Who Else Wants To Be Part of A Global Worship Songwriting Community?

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:13:59 +0000

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”.

Sam Middlebrook
Founder www.developingworship.com

Here are the full details from Sam…

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!

Sam Middlebrook
Founder, www.developingworship.com

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

Open Source Songs

Who Else Wants To Be Part of A Global Worship Songwriting Community?