This weekend I got to attend a song writing workshop taught by Mia Fieldes, one of the writers from Hillsong. She was very funny and brutally honest and had a lot of good wisdom about writing songs. It was my first time in a songwriting workshop that specifically addressed writing for the church and she really stressed the responsibility worship leaders have for putting truth into their songs. I took about six pages of notes because I’m nerdy like that. It was a super inspiring day and frankly a good kick in the pants.

Truthfully I was going to write about this yesterday for Music Monday, but I ran out of time. Rather than shelve it and wait for next week, I thought I would turn it into a thematic top ten post! Since quite a few of you are songwriters as well I didn’t think you’d mind. Here are the Top Ten Things I learned at the Songwriter’s Workshop.

One

Songwriting is sort of like going to the gym (great.). It requires consistency, discipline and putting in a little effort every day to see results. God gives us gifts of creativity, music and songwriting but he expects us to be good stewards of them. He expects us to invest them and work on them.

Two

Like most creative types, songwriters often struggle with lack of structure. Schedule time for yourself to write, block it off as “working”. If you value it, you will make it a priority. Whatever you put your time and money into is where your heart is.

Three

Make goals that are measurable, meaningful and attainable. A measurable goal could be: I am going to finish six songs this year and record really good demos of three of them. A meaningful goal could be, I’m going to write a song for my friend who is going through a really hard season or I’m going to be the pied piper who writes songs calling my friends back to Jesus.

Four

If you don’t love church music, then why are you trying to write church music?

Five

Songwriters and worship leaders in the church have a responsibility to put truth into their songs. People will walk in the door of a church and listen to three minutes of music, but they may not sit and pay attention for a forty five minute sermon. Make sure your songs are true but don’t get too bogged down in theology and heavy words. If the songs are not generating a response from the congregation, work on them harder. Our highest goal in worship should always be leading people to Christ.

Six

A good song introduced badly is a bad song.

Seven

A good song with a bad title is a bad song.

Eight

Good songs always start with a theme and then find a new angle on that theme. Widely used themes (love, heartache, longing) are common because people can relate to them. