Who
Else Wants To Be Part of A Global Worship
Songwriting Community?
Recently I, and some subscribers
to my personal blog, tested a process that has helped us co-write
worship songs that people are now singing around the world...
...And we'd like you to join us!
We're at the pre-launch testing
stage before going fully public with OpenSourceSongs.com and I'd like to invite you into
the 'lab' to help test some of the co-writing process.
Check out the video below for
more details.
Cheers -
Andy Rogers
www.OpenSourceSongs.com
Submit your details and I'll email you
instructions.
By the way I take your privacy very seriously!
So how does
Open Source songwriting work then?
Well,
I'm glad you asked...
1.
Share your song idea on the 'Songs Under Construction'
section of the 'Lab'
and invite others to contribute suggestions. Perhaps you have a lyric
and a bit of a melody or maybe a couple of complete verses but no
chorus.
2.
Others add their creativity.
Registered members of the community take what’s on the table,
and add
their creativity to the original idea and share their suggested ideas
and changes.
3.
This process gets repeated as
often as necessary until the originator of the idea is happy with the
final version of the song.
Simple as that!
Here's what others are already
saying about this process...
My
home church is falling in love with a song that Andy and I collaborated
on called "One Thing".
Christ
the King Church is a non-denominational church in Bellingham,
Washington. We're a church of about 4,500 people.
I've introduced the song that Andy and I collaborated on, calling it
"One Thing", and it has been very well received. I'm amazed
that God can use technology to link two hearts from two very different
cultures and use those two hearts to come up with a song that He would
draw His people into worship with. An idea that was
originally sparked on the Causeway Coast of Ireland made its way around
the world to the Puget Sound of Washington State and has blessed
thousands of people.
It started with Andy posting the verse and chorus to YouTube.
I watched, and then emailed Andy my idea for a second verse.
He was very open an honest and said that he liked but that he was going
to also explore another idea being worked on somewhere else.
It took a lot of maturity on both of our parts to hold what we were
working on very loosely, but I understood that Andy might not use it,
and Andy understood that I might take it and run with it! I
read his clearly laid-out ideas about ownership and copyrighting, and
used the song under a Creative Commons Agreement that he had posted on
his site. I then added a bridge, and now the song "feels"
complete to me.
Each of us has benefited from the song, likely in different
ways. Even is the song never leaves my home church, it's
still a global success to know that two songwriters, both seeking after
Jesus, can lay down their "rights" to a song and collaborate.
I am honored to work with Andy Rogers, and pray that I will get the
chance to do so again through his new OpenSource website.
It's a great idea, and one that I will point as many people towards as
I can. It excites me to think of the possibilities of
songwriters joining forces from around the world to create love songs
for the King of kings!
And here
are a couple of other examples from our preliminary tests...
Faye
Smith
did an interesting thing with another song idea
Here are
the details from Faye
"I
have been
thinking for some time about writing a song to be sung in a
non-liturgical church worship setting that could not only gather the
people, but also provide a place for the Body of Believers to confess
their sins and rightly posture themselves before the King before they
are thrust into praise. I had tried several times, but
nothing
seemed to work.
"In the
meantime I was delighted to accept the challenge Andy had
proposed: feedback and co-writing in his 20/20
project. I
was so excited to have a collaborative project that would 'stir up the
gifts within [me]'. One of Andy's partially written songs was
submitted, and I thought the first verse was extremely
strong. I
dusted off my gathering/cleansing song idea to see if Andy's song could
be positioned in that direction, and I'm quite pleased with how it
turned out. I gave it an up-tempo, 4-chord progression, and
then
I wrote a new chorus and 2nd verse which paralleled Andy's first
verse. The result is a gathering song with a double
meaning: I Come Clean gives opportunity for the Believer's
confession and secondly declares how we are washed clean by the
forgiveness of the Savior. My favorite line of the
song: 'A
former casualty, I come willingly, I come...I come, and I come
clean!" I would love to continue this collaborative
process!" Faye Smith - Dallas, Texas
I
Come Clean was introduced in a Dallas suburban church (about 700
members), and was well received.
Faye's
worship pastor, Roland Worton, has this to say:
‘I
Come
Clean’ by Faye Smith and Andy Rogers releases fresh
understanding
of the mercy of God and His goodness in cleansing us completely. The
song puts a contemporary spin on the invitation to walk in forgiveness
and freedom and welcomes a congregation to approach God
‘clean’ and ‘blood washed.’ A
refreshing and
usable song!
Roland Worton - Worship Pastor,
Dallas TX .
Matt
McChlery, on the
other hand took the original melody of the same song 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
it's win-win for everybody...
If
you are a songwriter with an incomplete idea you benefit from having
the creativity of others to draw on. You can accept (or 'pass' on) the
contributions of others and you get to decide what makes it into the
final song.
If
you're a song contributor and your suggestion gets included in the
final make up of a song, you are credited as a co-writer and part owner
of that song.
All
this works because of the Creative Commons copyrighting
system that allows each songwriter and contributor to retain rights to
their part of the song.
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.
Submit your details and I'll email you
instructions.
By the
way I take your privacy very seriously!
Cheers
Andy Rogers
Who
on Earth is Andy Rogers Anyway?
Andy
Rogers is a worship Leader and
songwriter from the Causeway Coast of Ireland with songs published and
recordings produced on EMI’s Kingsway label.
An
artist on Kingsway’s original ‘New Celts’
album (along with Robin Mark, Brian Houston & Joanne Hogg) and
more recently on ‘Engage24’ with Ian Hannah, his
style has been described as ‘Ethno-Celt’ - a mix of
acoustic ethnic sounds fused with contemporary musical sensibilities.s.
He
has been part of the pioneering team at Causeway
Coast Vineyard under the leadership of Alan and Kathryn Scott
since 1999 and
continues to serve there with his wife and family.
He
is also one of the founding members of the Coleraine House of Prayer
(C-HOP) team along with Ian Hannah. C-HOP is an
intercessory worship gathering
in Coleraine, Northern Ireland that started life as a one-off 24hr
worship event back in May 2000 and continues to grow as a regular
gathering of worshipers and intercessors from various church
backgrounds.
Worship
leading throughout Ireland and beyond, his music has taken
him to such diverse venues as churches and conferences to the
nightclubs of Eastern Europe and even the brothels of Thailand (you can
see video clips of that here).
He passionately believes that when people worship then God does amazing
things just like He promised - and it doesn’t have to be
‘in church’.
Andy
lives in Coleraine with his wife, daughters and an old cat named
Tangles!
Here’s
what others are saying:
‘I’ve
known Andy for 18 years -
both as a worship leader in the church I attended as a teenager, and
then as a friend and co-leader as we grew a little older together.
He is
one of the most
servant-hearted people I know. Few understand, and live out true
worship like Andy - and I feel honored to serve with him because of it!
If you
ever get the chance to have
him come and lead at your church - or to listen to the songs that he
has been writing - or to input as he explores the whole idea of writing
as an online community (OpenSourceSongs.com) - I cannot
more highly recommend that you jump at it. Andy really is one in a
million - he’s the real deal.’ - Kathryn
Scott
Here’s
what others are saying: