How I Prepare Worship Music For Special Liturgies

Last night, I was invited to perform the music for a charismatic healing mass liturgy for a neighboring diocese.  I consider myself to be charismatic and a traditionalist, so I aim to reconcile the two sides in my song and musical choices.

What follows are my notes as to my process in crafting the musical choices for this liturgy, both in song choices, and musical approaches.  I write this so that other aspiring worship musicians who play for liturgies can benefit, to see how one can aim for both charismatic and traditional approaches concurrently.

They had no songbooks, missalletes or hymnals.  So I had to craft my own songsheet.  I had to pay particular attention to the readings, the theme of the night (healing), the musical likes of the congregation, and the copyright permissions I had at my disposal.

The entrance hymn I chose was “Breathe On Me Breath of God“–an archaic, public domain hymn that should be more well-known.  I chose it for two reasons: first and foremost, because it was a charismatic healing mass, it was lyrically appropriate.  Other musicians have borrowed this phrase to create their own worship songs, but I thought it was high time to introduce to the original.  The second reason was because it was the best song in which I could take the Entrance Introit of the day and shoehorn it within the song itself (it’s public domain, so you can do these things).

After such, I tinkered with it in a manner that contemporized it a little, while keeping its integrity.  Deciphering the organ accompaniment’s notes I found the exact right musical chords to the hymn, and found a good tone by using my method of linking proper intent of the song with that of the chords. I like it.  I hope to introduce it through the podcast one day.

I wrote a Psalm melody in which the entire congregation embraced. My aim was to match the musical motif with the lyrics, but still be congregational friendly.  It was very loudly but reverently sung.

The Offeratory hymn was an old charismatic classic “Change My Heart O God” by Eddie Espinosa, requested by the leadership.  What I did differently was work in discovering a new, fresh approach to this song which I hadn’t done before.  I employed three alternate capos and came up with a different tone to this song that, in my mind, added more vulnerability and brokenness to the lyrics.

The Communion hymn was a worship song/Gregorian chant hybrid.  People don’t usually sing during Communion, so it is a good opportunity to use the Communion Antiphon text.  What I did was I crafted a melody straight from the Latin-based Roman Gradual, and found the guitar chords by fiddling around.  I then translated the Latin and that was verse 2.  The chorus was the alternate antiphon text in English; I had crafted an easy-to-sing complement to the first melody.  In short, there was an awesome silence during the reception of Communion, but towards the end, people were singing the chorus.

The final hymn was Come Holy Ghost, which I always use at the end of these masses.  There is a time of prayer and intercession after the liturgy, and this song leads in to the worship time afterwards.

The songsheet I had crafted included music notation for the opening song and the responsorial psalm.  Creating music notation on a songpage is actually quite easy to do once you get used to it; you use your music notation software, do a “print-screen” on your computer, and copy it into MSPAINT… yes, the super simple jpg-editing software that comes with every computer.  There is a way to adjust the notation so that it looks exactly as you’d want it, and from there you can put it in your Word document.

And after this, there were still moments of spontanaeity and surprise.  During the homily, the priest started singing Talbot’s “Come Worship The Lord“–he didn’t know that I knew that song by heart, and was able to accompany him on the spot.  The worship afterwards was also quite strong, as I was able to employ older songs from the 60s and 70s, Taize, a lesser-known Talbot song, and popular worship songs of today.

It was a late night, and I was very blessed to have helped out.  Thanks for reading.

Me at the diocesan healing mass some time ago.