LOOP COMMUNITY
WRITING AND PRODUCING MUSIC FOR THE CHURCH | by Matt McCoy with Andy Walker
Does your church want to start writing its own music ? Do you already write your own music , but now you want to release it ? As founder of Loop Community , I sat down with our good friend producer Andy Walker to hear his tips for writing and producing music for the church . Whether your church is ready to release your own album , or you hope to one day , check out these three helpful tips !
1 . WRITE SONGS FOR YOUR CHURCH [ Matt McCoy ] If you start out with the process of writing and producing music as a church with the goal of being famous , making money or having the world hear your song , you aren ' t approaching this the right way . If that happens , that ' s great . But if these songs don ' t resonate at your church , they won ' t be authentic .
[ Andy Walker ] If you try to write a song for a thousand people , only one person will hear it . If you write a song for one person , a thousand people may hear it . There ' s something about writing about the unique experiences of your church . When you have a writing session at your church , don ' t go into it thinking ' this song has to be sung on Sunday morning '. Go into it thinking ' even if no one ever hears this song besides the people in this room , we still got to talk and worship God together and dive into his word to try to create something from that .' That has value .
Make a full dedicated day for writing music together as a church , and even if none of the songs that come from it are sung at your church , it can still be very impactful . Then , once you finish these days , you can analyze what songs might be good for a Sunday morning and proceed from there . Try it in your worship services and see if it feels like a fit .
2 . LIVE OR STUDIO RECORDING ? [ Matt ] When you get to the point of wanting to record your songs , you need to decide if you want to record it live or in a studio . There are a lot of factors to take into account . First think through what you ' re trying to accomplish .
[ Andy ] With a studio recording , you can do a lot of cool creative elements that won ' t translate live . But if you ' re wanting to capture a congregational live feel , I love live recordings .
There ' s two ways to do it . If you ' re doing a studio recording , your steps are demo the song for Sunday , play the song on Sunday , take all of the versions you have of a song and choose which you want to record . Then go into a studio session , track the drums and everything else .
On the other side , we started having nights of worship for a live recording . Then we use Dante and record into Logic so we have everything multitracked out and it makes it really easy . We multitrack the rehearsal , the run through and the entire service so that we have multiple options . We also mic the entire room . From those , we pull them into Logic and go over everything . We keep everything that we can and overdub the rest . Usually , we can keep almost everything . It ' s been a long time since a ' live record ' is actually ‘ live ’. Now there are layers on layers to the track .
There ' s no wrong answer when choosing to record live or in a studio . Do what you think works best for your church , your goal for the sound of the song , the cost and the equipment that you have available .
3 . HAVE A STRONG MELODY [ Matt ] We remember great songs for their melody . Sometimes worship leaders and songwriters can be so focused on chord progressions , or small parts of the song that aren ' t as impactful , that the melody is lacking , and the song doesn ' t stick .
[ Andy ] “ Revelation Song ” is the same four chords the entire song . “ Reckless Love ” is the same chords the whole song . There are so many great songs that are the same progression the entire time . Making sure that your melody is strong . You can have the best lyrics in the world , but no one will remember it if the melody isn ' t good . That ' s where songs can go farther than sermons . I don ' t remember what our sermon last month was about . But I can sing three dozen worship songs from memory . Focus first on the melody , then the lyrics , then the music . Keeping this in mind can help you write songs that are more impactful for your church !