Today’s post is on songwriting, and the tips are relevant for people writing for church congregations. This kind of songwriting requires a different set of values and practices than writing a song to sing TO people, or a song people will just listen to. Writing songs that people need to join in with is tricky and I hope the 10 tips below will help!

1. Focus on one idea -most songs cover way too many ideas or themes, and the lyrics lack the punch of one focused idea. When you’ve written a verse and a chorus, the temptation is to move on to a different theme for verse two, and maybe a different theme again for the bridge! Stay true to your initial focus/idea and go deeper into it during verse 2 and the bridge. Resist the urge to pack ten theme into one song – aim for one theme!

2. Be brave and allow others to help – this is always hard! Try and emotionally detach from your song enough to allow people to critique it. It’s the only way to grow as a writer, and it’s definitely going to help your song be the best it can be! Get feedback on what is good and bad about the song, and use it as a learning experience. People will see things about the song that you as the writer, wouldn’t see. Don’t be defensive. Try and see it as a gift to you, to help your song be better!

3. Re-writing is the key – when you think the song is finished, assume that it’s not! Give it another few weeks, where you go over it with a fine toothed comb searching for things that can be improved. Have you really laboured to find fresh ways of saying what you’re saying? Have you defaulted to cheesy lyrics or cliches? Have you let anyone else hear the song and give you feedback? Re-writing can take an ok song and turn it into an amazing song!

For the rest of this article, visit:

http://vickybeeching.com/blog/ten-mistakes-to-avoid-in-songwriting/

Facebook is amazing. I love the community it creates. So is the Women In Worship Network. These kind of networks bring us together!

Compassion (an incredible organisation I’ve been working with for over seven years now) have a new social network. It’s for sponsors of kids to meet each other and share stories, prayers and experiences.

So now when you sponsor a child, you also get to join their social network and meet all the other sponsors who sponsor kids in the same country and project.

I’ve already met four other people on there who sponsor a child in the same project as me.

It’s called “Our Compassion” – check it out in the video! Sponsoring a child just got even more interactive….now you get to join a whole community.

To read more of this post, and how you could consider sponsoring a child, visit my other blog site here:

http://vickybeeching.com/blog/a-social-network-site-for-compassion-sponsors/

The problem was only 5k of you are my Facebook friends, and as my profile has reached it maximum number of friend requests, many of you who WANTED to join in the discussions couldn’t, as you couldn’t access my Facebook profile. Sorry!

Hence, why I’m blogging about it…so we can carry on the conversation here.

It matters to us, as many of us are involved in some kind of ministry or church leadership. So we need to know what we believe and why!

Let’s show our ability to engage with the Bible for ourselves and back up our views. This is a really important part of following Jesus – knowing truth by exploring the actual texts and original languages – for yourself! Otherwise we will just be robots, parrotting off what we heard from the last Christian author or speaker!

Let’s be like the Berean followers of Jesus, in Acts:

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” – Acts 17:11

So…..here goes!

Some key texts you might want to look at, or discuss here are:  Colossians 3, Ephesians 5, Genesis 1, 2 and 3, Proverbs 31, Revelation 1:6, 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2, Galatians 3:28 and any others you want to bring to the table.

Over to you!

- Do you believe women should be able to preach in Church?

- Have you ever been challenged about leading worship, and told you shouldn’t as it involved you taking authority over men in church?

- Should women be able to be the senior leader of a Church? An Elder? A Bishop?

- Are men and women equal and ‘the same’ before God, in their role, because of the resurrection? Or is there a difference in role that is God intended?

- Is a man the ‘head’ of his wife? Should the husband get the final say in a marital issue?

- Is Complimentarianism (the belief that men and women have different roles; e.g. women can’t teach men) right?

- Is Egalitarianism (the belief that because of Christ’s work, men and women are equal in role and not bound by any gender dictated restrictions) right?

- How do we interpret the key Scriptures about these things?

Really looking forward to your thoughts on this!

Vicky

Yesterday’s post here on WIWN was about a new blog I’ve started (in addition to this one, and my VickyBeeching.com site!)

The new blog is called “CyberSoul” and it looks at the way technology is fast developing, and what this might mean for our spirituality and faith.

It’s a chance for my GEEKY side to come out!

Here’s an example of what I’m exploring over there…. if you like it, come to http://www.cyber-soul.com and join that community too!

“Could people worship a hologram pop star?!”

This may initially sound bizarre, but in Japan it’s already a huge epidemic.

“Hatsune Miko” has a huge following, a beautiful voice and a band of talented human musicians who tour with her. But she is….a hologram.

