Sep 28, 2008
Bob Kauflin shows what makes bad tunes bad.
In his message this weekend, Kauflin talked about what makes melodies effective and gave some examples of how not to write music:
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Theme based on Derek Punsalan's Grid Focus.
Neato. Thanks for posting that. Look forward to the entire conference to be on mp3.
i’m not going to name names, but i can think of several songs that are either reeeeeally repetitive and boring (like his first example) or reeeeeally hard and annoying to sing (like the second). (hymn-wise, i think the traditional “And Can It Be?” is pretttty objectively terrible, even though i’m fond of the song overall.)
on the other hand, there are some great ones out there. “Be Thou My Vision” has obviously lasted us a while (even though it’s not THAT easy to sing). besides hymns, i think caedmon’s call was pretty good at melodies. something like silas could write a nice one too.
i do think that modern worship songs are (purposely) not always as melodically (and therefore vocally) driven as hymns. they CAN still be both pleasing and memorable, but if the intention is for them to be enjoyable to sing as a congregation, maybe i’ll be go ahead and say that more “traditional” tuneful melodies are, yes, better.
THANKS, Abraham!! :) As a musician, I love hearing stuff like this from Bobby K (as my husband & I like to fondly call him). :) Looking forward to hearing more audio & watching more video from him & from the other speakers.
I found myself trying to remember how the “non-memorable” version of *Come Thou Fount* in the shower this morning.
Couldn’t do it. ;o)
I thought he was BRILLIANT in that part. He was my favorite speaker! (Sorry I didn’t stop by and meet you, Paul T. went on too long and had to run)
I must say that in the past I have not always understood the disagreements about worship music, mostly just chalking it up to people’s preferences. However, this little excerpt from his message helps me understand how people could be so easily irritated by certain songs. I’m not a musician so I don’t give it much thought but I can definitely see how being a musician could make a person go crazy over “bad” music. I will say that singing the same lyrics to the same melodies for the billionth time in the same song should make everyone crazy though.
Hmmm. It looks Mr. Kauflin would be a person I’d like to talk to, to get more into the nitty gritty of these ideas.
He almost certainly would be able to advise me with my attempts at melody and memory.
http://jamsco.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/a-nice-big-round-number/
Two random but related thoughts:
1) To illustrate the fact that the relationship of melody and lyrics is important, one of my seminary profs had a guy sing “O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus” to the tune of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (both, of course, are great songs). Go ahead, try it. Pretty striking.
2) Has anybody else ever laughed at the RUF version of Luther’s Psalm 130? It starts “From the depths of woe I raise to Thee the voice of lamentation,” but it’s a really peppy tune (think Tom Jones). The lyrics move in a more joyful direction, but you have to wonder if they thought about this.
This was really discouraging to watch, because when Bob sings badly, it sounds better than when I try to sing my best.
Hey, I just realized my last comment was 22 words!
Enjoyed both this video and the one where MD gave your dad the skateboard “DG” sweater (watched it on someone else’s blog this morning). This conference looks like it was waaaay too much fun. (grin)
One question, though: Do you get your notorious thriftiness from your dad? He was awful proud of the fact that he only paid 5 bucks for his blazer… (lol)
Did anyone else just go back and count the words in Penn’s first post? See what you are doing to us, Abraham? =-]
[...] (HT: 22 Words) [...]
I loved this. It was the first talk of the day and it felt like prime time. I got sick and missed Tripp and your Dad which was a bummer, but I was really impressed with all of the conference that I experienced. I am pretty amazed at the generosity of DG. Offering all of the conference talks for free online? That’s just so cool. And the gift bag of books and DVDs? love it.
God bless Kauflin for saying this and you for posting it! Some of the latest songs we’ve been singing at our great church are theologically great, but musical “random streams of consciousness” and the lyrics are getting lost. I’ve been praying about a way to humbly invite our worship leader to consider this – he’s a big Kauflin appreciator and so he’s probably listened already!
Has this guy seen Orison rap?
Bob’s book on worship, btw, is outstanding.