"What is Music?" Video Transcript

Video Transcript: What is Music:

Welcome to our second session how to be an effective worship leader. The question that we're trying to answer in this section are there's really two questions. What is music? Why is it so powerful? If you look at the elements of a worship service, you have music, and I don't know, some churches have maybe 25% of their worship. Service is music, some at 30 - 40 - 50, sometimes 60% of the time, most of the time is dedicated to music. Then there's the sermon that takes quite a bit of the time. There's some Bible reading, of course, there's an offering. There's prayers, various places, there might be a testimony of sorts. But really the bulk of It is music. Now these are all just ways of communicating and talking to God and talking to each other. That's really what a worship service is. It's kind of a dialogue between God and people and each other and so on. But why over the centuries has music taken such a big chunk of that? I mean, when we go to a baseball game, we just watch baseball. And that's what it is. And maybe at the seventh inning, they sing one song or at the beginning, they sing the national anthem, or at a soccer game. You know, there's a little bit of music here and there at halftime sometimes. But, but, but this worship service for some reason, all of a sudden, we just spend a lot of time singing together, even even in our cultures that don't sing as much anymore used to be people saying whenever they got together, we still spend, you know, a good chunk of the worship service with this language. Music. So I wonder why that is what is music?

And why does it do what it does? A number of years ago, I was I was on sort of a weekend getaway with my wife. We were living in Chicago, and we were going to this place called Shipshewana. Shipshewana has quilting, and it's got crafts, all the things that a guy really wants to do. It's got a flea market. And so anyway, so I'm going there with my wife, this is where my wife wants to go. And she's driving, I'm in the passenger seat, and I'm just enjoying the ride. You know, I have a couple days off, and I'm looking out the fields, the cows going by as we're just driving, just sort of in a relaxed mood. And all of a sudden, these two questions hit me what is music and why does music do what it does? Why is it so powerful? And it's I'm kind of an analytical, philosophic kind of person. And so I started thinking about it for five minutes and looking at the cows going by, and my wife was driving. 

And I decided, well, I'll ask my wife, she's a music major. I mean, her parents spend a lot of money to send her to school for four years, I should ask her. So I looked over at her and I said, hey, I've been pondering a question, what is music? And then I asked her specifically, why does music do what it does? And after four years of college and the money and learning and the classes and doing well, this whole thing called music, this was her answer. Why does music do what it does? grants or was it just does? Music just does. It's just powerful. It's just emotional. Well, that answer didn't satisfy me. So for the next while, that whole trip, you know, we're looking at the quilts. We go into the flea market and all these things. And while we're doing that, and we're enjoying our time together, and the back of my mind, I'm like, What is music? What is this? What is it? What does it do what it does? At night, I'm thinking about we're at a restaurant, I'm thinking what is music and I'm analyzing I'm trying to figure out exactly what it is and after two and a half day I figured out what it was. are you  interested to two and a half days. This is what I figured out. 

What is music? Why does it do what it does? Music is a recognized pattern. Two and a half days took me to figure out that music is a recognized pattern. And there's it's a pattern of, it's actually three patterns. And that's why it's so powerful. First of all, it's a recognized pattern of words. When you hear certain words, you recognize them as a song, if I were to say to you, Amazing Grace, how you could feel it, how sweet the sound, the saved a wretch like me. I mean, with very little prompting all of a sudden, we know how I mean, we know these words individually, but somehow when we put a couple of them together, it's a pattern we recognize from our past. Hey, I know that so I know. I know. Some of you are taking this class are not from the United States, maybe Amazing Grace isn't one that you know very well, but Spanish. If I were to say Yo, tengo go so go. So in me You would know Corazon is the next slide. I've got the joy joy down in my heart. 

Or some of you I know are taking this class here in the Philippines. And if I were to start out Salama, sayo King vanina. He Sue's you would know that because you know those, I mean, the Mennonite just start saying those words, you know what the rest of the words are? It's a pattern that speaks to you. And it's a pattern that sticks to you. So music in first of all is a recognized pattern of words. But if I were to say, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, it's still not a song yet. It's just it's just words. So there's a second pattern. There's a pattern of beats. It's not amazing grace, how sweet the sound. It's amazing grace how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found Was blind. But now I see there's a specific beat to amazing grace. It's actually three four times. It's like a waltz 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 Amazing Grace, how sweet the stuff that saved the data, data data. Okay? So there's this pattern of words that we recognize. But now there's added to that pattern words, a pattern of beat and you recognize that beat and beat really gives it a lot of its flavor. 