Check out the video below if you haven’t seen it before. (The video is slow and long! So just watch a few seconds to see her in action):

Apparently people flocked to her tour and as you can see in the video, they stood and waved their glow-sticks, responding as though she were a human pop star.

We saw a little taste of this with Damon Albarn’s “Gorillaz” a few years back, although they weren’t 3D holograms. Here they are appearing with Madonna (this video might be a bit risky for some after a few minutes…so feel free not to watch it all):

With Gorillaz or the Japanese hologram, it’s easy to tell they aren’t truly human and aren’t physically present.

But what if it could get so real that even we got fooled?

The Japanese public were shocked to find out that they had been taken in by another computer generated singer:

“AKB48 is Japan’s most popular female pop group. With give-or-take 48 members, its latest member is Aimi Eguchi, who has rocketed from obscurity to become the poster girl for a Japanese ice candy, Ice no Mi. Now revealed as a computer composite of other girls in the group, she appears below (see video):

See if you can tell the difference and pick the computer generated girl from the real ones:

I couldn’t tell. Apparently she’s the girl that you see precisely 4 seconds in. It’s fascinating that something we’ve invented can then fool us.

If we think the areas we are discussing these days – relationships, gender, marriage etc – are complex, imagine how much more we’ll have to navigate when people begin falling in love with holograms, who through haptic technology they can touch and feel they genuinely know. What will our ethics be on that?! Would it be socially acceptable to spend hours in virtual reality, building a relationship with a computer generated ‘person’? Could you marry a haptic hologram if you wanted to? Today kids in Japan are gazing adoringly at a singing cyber-projection. What will that turn into in five years, or in fifty years, I wonder…?

Singer Chris Brown’s song “Hologram” uses the term as an analogy, to describe a woman he can’t quite connect with. But it seems oddly likely that this might one day become reality for some people:

“Hologram, I’m pushing up close
But it’s hard to get to ya.
Hologram,
There’s a glitch in the system
Tell me what I gotta do now” (source: http://tinyurl.com/6egckfu)

Over to you:

• Do you think we’ll be dealing with more computer generated ‘people’ in the future, or do you think I’m just full of crazy ideas?!
• What would you do if your future grandchild told you they were in love, then you found out the person was computer generated, only existed in virtual reality and was a hologram? Would you wish you were back in 2011 dealing with issues we’ve got on our plate?!
• The more we see computer generated images of men and women, the more it will affect our sense of self-worth, as they are created to be physically ‘perfect’. Do you struggle with all the airbrushed people seen in the media and the effect they have on us?
• Would you pay money to go and watch a hologram perform with a band?
• What are your thoughts on all that I’ve said in this post?

- Vicky

(come and join the comments section on THIS post over at CyberSoul! http://www.cyber-soul.com/2011/07/02/japan-flocks-to-see-a-hologram-pop-star )

So I’ve started a blog to explore the relationship between spirituality and technology. Any techy girls out there??  :)

This may not interest you at all – and that’s fine!

But if it does, or if you just want to see what I’ve been thinking about lately, check it out! The site is:

http://www.cyber-soul.com

Love

Vicky

First of all – no that photo is not of my office!!

But us creative types can tend to be pretty messy people, right?

Perhaps you are one of the ‘clean ones’? I know they exist, because I think the link between music and mathematics makes some musicians very organised and precise. So there is a breed of musician/artist/creative, that are really neat and ordered.

Other musicians, and I lean toward being this way, are more of the messy ones!

For instance….we get random creative ideas for a song while we are putting away the laundry, so it sits there damp and forgotten, because we’re working on our song til late, then crashed into bed and forgot all about it!

Often my home studio gets a bit disordered, because I’d rather be getting musical ideas down, then organising my gear and paperwork.

Yesterday I finished a big tidy up and reorder of the whole room. I sat down to work today and it just felt different.

I felt more creative.

How weird is that?! That a fairly messy musician, would feel MORE creative in a tidy environment?

That is definitely how it works for me. If things are ordered and tidy, I feel like there is more brain space available for the ‘muse’. I think that’s true for a lot of us – that when our mind has to take in all the disorder in the environment we’re working in, it leaves less mental space for ideas and artistry.

Clearly sometimes that isn’t true. Many of us have written or created great art in a really messy place, at one time or another. So it’s not always true. I just have a hunch that it’s more often true than not?

In Genesis, God took chaos and created order… I think that’s significant……

How about you? Are you a tidy person, a messy person, or somewhere in between?

Do you find working in a tidy, ordered room more inspiring than a crazy, messy one?

