community , because I work a lot with the church and with Christian music community , but I also work a lot outside of it as well . And if I could just challenge our worship leaders , our worship writers and our worship producers , the people creating the music , to not just go for the status quo because it ' s easy , it ' s not hard to have a church nowadays put out a record .
We have the technology . We have great songwriters in our churches . So , it ' s easy to put something out that just kind of feels the same as everything else , but that ' s where we ' ll fall is when the creativity disappears , when innovation disappears , when our ability and our willingness to take risks disappears . Yeah . For anybody who may be listening to this or reading this or whatever format it will be in , I just really want us to challenge and dig in and go deeper on an artistic level than we ever have before !
[ WM ] Well said ! You have just launched a quite elaborate Songwriter training program . Tell us how this works for everyday songwriters ?
[ Seth ] We have a few different offerings . Our main thing that we have through the academy is a program that I created called Song Chasers . Song Chasers really at its core , teaches people how to write songs that resonate with a mass audience . So that means it ' s about commercial songwriting , and we ' ve had a lot of worship leaders go through it and take it and their songs have gone from , I would say from good to great in a pretty dramatic way . Part of my passion is for helping worship leaders write better songs for their churches because if they ' re going to get up on stage and lead them , they better be as good as they possibly can because it ' s a high calling .
In Song Chasers , we give the aspiring and up and coming songwriter tools that they need to craft amazing melodies , to craft amazing lyrics , to produce great sounding demos , and then to also help dive into what do you do with the song after it ' s finished .
We dive a little bit into the publishing side as
X O ’ Connor
well . It is a … you might call it a genre agnostic thing . But I really believe at its core , a great song is a great song . The genre really just is a place to put it on the shelf , which shelf is something going to be consumed on or which niche it will be consumed on ? We do have very specific advice targeted to worship leaders in it , but we ' re teaching the universal unchanging principles of what makes a hit song , a hit song .
[ WM ] Any new notable projects you are starting to work on now at the studio ?
[ Seth ] Man , a lot . It ' s a busy season . We ' ve got For King & Country in to work on a new record with them . I would say their music , it ' s not worship music , but it ' s worshipful . Yeah . So , they ' re awesome . We ' ve got , let ' s see , Francesca Battistelli is in with us tomorrow . We ' ve got the Newsboys as we ' ve had Tate in here for the last few days working on some new music for their records . So it ' s good to dive back in with those guys . And then we ' ve got some things outside . We ' ve got some country and pop artists that we ' re working with as well too . Those are kind of the main projects right now .
We ' ve also got a new single coming out with Christine D ’ Clario , who ' s amazing in the Spanish worship community . We are putting out a song that I wrote with her , Chris Tomlin and Jason Ingram . Yeah . A lot of good stuff going on .
[ WM ] Seth , thank you for what you do for the Worship music community and for being willing to train songwriters as well !
[ Seth ] You are quite welcome , it was good getting to know you and your readers !
86 May 2021
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