It seems that in the world of ministry you need to write books and get them published in order to show you are successful. I would definitely subscribe to the maxim that everyone has at least one book in them. BUT On the other hand I would also make the argument that for a minister of music creating an album is equivalent to writing a book. 

Hear me out. 

First step is to write a song. But it has to be a good song with a hook filled melody seated upon chord voicing that oozes quality and taste. The lyrics must avoid cheesiness and cliche, being crafted and honed to convey interest and depth. Every syllable must pull its weight. The parts need to work together with the whole greater than the sum of those parts. A great song may have less than 100 words but move the listener in unimaginable ways. Oh, and it needs to be theologically sound and well grounded.

Writing (or maybe I should say, completing) such a song can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 15 years. Those are extremes but most songs arrive in a flash of inspiration followed by a period of hours, days or weeks sweating the details. 

To create an album you need about an hour’s worth of great songs. That equates to 10-12 songs on average. 

The Boss (Springsteen) would enter a studio with a huge number of songs (40+) then whittle them down to an album of material. In a similar vein, when I recorded Glory and Fire I sat beforehand with Neil (producer) and we went through a list of over 30 strong and well tested songs to find a theme that could guide our choices. Once we realised we were mostly considering songs around the person and work of the Holy Spirit, we were able to discard those not quite fitting with that theme and concentrate studio time and effort on just those which would make the album (in the studio Time = Money)

This then is a typical scenario for artistes. You have more songs than you need going in to the studio. And here’s the thing: that represents a huge amount of time spent in crafting songs. If we say a song takes a week to write (yes I know some take a lot less, but some a lot more) before heading into the studio you’ve spent probable half a year just on the songwriting side.

Then there is studio time. With Glory & Fire we budgeted 6-7 weeks for tracking, adding extra layers, adding vocals, finessing, fine tuning and then mixing. Once the mixes were done, a day in Abbey Rd to master. 

In total about 8 weeks spent and we have an album. 

If writing the songs is equivalent to writing a book, then the process of recording is the rough equivalent to typing it and editing it. Mastering is like Typesetting and layout. The final step is to place the completed work into the hands of another; a company who will take your finished item and produce it in quantity: CD duplication plants for the music, printing presses for the books. 

Your average book is going to use between 70 000 and 100 000 words; your average worship album only 1800. If a picture paints 1000 words then something similar could be said of the marriage between lyrics, melody and harmony which adds significantly to the weight of each word as it is delivered. Each song works  like a chapter in a book. And on an album carrying a theme, each song/chapter links to the next, building a thematic arc. The pacing and placement of each song is important. In our modern world of listening to random tracks we are possibly missing out on layers of meaning intended by the artiste in putting the tracks in that order. Perhaps this in part explains the resurgence of vinyl as a recorded medium where you put the vinyl on the platter and just sit back and enjoy the songs in the order the writer intended.

Releasing my latest album, Worthy (available on all streaming platforms worldwide), is, in my mind, equivalent to me writing and publishing a book. It has taken a similar amount of time and a far greater variety of creative skills. For this album I was songwriter, singer, studio engineer, keyboard player, guitarist, bass player, drummer, arranger, mix engineer, mastering engineer, producer (though track 9 a lot of those tasks were brilliantly handled by my good friend and co-writer, Luciano Manfrinato). What it boils down to is this: Worthy is a great book – worth your time to “read”. Let me know which chapter was your favourite.