Dance Worship
So we are on a journey at CCM at the moment. The guys at CCM:City are experimenting with dance music in our worship times. We are privileged to have some very talented musicians who are passionate about worship.
I have banged on about worship music being missional for ages in the hope that a few people would join us who A) agreed and B) were talented enough to make it happen. Prays answered. Thanks boss.
Manchester has more nightclubs than people, dance music rules in this city. To not at least try and incorporate dance music into our worship would be a colossal oversight.
So we have a track that we want to put out there. We have used it on a Sunday a few times and it works (pretty much). We are working hard on increasing the flexibility of the music so that we can go wherever God takes us as we worship. We are not quite there yet. What you will hear is a backing track that we make our drummer play along to (he is awesome) and the worship leader adds some elec guitar. We think that we can soon fire the drummer and just have a guy on a laptop.
Anyhoo, we remixed consuming fire by Tim Hughes. We slowed it down a little. We threw in some beats. We ran it over with a lorry and then we got R2D2 on lead vocals.
Have a listen –
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Chorus and out into verse each time is pumping. Love the big dark second chord in the chorus. Two questions…
How many hours prep per song?
What’s the congregational participation like – what’s the reaction – singing/dancing?
Would love to hear others that you might try out. Keep challenging us.
Matt
October 10, 2011 at 1:36 pm
the guy who made this track thinks it took 10 to 12 hours!
People sing although we have fairly loud meetings, so we are working hard on making space between songs that people can contribute in. No dancing yet. We still have chairs out and lights on, that might have to change….
We have a few other songs in the pipeline. Hoping that we have some completely original stuff soon.
October 10, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Liked it, and Matt’s questions are good ones. Be keen to hear more songs. Keep it going.
October 10, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Sounds pretty cool mate. It does take hours of prep, but the more you do it, the quicker it’ll get and your tech guy will learn some stuff that saves a lot of time. For our last 2 student weekends away, Raj has played his kaossilator in the band, partly because we haven’t had a drummer, but also because it sounds awesome when you get it right. But he and the bands were practising for hours sometimes! I’m starting to lead worship at church…would love to something similarly innovative.
October 10, 2011 at 7:36 pm
s’good. This is quality which is refreshingly surprising. I salute you CCM. Seriously, you’ve gotta keep building on this, I really like it and would DEFINITELY love to worship to this stuff.
October 11, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Love it – would love to see some more of this stuff in our worship time!! Love to hear some old style hymn stuff remixed like this and make incredible truths come alive to a new generation. I could definitely get my glow sticks out of the attic for this!
October 13, 2011 at 3:32 pm
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cool, reminds me of the old Nitro Praise CDs.
October 26, 2011 at 4:10 pm