 18th Century melody, adapted by Edward Miller (1731-1807) for use with words by Isaac Watts (1674-1748) as the hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”)
I have been using Fractal Audio’s Axe-Fx II for my guitar rig and absolutely LOVE it!. http://www.fractalaudio.com/index.php
The guitar on those recordings was mostly a custom “relic” Tele.
There are plenty of things I haven’t heard. I have not heard that melody, that was a nice fluid, legato performance. Great voice leading. In my opinion, that is worship or worshipful.
If you have done the research, which one came first, and which is the resetting? It is not important really. I used to have a hymn book that gave the title of the melody used if it was not composed by the author. Musicians or historians are the only ones who care about that information. As this discussion has unfolded over a week or so, I have continued to think about it. Any arrangement that is good is what it is. I don’t think you accomplish much by taking an older song that “older” people love, keeping essentially the same music, i.e. melody, and chord progression and try to “modernize” it. The younger people still don’t care for it, and it just got ruined for the older folks. That is where I think a new setting can be effective. Familiar words, but no comparison to lock onto in music. Any how, I have worn this one out. If it is good, it is good. We can never please everyone. A great musician always has the artistic freedom to arrange if they are so moved.
Well, I just said I had worn it out. After asking I got curious. Issac Watts wrote “When I Survey” in 1707. It was ground breaking for being the first known English hymn set in the first person. “Rockingham” was written by Edward Miller, who was a flautist in Handel’s orchestra. He was also a church organist at one post for 50 years. The melody we sing now is referred to as Hamburg, written by Lowell Mason in 1824. There appears to be 8 or 9 known settings of When I Survey.
Enjoyed it, time to go.
My church has been working on rearranging classic hymns for about 1 year now. My goal is that we’ll have 12 original arrangements by the end of 2012. Here’s our version of How Deep The Father’s Love if you’re interested. Unfortunately it’s just a video camera but you’ll get the idea.
Why “bring a hymn” up to date? More likely dumbing hymns down. “Modern ‘worship’ music is mostly musically awful unless there’s been a professional musician hired to give it a orchestral arrangement. Write your own hymns, leave the great old hymns alone. They’re great as they stand. Quit plagiarizing other people’s work and adding dopey chorus’ to them.