of the things that I love , probably the thing that I love the most in the process , is coming up with all the harmonies , the countermelodies , the layers , and I think that ' s something I ' m good at .
And so , I just have a blast doing it . I could spend hours doing harmonies and writing weird harmony parts and stuff that so many people probably never even hear in the mix . But I went off on my own and just recorded these vocal arrangements . And then he kind of went through and copied them , added his own spin to them and came up with some parts on his own as well . So that was a really fun process .
[ WM ] Seth , your studio - Full Circle Music - has participated in producing scores of hit worship songs . What are some common elements you have found that are in those popular worship songs ?
[ Seth ] Yeah , it ' s a great question . I think nowadays worship , as worship as a genre really kind of has those hallmarks of what makes a really great worship song . And I think a lot of that hinges on , and this is totally my opinion . Songwriting is very subjective , but I think the songs that resonate the most with people and the ones that seem to work really well , follow the “ KISS ” rule , the “ keep it simple stupid “ rule . I think both musically , melodically , vocally , they ' re not too hard to sing . The range is not crazy . I think it ' s when people try to start getting too cool or too cute or too clever with songs is when they lose the congregation , and it works maybe okay for their home churches , but just keeping the top line really simple , making sure the music serves the melody .
And as always , I think the lyric has to be special . It has to be saying something new about the same thing . It ' s the same God that we ' re writing songs to . It ' s the same God that we ' re serving , but the great news is with him , he ' s an infinite well of creativity and inspiration . And I always tell people in our academy when we ' re teaching songwriting , that you never have to worry about writer ' s block , especially when you ' re writing worship music because I believe we serve an all-powerful , all-creative , all-infinite God . And it ' s just an incredible thing to be able to write those songs and then see the church bring them to life . I always encourage people , write from a place of authenticity , vulnerability and rawness . We always say that people will resonate with what ' s real .
Nowadays , it can be easy to come in and try to contrive a worship song . When in reality , I believe that writing worship music is kind of one of the highest callings and we should really dig in and go as deep as we can . What is God actually saying to us ? What are we learning right now ? What does our church need to hear on a local level and on a global level ? And really , if I could say anything to the worship writing