So this is a long one, with more characters than most of my stories. Here's how it happened. I started writing a hymn on the piano perhaps back in 2010 or so. Although I liked the music, I just couldn't come up with any lyrics. "As we humbly bow before you" was all I could do. So I wrote to my friend Greg Scheer, asking for advice. Greg is a fantastic composer and an even better person. You should visit his sight and at least get to know him through his music and musings.
Well Greg said "Why don't you ask my friend Colin if he would write something". I was familiar with Colin Gordon-Farleigh through the songs he and Greg have written together and Greg posts on his music blog. I wrote off to Colin asking if he would be interested, and to my immense pleasure, he agreed. Shortly thereafter I had lyrics to my hymn, so I put the whole thing together, and before you know it, Colin had it published on his site.
Here is where Raise Your Hands beings: Colin wrote back with lyrics, and asked me to put music to it. Being the putz that I am, I started, but never got it finished. I think part of the reason is that I had written a song called Raise Your Hands just a few days earlier, and it just kind of freeked me out. But I also had a bit of time away from writing due to other pressing matters in my life. I've had this nagging guilt for the past year. Then last week Colin wrote to me and asked if I'd ever gotten it done. "No, but I'll do it by next weekend". Earlier this week I started over entirely with a more folky-tune on the guitar. But being unsure how Colin felt about that sort of music, I dug back in and finished up the original. And so, without further ado:
Raise Your Hands
Lyric ©2011 Colin Gordon-Farleigh
Music ©2012 Stephen G Brown
You're killing us--where's the second page?!
ReplyDeleteAlright - I'm working on it...
ReplyDeleteGrr. It'll be a bit. The version of Finale I am working with (SongWriter 2010) doesn't work quite right on OSX 10.8, to which I recently upgraded. So I have to upgrade Finale before I can get the pages re-printed. Plus I need to fix a couple measures where music is a bit messed up. Maybe later, maybe tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteUpgraded, not a newer version of Finale, and (I'm not sure why) a more sophisticated version (Finale PrintMusic 2011). Installed it, corrected some musical errors, recreated the sheet music so you can see both pages. What more do you want from me?
ReplyDeleteGorgeous!
ReplyDeleteIt's been good fun working with Stephen, and I hope that we will be able to work on a few more worship songs together, so keep on watching this space!
ReplyDeleteIf you are a little confused over the sudden name change half-way through the post don't worry! It's a rare occurrence when folks manage to avoid calling me 'Gordon' at some point!!!
How terribly embarrassing. Your name has been corrected, Colin.
ReplyDelete