The Crwth

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, and I’m too lazy to check. But I was doing some research into my last name and I found out that my last name means something close to “the player of the Crwth.” The Crwth? Never heard of it. It sounds like something made up by Lovecraft, but it’s a real thing. Turns out a Crwth is a musical instrument. It kind of looks like a lute, or a guitar, depending on how you want to stretch it. It looks like this:

According to some of the things I've read, it’s a Welsh instrument, popularly used in music for about a thousand years. It was played with a bow, like a violin, but it had a flat bridge, so you couldn't play it one note at a time like a violin. That means it was probably used primarily to accompany a singer or another instrument. It’s probably the violin that killed off the Crwth because you could play melodic lines, so it was a more versatile instrument.

I thought I’d buy a Crwth and learn to play it. Makes sense, right? But the cheapest one I could find is a box Crwth for about $500 dollars. A real Crwth, carved out of a large piece of wood, can run you about $3000, and usually has to be ordered from England.

Yikes.

If you don’t know me personally, it is fitting that my name is about a person who plays a musical instrument. I have been involved with music almost my entire life. And it’s a big part of my heritage. My grandfather was a string player. He played violin, or “fiddle” as he would have called it, as well as guitar and banjo. The story goes, in the family, that he tried out for the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee, but the pay wasn’t enough so he refused and took a job at the factories in Detroit instead. It’s stunningly frustrating to think about. I can totally relate to his situation. Music don’t much pay de bills.

So I’m thinking about taking my name back to the original. It would be something like “McCrwther.” I love that. But I wouldn’t really change my name. Another way of pronouncing it is the last name “Crowder,” which is from the same root, so David Crowder and myself might be related. Ya know. Talent running in the family and all. Heh heh. Maybe I can use that as a cheap excuse to get him to record one of my songs.

I’m reminded at this point of sir Michael Jackson, who said, and I quote: “You keep dreamin’”


Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Interplay

 I’ve been listening to a lot of different music lately and have been trying to pay attention to what grabs me while I’m listening.

You’d think the words would be the thing, but the words have more potential to push me away than draw me in. As long as the words aren’t so stupid or corrupt that they drive me away from a song, I find that I’m looking for something more complex.

Even in the simplest songs that have more than one instrument, there is a combining of rhythms and tones that are crisscrossing, moving and changing. And I find that this causes a really strong response in me both emotional and, I think, physical.

It can be something classical, like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I have a recording by Dmitry Sitkovetsky where he arranges this keyboard music for strings. It is, in my opinion, some of the best music ever recorded. Hearing it on strings is almost like hearing it move from two dimensions into three. I always go back to listening to it over and over again because the interplay in the music is endlessly compelling and profound.

But it doesn’t have to be classical. The music of James Brown or Tower of Power, Thelonius Monk or Chick Corea. The complexities of the drum programming that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produce. David Crowder’s melodic twists, stringing out against changing patterns. The counter melodies that some country and folk and pop artists craft between the instruments and voice.

There is a math to all of this that rises above numbers on a page or musical notes on a staff. It’s like finding the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.

There’s an old hymn from the 1800's called “This Is My Father’s World.” And there’s a line in the song that says, "This is my Father's world, and to my list'ning ears all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.”

This “music of the spheres” is a very old idea, basically that the planets and universe figuratively “sing” with their interplay throughout creation. And I find a similarity there, between how I feel when I look up at the night sky and see the stars and planets, and how I feel when I hear the interplay of music.

I don’t know if you can relate to any of this, but I felt like trying to express it. I think I have not done it very well, but some things are not done much justice with words.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Church Songs

I have been involved in writing music now for over 30 years. It started when I was a kid, before I had even learned an instrument. I would use two cassette decks and sing my song ideas onto them. I’d sing a melody line on one, then play it back while recording on the other and add parts as I went along, back and forth, trying to piece things together.

For many of us who are caught up in this behavior of song writing, it is somewhat pathological. When a song starts humming in the mind, you either get it out or you get a little crazy. It’s hard to concentrate on other things. It’s like having a radio playing loudly in one ear while someone tries to talk to you in the other. It really is a compulsion, and it can be a good one if properly managed.

I’ve lost track of how many songs I’ve written over the years. People ask me sometimes, and I honestly have no idea. It’s in the hundreds. I’ve recorded a few things along the way, but I’ve never been very happy with the results. Some friends are helping me do some things now with new gear that has finally become financially accessible. But it’s still very, VERY challenging to produce anything even half way decent. My talent has some pretty severe limits.

Over the past fifteen years I’ve primarily written songs for use in churches. For those of you who don’t go to church, this might seem a little odd. I know when I was a kid, I thought all those songs we sang in church had always just sort of been there. Didn’t God write those songs? But the fact is that song writing for Church use is a long and honorable tradition. Artists have done it all throughout history, people like Bach and Handel, John Newton, Charles Wesley and W.C. Handy. And Hank Williams Sr.

Hank saw the light, at least for a little while, and he wrote about it. It’s what he did.

And there are moderns still writing for the Church. Contemporary artists like Phil Wickham, Chris Tomlin, the Fee brothers, Darlene Zschech and many others who are doing the best they can to tap into melodies and song structure that clicks with the contemporary heart and mind, while still communicating eternal truth. Other artists are trying to express their hearts in relationship to God, people like John Mark McMillan and Jon Foreman and David Crowder, who are great artists and very gifted musicians.

I’ve been drawn into this tradition, and I enjoy it. Especially the music for churches. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when you write something, like a prayer set to music, and you lead people with it and they learn it and take it to heart. You become a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac between people and God. It’s very different in some ways than a performance oriented approach to music, but I love it.

It’s an honor.


Psalm 33:3
Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2011