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Week 16: I live for you
I’m finally catching up with uploading my ideas. When I get busy, I still write but blogging seriously falls by die wayside. Week 16’s idea started out just playing around on the piano. It’s really just a riff and an idea of a melody with some placeholder words at the moment, but I would love to develop this some more. Here’s just a simple recording with my phone.
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Week 15: Tot in ewigheid
This song has been so long in the making, I originally wrote the chorus back in 2010 and just haven’t found any verses that quite worked. I was inspired by John 1 where John writes about Jesus as the Word that was with God since the beginning and created everything. He will also be with God for eternity and this idea fit so nicely with my chorus.
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Hei’ge Gees – new worship song for Pentecost
I spent some time last week making a simple lyric video with video footage shot at home for a song we wrote as Manna for Pentecost. We set out to write a new worship song about what the Holy Spirit does for us on a daily basis. Something that could be used by congregations in a church period where there isn’t a lot of new Afrikaans option around. Hope it leads your heart in worship as you think of the comforter, instructor and life-giver, the Holy Spirit, in this time. This song is a co-write with Piet de Wet, Marissa Venter and Luan Swart.
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Manna: New co-writing project released
In 2018/ 2019 I got involved in a songwriting project at church. Just a couple of people who love Jesus and writing songs coming together to write. It was such an organic process of sharing what’s happening in our lives and then praying and writing together. By being part of this project a dream of mine – co-writing with other like-minded artists came true. We started recording the songs end of 2019 and the project was about 80% done when COVID hit. We continued recording from home last year and finally we had 6 songs completed by March this year. Most of March and April was consumed by getting the…
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My week attending The songwriting academy’s 555 Challenge
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Week 14: Beskermer van Israel
One of my favourite verses in the Bible is Ps 121:4 that says “Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”. This verse has calmed my racing thoughts many times assuring me that God is in control. So many times over the past year we’ve been bombarded with scary news and I’ve felt overwhelmed many times, but time and time again God has reminded me that He is not sleeping and is still in control. This gives me immense hope. I wrote the verse and chorus a few weeks ago and just didn’t get around to recording the idea. This week I completed the song and also…
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My week attending The songwriting academy’s 555 Challenge
I did the 555 Challenge course by https://thesongwritingacademy.co.uk/ this week. It was really inspiring and breathed some fresh air into my writing. I really enjoyed to see how down to earth the presenters were even after successful hit songs for super well-known artists like Dido, LeAnn Rhimes, Westlife and the list goes on. I learned so much this week and was reminded how easily we can connect globally these days with other songwriters/ producers etc. We had daily webinars and assignments and a community page to share and comment. I would highly recommend it. Thanks to Martin and the rest of the panelists for making this course available at such…
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Manna: New co-writing project released
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Week 12: Ek sal hier wag
This week’s song is about waiting. Not something I’m good at and there’s a lot of it going around. Waiting for schools to open (they finally did this week!), waiting for vaccines, waiting for normal life to return, the list goes on. And all the time we’re waiting, God is still working in us and around us. This is a prayer about submitting to God’s timing and recognising that He is working us into His bigger picture. He is creating a symphony requiring not only my little part, but all the parts to work together for the sake of beauty. In terms of songwriting techniques, there’s quite a bit of…
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Week 11: As die virus weg is
This week I wrote a fun song with my girls about all the things we’re going to do when the virus finally goes away! We used the loops on the iPad Garageband app again and had great fun arranging our song. Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash
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Week 10 – Hier by ons (vers)
We all have songs that we love while we’re writing them and then they turn back to pumpkins when dailight comes. This week I thought I finally had a verse for a great chorus I wrote awhile ago. But, alas, in dailight they did not seem such a good match after all. One thing I have learned, though, is that no lyric or song idea ever is a waste. It might just come back to you in a co-writing session as you search for a verse or some lyrics. Sometimes you can take lyrics and just write a new melody later and suddenly it works. So, here is this week’s…
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Week 9 – Bly in my
This week I wrote a prayer song or Taize-like short repetative song that is based on John 15 where Jesus said we should remain in Him to bear fruit. The beautiful verse that follows that is where Jesus says he loves us like the Father has loved him. What a comfort that is in a time such as this. The words are from Jesus’ perspective so it’s more of a ministry moment song or for personal worship. The challenge of this type of song is to keep it simple. I like to write it with a little climax in the second part of the verse that provides contrast, but traditionally…
