I’ve been writing up my review of 2007 for my Trustees (I’m partly supported in Christian worship and arts by Deep End Trust) and during the process of documenting the last year two things have emerged that have really stood out.
I find I’m actually running to catch up with these two ideas that the Lord appears to be breathing on and they seem to have taken on a life of their own as it were.
One of those things is the ‘open source’ songwriting idea that we tested on my blog (I’ll write in more detail about the other in another blog post).
It has wildly exceeded my expectations.
While I was on a ministry trip in Thailand I got an email from Sam Middlebrook from www.developingworship.com/forum about one of the song ideas that I had invited contributions to, he wrote…
“I’ve used the song a few times now, and last week, a I got over 300 requests to do it again over email, feedback cards, phone calls and the like. (the week nine song, with my second verse idea)”
You see, Sam had taken the song idea and added his ideas to it and tried it out in his church. When I read that email the significance of what we had inadvertently achieved struck me like a ton of bricks.
1. Thousands of people had used the song in their worship. Sam is the worship leader at a large church in Washington.
2. Together we had completely bypassed the traditional ‘music industry’ system of music distribution.
Think about it.
The ultimate aim for any worship songwriter is to have people connect with God through singing their songs. The whole industry norm of getting a publishing deal, recording a CD, touring and getting a record and distribution deal at the end of the day should be about having real people at the other end sing songs that help them connect with God.
Don’t get me wrong, I like selling CDs as much as the next guy but that process should be a support mechanism, not the main aim in itself!
3. We created a song that probably neither of us would have created on our own. To be honest the initial song idea was lying around half finished in my to do pile for at least 5 years - all it needed was some creative input from others.
And here’s another thing, maybe the song isn’t even finished yet! The creative Commons agreement that I’ve used to initiate the idea allows each contributor to still own their piece of the song. We could go on to refine the song even further or incorporate contributions from others.
And Sam isn’t the only one who has done something creative with this process.
Faye Smith for example did an interesting thing with one of the other songs that I’d invited contributions on. Faye took the lyric idea added to it and used a completely different melody and rhythm (you can see her version here)
Matt McChlery, on the other hand took the original melody idea but filled in the gaps with his own lyric ideas. So now we have 2 distinct songs, different co-writers all from the same initial idea. And again the creative commons license allows for the appropriate ownership of each work.
And I know many others of you chipped in with very valuable contributions to the process (sorry if I’ve left you out in these examples).
As you can probably tell I’m excited about these tests and I’ve been working away in my ‘lab’ to create a community that will make it even easier for us to work together using this collaborative process.
And this is where I need your help.
I need to test the system before I go fully live and public with it.
In the next few days I’m going to send a link to the subscribers on my email list to invite you in as a ‘pre-launch member’ to help try out the system and iron out the teething challenges that inevitably come with any new idea.
You might be a worship leader, songwriter, musician or you might be none of those, maybe you’d just like to have a go at the process of songwriting - great I’d love to have you as part of the ‘pre-launch’ team.
If you’re up for that make sure that you’re on my mailing list and I’ll be in touch soon.
Andy
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