For some of us musicians, could a habit of being more organised and well ordered, lead us to be BETTER at our art forms and creativity?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

- Vicky

Some love wearing pink, making cakes and painting their nails.

Others have short spiky hair, wear only black and love riding motorbikes.

Sometimes we try and fit into an ‘idea’ of who the ‘perfect woman’ is, like trying to be a cookie cutter of culture’s media messages.

I just thought today that I’d blog about the importance of us BEING OURSELVES! We shine the brightest for God when we allow our uniqueness to fully take flight.

I’m quite a tomboy at heart. I grew up climbing trees and shooting catapults! So don’t feel like being a female worship leader means needing to start wearing dresses or jackets with shoulder pads! If you are less of a ‘girly girl’, then use your edginess to glorify God. Bring some rock and energy and passion. Think about how passionate and inspiring artists like Alanis Morisette or Pink are!

If you are a ‘girly girl’, then go for it! Let your softer songs and gentleness shine for God, full blaze!

Whoever you are, be that 100% for Jesus, and lead worship in that uniqueness.

Our worship is most powerful when we stop trying to be someone else, and start being at home in our own skin.

Whoever you are, how ever you dress what ever music you like, you are BEAUTIFUL and BRILLIANT!

We need you to be…. YOU!

We want to let each other know “you’re not alone!”.

For some of us the journey as a woman involved in this area of ministry has been lonely or tough. I know that from reading all the messages you guys send me via this site.

So, how do we make it easier for the younger girls who want to get involved in worship ministry? What support systems can be put in place, so that they don’t fall into the ruts of loneliness or insecurity, that many of us have?

One the easiest ways is at a local level. That’s where change really happens. Yes we can have big websites with thousands of members, and we can hold big events where we are inspired. But real change happens when we come alongside someone else, week after week, conversation after conversation, cheering them on.

Do you know any young girls in your church or local area, with a passion for worship ministry? Have you ever thought about taking them for a coffee or a hot chocolate, and asking them to share their story? Could YOU be the encourager they’ve been waiting and praying for?

To encourage a young female worship leader, singer or songwriter, YOU don’t even need to be musical! All it takes is a heart of encouragement and wisdom. That’s what helps someone find the courage to follow their calling, and step beyond their fears!

Is there someone God is bringing to your mind now?

If not, keep your eyes open, as perhaps he’ll bring someone across your path in the coming weeks.

Love

Vicky

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about the dramatic type of lyrics we tend to sing in our worship songs.

How many times do we sing HUGE statements that we ‘kind of’ mean, but kind of don’t?

When we sing things like ‘I surrender all’, do we really mean it, or is it more of a feeling in the moment, than a genuine promise to God?

Should we aim lower with all the statements and promises we make in our songs?

(“Nothing I desire compares with you” – really?? “You’re all this heart is living for” – really?? “You’re all I want” – really??)

I think it’s great that we sing these huge statements, as we aspire to fulfil them and mean them. It shows the desire is there. But I just wonder whether it’s worse to sing them and not ‘do’ them, than to sing something less grandiose in the first place.

Maybe that’s where honesty comes in.

Perhaps more honest lyrics would say ‘I’m trying to surrender everything’ or ‘I want you to mean more than anything else’.

They doesn’t sound as epic and amazing, but maybe that’s more the way we need to be writing worship lyrics… then those in the congregation whose feet are rooted firmly in reality, will be able to sing along without thinking ‘I don’t mean this yet, so I can’t really sing it’. I want to lead and write worship that is deeply honest… so I’m thinking a lot about how we do that…

Thoughts??? I’d love to hear your reflections on this topic!

- Vicky

Yet we usually treat inspiration like a random thing that happens when it pleases, and often do nothing to take responsibility for our own process of getting and staying inspired. Yes, the Holy Spirit IS involved in the inspiration process….but actually some of it depends on us being good stewards of our own creative development.

If we leave all responsibility for inspiration on the Holy Spirit, we become passive recipients of divine sparks of illumination. Thus we can sit around, lazily waiting for this to strike us. That doesn’t sound like the co-labouring partnership that God invites us into! And it doesn’t sound like us giving our full energy and brainpower to the calling God has put on our lives.

So… how do we GET and STAY inspired?

Taking responsibility is the first thing

Simply taking on board that we have a responsibility to help our own creative proces, is the first step. Once we move away from the ‘waiting for a spark of divine inspiration to hit me’ passive model, we are already well on the way to a healthier approach. It’s easier to see inspiration as God’s work not ours, as that gives us a source to blame when we aren’t inspired. We can simply say ‘God hasn’t given me any good ideas lately!’.

