#music

on

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.

on

If one album in 2025 wasn’t enough it was followed by a single release and a whole new album.

In June of 2025 my much loved big sister went in for a serious heart operation for which the success rate was high. Despite the optimism about her recovery she didn’t come around and was declared dead on 7th June.

We all have different ways of coping with grief. Mine was to pour myself into a song which I reframed for my sister. ‘Play it over again’ was released as a single in late July. Please do have a listen but be warned it is edgy and raw.

In the meantime I had been working on a collection of worship songs called Encounter. Two of the songs had made it onto recordings previously but needed reworking largely from scratch to bring them up to date. Most of the others had existed in demo form for some time but had never been released on an album, though had been either performed by me or used in worship. So cue a major rebuild with fresh sounds, tightened timing, and new vocals. Finally one song was a brand new co-write with my mate Andi Foster which featured him on acoustic and vocals with Peter Welly contributing some ambient drums.

In amongst all these great songs is a fabulous jewel – ‘Jesus how we love You’. It’s the song that first drew the attention of Nigel Coltman and Geoff Shearn at CopyCare back in the early 1990s. Delicately sung by Andrea Almeida its qualities are timeless. This edition is true to the original and includes a very Gilmour-esque guitar outro.

As ever if you have questions on processes of writing songs or recording them, then please do drop a comment below.

You can listen to all my music on any streaming platform worldwide.

on

As I write this blog, I am excited that my latest album called Two Worlds Kissed – Part1: The Season is now out and available on all streaming and downloading platforms worldwide. As it happens it is a Christmas album. I want to tell you the story of how it creatively formed.

2022 had been a busy musical year for me culminating in the release in 2023 of 3 albums, 1 album of story songs and 2 albums of worship songs. A total of 32 tracks were honed, given spit and polish and released on those 3 albums. Even so, there were still more than enough unreleased tracks for a further one or maybe two albums. So, I collated some demos and began to listen with a view to putting out another album in 2024.

I did this in the tail end of 2023. Two things popped out at me: Firstly, there were some significant tracks relating to the cross, both the work of Christ through it, and our response to it. Secondly, I realised that my previous Christmas album, released in 2007, was losing its freshness and I wanted to find a new creativity for future festive seasons.

I was undecided as to a direction for any production but with time my side I waited and pondered, and I prayed as we headed in to 2024.

In early February we went off on a skiing holiday to Grindelwald in Switzerland. I love skiing and I love the mountains – the vistas and the fresh air. They are such inspiring spaces. It was whilst skiing one day I had what I can only describe as a God moment, an epiphany, and all my ponderings to that point came into sharp focus in the realisation that both Christmas and Easter represented moments in human history when the earth we live on was kissed by heaven; moments that changed everything. The impact on me was so profoundly moving that I nearly lost it on the piste – I had to get quickly to the side to recover. Whist I paused there, a lyric and a melody rose up and I began singing it out, hastily grabbing my phone to capture the result.

I now had a clear creative urgency and direction to sort the demos which could fit with such themes. There were only 3 possible songs. It was therefore time to get busy in the studio and get creating. As I poured myself into songwriting I found some fresh ideas in the Christmas story – ideas which had not been presented before, or at least had not been presented in this way and definitely not by me. Before I knew it, I had an album’s worth of ideas ready for full production, but the ideas did not stop flowing and I shifted focus from Christmas to Easter. More new songs came. But excitedly as I revisited some songs written decades ago (but which had never aired in public), I found their content and style absolutely fitted.

It then became a process of completing and polishing what was there. That epiphany had been so strong, I knew that I had to bring my ‘A game’ to every aspect of the process. A dodgy lyric line – rewritten and/or re-sung. A poor guitar part – replayed. Piano parts, strings parts, organ parts – all honed. Editing was down to the smallest of details. I wasn’t representing me – I was representing something far greater, something that required my utmost for his highest.

So, Part 1 is out. It has already invigorated many, from the youngest – dancing to the groovy tracks, to the oldest – who reckon it has a melody. The feedback has been so positive. It is spurring me on to make ‘Two Worlds Kissed – Part 2: The Reason’ even more EPIC. Another 10 songs (at least) which this time will bring the death of Jesus into stark relief. Spoiler alert – his death is not the end 😊

I hope you enjoy Part 1 in the meantime – get it on your Christmas playlists. Sing along in your car. Get hold of the lyrics – they should be on this website www.davewellington.org in the resources section very soon.  

Blessings

Dave