A New Lyric and Some New Chords [by Ed Kerr]

I want to provide you with an arrangement of a familiar Christmas carol. "Silent Night" is certainly a favorite song of the season for many Christians. I suspect that many who do not yet believe in Jesus as their Savior also find comfort in the beautiful lyrics and lullaby-like qualities of this song. For many people in our culture and even in our churches, there may be personal realities that sometimes produce anything but ?sleep in heavenly peace?. The ongoing conflict in Iraq, the frequent terrorist atrocities which dominate the news, and other concerns might be your focus rather than rest in the love of God. In response to that reality, I’ve written an additional verse to "Silent Night". You can hear it sung in an mp3 here and download a pdf of the arrangement as well. Perhaps you might find it useful for an offertory or special music selection in one of your services during the Christmas season. To hear the familiar tune of "Silent Night" with these lyrics could encourage someone in your fellowship to surrender an area of concern to the Lord. Here are the new lyrics:

Holy God, only You see
All we lack, all we need
You alone love us just as we are
Humbly now we surrender our hearts
Give us hope as we worship
Fill us with heavenly peace
Fill us with heavenly peace

Amen. What an awesome reality, that God can and will give us hope as we worship Him. As we enter the holiday season in which we celebrate “God with us”, I pray that we will be people who walk in the peace of God that passes understanding. Certainly there is much in our society today that could cause us to be afraid, but I hope that you and I will run to our Strong Tower and find relief from the cares of the world.

Here’s a portion of the chord chart for my arrangement of "Silent Night".

What would your response be if your worship leader handed you this chord chart for use in an upcoming Sunday holiday service? If your response would be to plan an early visit to Grandma’s house that Sunday so that someone else would have to play keyboard, I hope that the tips I’ll give you here and in "Building Blocks For Keyboards" will help you feel more confident in your abilities to create keyboard parts from a chord chart.

One of the most important principles detailed in my new video is an invaluable one for any musician to grasp, the principle that “less is more”. This principle has its origin among studio musicians who have seen that the most important consideration they can make when deciding what part they will play on a recording is the need of the arrangement. Though they might be able to play a dazzling 32nd note run covering four octaves on their instrument, their first consideration will be whether such a run would be appropriate for the musical context. Often, the part they contribute is quite simple, showcasing not the technical dexterity of the studio musician, but rather their musical sensibilities. Listen to keyboard parts from your favorite praise and worship recordings, and I suspect that you will find that generally the parts played are not terribly demanding technically but do seem to be just what the arrangement needed musically.

How can you and I create keyboard parts that have similar qualities? Compare the portion of the chord chart shown above with the keyboard part you see below. I've prepared an mp3 of these four measures for your use. Take a moment and listen to them now. Several elements of this keyboard part merit description. One of the most conspicuous ones I see is the simplicity or the right hand’s part. It starts with a Bb above middle C and stays on that note for nearly two full bars. I call this part a drone, where a single pitch is heard for several bars over changing chords. In the 3rd an 4th bars the drone continues, as the right hand jumps up an octave to another Bb. Throughout these four measures, most of the note values in this right hand part are long ones, half notes or greater. Melodic activity and melodic interest are definitely not features of this part, but the fact that it is created from a single pitch is. I'm highlighting the occurrences of Bb's as drones in the graphic below with yellow.



By contrast, the left hand’s part is much more involved both melodically and rhythmically. It gains melodic significance from the chord progression of the arrangement. Study the chord chart above and you'll see that it features a “walkdown”, a concept explored in many examples within my new video. I've highlighted the notes of the walkdown here in blue.

A walkdown features a bass line that descends by whole or half steps. In this chart you’ll see that the walkdown begins on a Bb and then descends for the next three notes, moving to an Ab, a G, and a Gb, then repeating that four-note walkdown. To pair that descending bass line with the unyielding Bb of the drone in the right hand makes for a pleasing musical texture.

The left hand's part gains rhythmic significance through the use of an ostinato, a device common in classical music. Webster’s Dictionary defines an ostinato as “a musical figure repeated persistently as the same pitch through a composition”. Do you see how there are 2 eighth notes played on the 1st and 4th beats of each measure? I've highlighted these notes in red below. Since the pitches used in each group of 2 eighth notes change, this example doesn't adhere strictly to Webster's definition of ostinato, so I'll call them a rhythmic ostinato.

The use of repeated rhythmic patterns like this gives the arrangement a continuity and predictability. Once this repeated figure is established, it continues all the way through measure 28 of the arrangement. Again, a pdf of the arrangement is available here.

This four measure selection is an excellent example of a concept developed in my first video, "Keyboards In Contemporary Praise and Worship, vol. 1". That concept is "the internal clock". The essence of this concept is that we don't need to create keyboard parts where every subdivision of every beat is filled with activity. Look at measure 1 of the example shown above. Do you see a constant string of 8th notes in the left hand? No. There are 8th notes on the first beat, then a half note held through beats 2 and 3, eighth notes on the fourth beat, and another half note held through beats 5 and 6. The logic of the internal clock concept is that we can create a sparse keyboard part (remember the "less is more" principle, described above) that sufficiently establishes the meter of the song we're playing without creating a busy part.

Listen to these four measures again by clicking here. If you were to play these measures this way, do you think the listener would panic on beat 3 of every measure, anxious about where the next downbeat will be? No, because the first two eighth notes of the left hand part establish the subdivision, and the listener's internal clock fills in the subsequent eighth notes that aren't played after that. We can trust this "internal clock" in our listener. Thus, we can create keyboard parts and arrangements that are sparse rather than full of constant activity.

Click here to listen to these 4 bars, first played as written, and then played with every 8th note filled in, and I think you'll agree that the meter is clearly established in the first example. Try this yourself, playing whatever song you choose. Evaluate whether or not the part you're playing is filling every subdivision of the meter or if you're making music that trusts the internal clock in your listener.

I'm including a pdf of my piano/vocal arrangement of the hymn, "Be Thou My Vision", which demonstrates many of the principles discussed above. Click here to hear an mp3 of the arrangement. An ostinato is created in the intro, and that ostinato pattern is repeated in almost every measure of the keyboard part. The "less is more" and "internal clock" concepts are shown as well, with very few instances throughout the arrangement where anything is played on the third beat of any measure.

Behind all of the resources available here at kerrtunes.com is my hope that these items will help get many major musical concepts not just in your heads but in your fingers as well. Enjoy the process as you grow as a musician and minister, in Jesus' Name.

-Ed Kerr