This morning in the shower I realized I ought to (and would like to) write a worship song for Easter. A basic verse and concept for a chorus came to me so I did my best to remember them until I could write them down somehow. For all my trying, though, I still forgot most of it by the time I got to work. However, as I started to sketch out ideas in Finale NotePad, the initial idea came back to me and I developed it into perhaps 2/3 of a song.
When I got home from work today I tried to play and sing the song for the first time, and I found that it was not in a great key for me. I was able to hum the part quietly while working out the melody because it was in the lower portion of my range, but when it came time to sing out, the notes were difficult to project. I could sing an octave up but found that it was at the upper edge of my comfortable, non-falsetto range. Because of this I decided to move up a fourth, from the key of G major to the key of C major. I took the chord chart I had written up and transposed the chords over.
With the song (or part of a song anyway) transcribed into a more comfortable key, I sat down at our piano and played through what I had done so far. It went much more smoothly, and I found a couple of spots where the chords I had written didn't flow as well as I would have liked so I swapped them out for different ones. In addition, I developed a better chord progression for the chorus that incorporated a descending bassline as the musical peak of the song is reached.
With a better idea of how the song needs to progress, I discarded the initial arrangement and have begun composing the song in PreSonus Studio One which allows me to approach it a little differently and offers more tonal variety. As I near completion of a first draft, I'd like to record a demo of it, and preparing the arrangement in Studio One now will save me a lot of time later.
It has been quite a while since I wrote any original music so this has been refreshing and fun. I'm glad I felt the nudge to take up this project and glad I went with it.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a worship song for Easter, so it (hopefully) conveys the hope of the Gospel in the context of Jesus' death and resurrection. The song's working title is "Mercy Flows" but that may change.