If I were to sing Amazing Grace, straight it's just a straight thing. All the words are landing on the downbeat. If you're tapping your foot, all the words are coming down. It's very easy to say, if I was to gospel it up a little bit, it would be same pattern gives it a different feel. I was raised, you know, I was born in the 50s. But I was raised pretty much in the 60s and in the 60s, everything changed. transistor radios made radios cheap and so kids started buying them and we could listen to our own music. And we started listening to what's called rock and roll music. And we'd buy a few records and we'd play them and we play them in our room because record players were cheaper at that time. Before you had one record player in the living room and the father or the mother controlled what was listened to, but now as a kid, you had your own, and you can listen to what you want it and you'd be playing your record. And I remember my father coming into my room and saying, turn down that noise. It was noise to him. And that's what any music that you don't understand is going to sound like noise. If we were to go back in time, and we were to listen to King David sing his greatest hits. We would walk away saying that was just noise because it's not going to sound anything like the music that we have. But beats makes a huge difference. And the whole rock and roll thing. 

It was just a syncopation thing. It's really not that different. Our play Amazing Grace straight, I would just go just singing on the downbeat. It's very simple. But contemporary music likes to sing on the offbeat. So if you're if you're if you're if you're tapping your foot zone playing the main words come right on that downbeat. It's very easy, but contemporary music wants to play on the upbeat and what I mean by that but upbeat is when your accounting would be 1 - 2 - 3 - 4. That's the downbeat or the upbeat is one and two, and three, and four. And so the end is a lot harder to sing on that because you don't know exactly where it's going to be. So in order to sing the end or the offbeat, you can't just play. You have to play the eighth note. So I'm gonna play instead of one.

I'm going to play one and we're going to All down so it's gonna sound like this. Now playing the same exact chord as there was before, but I'm just playing one instead of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 doesn't sound like it. So all of a sudden it sounds like a totally different song but it's the exact same songs the same melody is the same chord but the beat makes it sound different. So there's all kinds of different beats all kinds of styles of music. And a lot of it isn't the words. It's not that the chords, but it's the feet and that's a style. And that's a recognized pattern. And when we hear that pattern, and we're familiar with it, we heard it in the past, all of a sudden, you know, we go I know that song. So music is a recognized pattern of words. It's a recognized pattern of beat, but it isn't music yet is I mean, if we just have words in a beat, it'd be Amazing Grace, so sweet, the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was locked but now when found blind, but now I see, we don't have a song yet. What do we have? We have a poem. write poetry is record a recognized pattern of words, the same words every time you don't just change the words, the same pattern of words every time and then the Words are set to a beat or rhythm. And that's what a poem is or poetry. So what do we need to finally transform words and beat into music?

Well, I think you know, we need pitch, or we need notes. But, but not just any notes because as I speak, Amazing Grace, I'm using a pitch. I could say Amazing Grace up here. I can say Amazing Grace way up here. Or I can say Amazing Grace right down here. I can use many different pitches as I'm talking, but somehow we don't recognize those pitches as music. The reason we don't recognize those pitches as music is because we have a long history of music and what pitches count as music on the keyboard. We have at Keeps. There's actually only 12 keys there's actually only eight we have octaves. And octaves are different notes, but they sound like they're the same. And the reason they sound the same is when I play down here. You can't hear it specifically but but but to make that sound, I'm using a little bit of this. I'm using a little bit of this, I'm using a little bit of this. I'm using a little bit of this all the way up. And all those are called overtones. And so when I play one note, those little notes are being played in your in the background. You can't hear him specifically.

So that when I play up here, it sounds familiar. Sounds like it's the same note sorta, they're octaves apart. So there's basically eight notes, don't Ray me and we saw we have These eight notes and we call those keys. This is the key of C. And in a key, we make more patterns out of out of these notes. And we arrange them. Here's the first note, the eighth. Here's the third note of the eighth. Here's the fifth note of the eight, and that's harmony. So we got the first, the third, and the fifth, and that makes the harmony and we recognize that there's a nice, nice sound. If we take the second the third note, so we got 1 - 3 - 5. If we take this one, and we go one note up, becomes a sustain note. 

It wants to go somewhere. It's like gotta finish this somehow. That's nice so this this the second this third 1 - 2 - 3 doe ray me me as a lot of power for emotion because I can sustain it's his again hurts a little bit he wants to go somewhere he wants to finish. If I take that same note and I go one half step down now it's minor what is minor feel like you know after a years of listening to songs, that sound is associated with sadness thinks Oh The sky is this day and then the sun comes out. Okay then if I go back to the major I feels a lot better. Life is good. I can't wait To the evening, you know, all sudden you start feeling good. And then it goes sour again. You feel gloomy. Do you see the the emotion and the reason why we have an emotion with all of that is our whole life. Those patterns and those sounds have been associated with sad things or with happy things. And over time we don't even realize it. But those patterns of speak emotion to us they recognize patterns, okay? Because music has so many recognized patterns, they become very sticky. 

