I have discovered, after teaching and researching on voice and choir for many years, that many people do not hear pitch, (pitch color) tone quality, (tone color) melodic movement, dynamics and harmonic progression. And that has nothing to do with their ears. When they first heard music, unfortunately, they were intuitively drawn to many other elements such as sounds, sights, color and movement, but they missed the most important thing, the finer elements of music. Music to them is only pleasant “background” noise that produces good “feelings” coupled with the pleasurable chemical process in their bodies when they admire the singers’ glamour, beauty, riches, and fame plus the packaging and promotional fiasco. (They wish they could be like the singers/musicians – a groupies’ mentality.) So they could listen to music of their choice all day long without getting tired. I could never do that. In the extreme cases, some people simply cannot tell the difference between the sounds of falling pots and pans in the kitchen and the beautiful music in the best symphony halls of the world. Continue reading →

WORSHIP AND CHRISTIAN MUSIC  —  by Joshua Law  CCM, Challenger 1990

True Worship

When we go to church on Sundays, what do we expect from the worship experience? Most of us expect to be lectured to when we get there. We have learnt to become passive, and quietly pay our religious dues by enduring a boring but necessary religious ceremony. We do not want to admit it but deep inside, we tend to believe that the church experience is mainly for the good of our children and it is a form of work that we do to gain salvation.1 The worship service is rarely exciting and meaningful. We know some where in our hearts that the message of the gospel is powerful and is the source of our happiness, wisdom and strength. We heard many great blessings from the Bible delivered through the pulpit, but we don’t seem to get these blessings in real life. It seems as if they are all true in theory only. So we slowly come to the conclusion that all these blessings are not for the present life,2 and may be, if we attend church often enough and be a good person, we will have a better future life in Heaven.3 So therefore most of us, in order to find meaning in church activities, resorted to socialize and making friends and planning programs around the most superficial of Christian themes.4 Going to church at its best means to have a sense of belonging, to make friends, to be lectured to or to live the good life. To have fellowship means no more than drinking coffee together and chit-chatting until there is nothing to chit-chat about. Hymn singing is often dull, dragging, and exhausting. All in all, the church experience rarely bring us any excitement, much needed nurture, discipline, and growth. Continue reading →