Believing that we are a crucial part of the process means we have to own up to times of writer’s block, and creative dryness, and realise that it IS because of us, and that we need to take steps to get healed and re-illuminated again.

“Inspiration Assessment”

If you’ve been in any of my seminars on the subject of creativity, you’ll have heard me ask you to take an Inspiration Assessment, which is a term I devised to help you figure out WHEN, HOW and WHY you get inspired.

So… let’s do it now. Think of the last time that you felt really creative and came up with a brilliant new lyric, melody, set list, song arrangement, or whatever your creative field may be… Picture yourself on that day, in that moment. Try and remember what you’d done leading up to that moment…that day, the day before, that week.. try and figure out if anything specific sparked your creative processes.

Often for me it’s watching movies. So if I think back to the last time I really got inspired, it was after watching The Social Network at the movies. I came home, pulled out my laptop, and started working for hours, on ideas for articles, blogs and lyrics.

Try taking the Inspiration Assessment further back, to the last 5 or 6 times you got really inspired (if you can remember!). See if patterns emerge – like you always get creative after hiking outdoors, or after seeing lots of friends, or after having a few hours of quiet.

Build it in!

This assessment is only useful if you learn from it and begin to build it into your life!

If you always get inspired by certain things/people/places, then make that a weekly and monthly priority…these are your ‘inspiration triggers’. I need to try and see a few good movies a month, in order to keep my ‘inspiration tank’ full up. Another crucial thing that gets me inspired is silence and solitude. So I need to build that in.

What are your ‘inspiration triggers’? Write them down somewhere you will see them regularly, like on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror!

Urgent vs Important

Life will always feel too busy for you to do your ‘inspiration triggers’ regularly.

Stephen Covey, one of my favourite authors, wrote “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (don’t be put off by the cheesy title, it’s a great book!). In it, he distinguishes between “Urgent” and “Important” tasks. The urgent ones may be much less important, he says, yet they always crowd out the non-urgent yet more important things.

The items on your Inspiration Assessment are 99% likely to be non-urgent…things that you rarely get around to doing in an average day unless you MAKE them happen! Things like watching stirring movies, walking in nature, carving out time for silence are usually pushed out by the urgent stuff like going to work, paying bills, laundry, taxes…. We need to fight to get these things in our schedules – it’s a life and death battle for the wellbeing of your creativity!

Accountability

Getting others to help you stay on track is an age-old method of gaining good, new habits. Its also a way to help you be able to do the things that trigger your inspiration, as we all need grace from those in our close community, to help us make time for them.

For example, if you are married and life is busy, your spouse might not be overjoyed at the news that you are disappearing out alone to watch a movie tomorrow night with your lyrics journal, leaving them with the kids and housework!

But…. if you take the time to explain your desire to steward God’s gift of creativity in your life, and that you’ve taken the ‘Inspiration Assessment’, and discovered what your ‘Inspiration Triggers’ are, and that you want your spouse’s help and prayers to encorporate them into your life, you might get a very different response! We need to bring others on board with our vision.

A similar situation is if you are employed in a church, to oversee worship/creative arts. By sharing all this with your line manager and pastors, they will hopefully see that in order for you to do your job excellently, inspiration is a key factor. Perhaps they will catch the vision and enable you to get your Triggers built into the work week, with a day of silence at a monastery once a month…or meeting up with 50 other worship leaders…or whatever it is that stirs your fresh new ideas.

Befriend the white elephant.

Sometimes you just AREN’T going to feel inspired. So embrace it. Don’t try and pretend it’s not there, like a white elephant. Befriend it and see it as a blessing in disguise. When you feel uninspired it’s a flashing light telling you that you need to go do some of your “Triggers” to conquer the dryness. It’s like getting sick – often we don’t realise how run down we are until we get flu. Then we are alerted to the need to get medicine. Writer’s block is like catching flu…it reminds us of the need to get the medicine we need to get re-inspired, and to take better care of our creative processes to prevent us getting dry and empty again.

So embrace seasons of dryness, and let them be helpful reminders to start paying more attention to getting inspired. They can be a great wake up call, and result in better patterns of life.

Let me know!

Try out these approaches, and let me know if they help! Think of your life as a marathon rather than a sprint, and start building in good habits for a lifetime of inspiration. As we approach January, lots of us make New Years Resolutions…maybe some of ours can be related to taking care of our creative processes a bit more strategically! May 2011 be your most inspired year so far!!

Hope this has been helpful!

Any thoughts to add, or comments, or questions?

Vicky