There's a pattern of words pattern of bead pattern of the pitch in the music, and all three of them converge. And, and it's like because there's these patterns and they're recognizable, they stick to us. So music sticks to us. It sticks to it sticks to everything connected to you, thus making those things stick to you too. So not only does a song stick to you, but the stuff that's happening around you when you listen to the song. So all the songs that I listened to when I was a teenager, okay? When I hear one of those songs on the radio comes on the radio, all of a sudden, I'm a teenager again, I have some of those same feelings. And some of the faces people I haven't thought about in a long time all of a sudden, or maybe it was a concert that I went to all of a sudden the things around the song, stick to it events, the emotions that you felt originally when that song was played, maybe some of these songs are in a movie and in the movie had all this emotion after the Titanic movie came out, people saying that song, My Love never ends, never ends or something like that. People started singing that song Because of the three hours of emotion that that movie brought to people, all of a sudden, if you just hear the song, all that stuff, all the, the roller coaster ride on that movie every, all those emotions come back to you, the people that you hang out with, and certainly in our relationship to God to we, you know, we learn a song when you're little and it gets connected to God and over time, it becomes more and more powerful. because music is so sticky. 

People have been using it to communicate complex emotions for centuries. These have been movies, we use them in church, we use them in love stories, and over over time, certain songs and certain chord progressions. Just speak to us. You know, sometimes when you listen to a new song on the radio, and it's the first time you Hear it, and it just speaks to you. The reason it speaks to you is because it has elements of old songs you're not even aware it's taken borrowing from that song, this song over here and that song over here, and you already have emotional ties to those songs. And now this new song just brings together all those emotions from all those songs. Okay, we went through the 88 thing because music is so recognizable and sticky, it's incredible repeatable. How many songs do I know my son has like 8000 songs on his iPad? 

And and he seems to know all the words people listening. You know, it's so easy to listen to music these days and people listen to song after song after song. I was on a mission trip a month ago and I went with a bunch of young people and we were on the bus and they all started singing Disney songs from all the different Disney movies of last 25 years. And yeah, I saw that maybe once with my kids but these kids watch them over and over again and they could sign them. And they know all the words. Music is sticky and it sticks to you, it sticks in your mind and all the emotions associated with it. Because music is so recognizable and repeatable. It has the potential to create layers of connection. As the layers pile up, they become more and more meaningful and begin to emotionally tug on your heart. When I grew up, I grew up in a traditional church and one of the songs that I learned was near still near. It's a It's a beautiful hymn.

It goes something like this Guess what I grew up with that song was just one of the Psalter hymnal songs and it was like, I mean, it was okay. I had no special connection to it was just one of the many songs that we sang. I grew up with it and I sang it often in church, and then I became a pastor and I went to a church. That had that same hymnal. And so I was in charge of picking the songs and I picked songs. And over the years, I ended up picking that song. I don't know why I just some reason I liked it. And so I had memories of connecting to it in my first church. Then I went to my second church, I planted a church in Vancouver, and we decided to go strictly contemporary. So I didn't sing that song for many years. And, you know, we just did contemporary songs. And then we moved to Chicago. And I mentioned already, in the last video that I taught my kids the hymns. Eventually they were teenagers taught him the hymns taught him the harmony part. And one of the songs we taught them was. So we taught him that song we taught him the harmonies. 

So now, you see, you know, I grew up with it was nothing special. It's just one of the many songs Then I picked out that song I have memories in my first church with it. And then we put it away that I've memories of teaching my kids this song and and the emotions that went with that. And they learned that they could sing the harmony parts and so on. Then I remember during those times, we had my father and we had some old friends from my first church over and we decided to have an impromptu service just in our home. We had like 50 people in our home, I asked my dad to share a little message. And we started singing songs, and somebody picked near still near so he's saying near still near. And in the middle of the song, my wife's best friend who was visiting with us with her family. She just walked ran out of the room, bawling her eyes out. And it was like, Okay, so my wife went after her. And it turns out that her parents were both dying in the hospital at the same time.

And and it was hard to communicate with them. And and one of the things that They did that, that that brought some new life to their parents as they were dying is the same hymns. And one of the songs that they sang on the special songs that they sang was near, still near, and the nurses and the doctors and everyone came by when they sang that song, and everyone had a little tears in their eyes. So what do we say it, the emotion of all that came back to her, and, and just that song became very, very heavy.

Well, then my wife's mother and father when they were not doing well, and the father suddenly died. So we had to go out to Washington State and we had the funeral, and one of the song was there, still there. And then my wife's mother died two months later, and we had a funeral again, then one of the song that we say, was near still there. My mother died three years ago she fell down some steps and broke her neck. And one of the special songs that we did at the funeral was near still near. I wanted to do it in a special way for her so I sort of wrote a different melody for it goes like this. The last verse is The song standard out is just one of the songs that I sang as a kid, just one of the many songs that I sing over and over and over then my first church, I would pick the side for whatever reason, I don't know I mean, the words never really grabbed hold of me. 

Didn't really grab hold it to to me until I started teaching my kids that song, and then the photos of my my in laws and my own mother and over over time you see a song just as a song, but over time, all those memories, all those connections, all those people, all that emotion gets piled on top of each other. Remember arguing with my father about music and he was saying how the hymns are just superior to the contemporary songs. And I would say to my dad, we have a dad, you know, he'd say, I just love the words, the words of the hymns. They're just so great. And a lot of the contemporary songs, you know, the song, you know, they're not that great. And, you know, some of the older people will say their 7 - 11 songs, you sing seven words 11 times in a row. By the way, when he said that, I said, Oh, you mean like the Hallelujah chorus, just Hallelujah, many times in a row. But, so I said to him, a lot of the contemporary songs, they come right out of the Bible. I mean, some of the words are really good. There's some songs that aren't that good. There's hymns that aren't that good with the words. And there's some contemporary sites that aren't that good, but there's some songs that are really I mean, the words are perfect, they come right straight on the Bible. 

So what are you talking about? And we would argue and talk and finally what I figured out what he was saying what what he was really saying is, look, I I have a lifetime of memories associated with those hymns. You can sing a really great new song for me, but I have no history with those. And I've lived a long time. So I don't have time to create a lot of history with those songs. So, I think that's part of it, that songs become really, really, really, really powerful. Because over time, they just get heavier and heavier with the emotion that it picks up. And so in church, we have to think about that. So music is a powerful language in our worship service. It carries emotion and it carries history of emotion carries the emotion of people in their relationships and all the things that have happened. carries history. It can be done as a group, it can be done in unison or in parts. unison has one kind of feeling parts. People are doing different things, but it all somehow blends together. It's a perfect picture of what the body of Christ is. It can speak for God. 

God speaks to us in the song or it can speak for the congregation we're responding back to God and we're doing it together. We praise you God, we do it all together. Music is the only thing that that you can have people doing different parts, and yet it all blends if we had a room full of people just randomly talking and saying their own thing it wouldn't fit together but music with harmony and and sometimes polyphonic. where people are seeing different parts and yet the music blends it all together. It can speak for each person in the congregation, we can all be singing, but it's I praise you and the person next to you is saying I praise you. We're praying together. We're praising together we're praying, praising individually. But like in all language, languages is, is only as effective as people know the language. I mean, you know, I'm not that great at Spanish. Okay, I A few songs, I can sing a few songs, I spent a year in the Philippines, I spent a year in bucola. City, maybe some of you are from there. And I learned a little bit of ilango I learned some Tagalog songs. 

But you know, I'm not that good. I know just a few songs. And if I was to really get something out of those languages, I should learn them. The more I know them, the more I'm going to get out of it. So in this course, you're going to learn all the parts of music, if you're if you're a worship director, or you're on the worship team, or you're the pastor, you need to know what all these parts are. This is, you know, 60% 50% of our worship services is music. And if you're leading music, you should know what these things are. What does music do? How does all the different parts of the harmony parts and how do we teach these things? How do we teach people to play instruments? How do we teach people to sing harmony?  

How do we help Do we create a culture of music so it's not just you know, the three or four talented people we happen to find and they come up and they lead the singing and and everyone just does the best they can and we'll see you next week and we'll do the best we can next week. You know a new person comes to your church they don't know your songs, how they going to learn these songs. If you don't know harmony, you know if you know harmony, it just blesses you and your worship experience, you know the language a little bit more. So who's going to who's going to teach you?

We're also going to learn how to teach these parts and think different parts of music to the congregation so they can get more out of the worship service. How do you teach 50 people in your church how to play the guitar. Want to spend 20 minutes so I can teach you how to play the guitar in 20 minutes, you'll be able to play the guitar in 20 minutes you'll learn how to play it better. It'll take three weeks. I can teach someone how to play the piano 20 minute We're gonna have a 20 minute video. And at the end of that, you're gonna know how to play the piano. Now, now Well, there's plenty more to learn. But harmony is not as difficult as, as you might think. I know for some, you don't even know what harmony is, it's not going to be a problem. We can learn how to maybe you know all these things, but you don't know how to teach the average person these things.

We're going to learn how you learn how to create a culture of worship. So it's not just something we do on Sunday, but it's a language that we use in our homes, in our play at work wherever we go. This language of music is helping us in our worship of God.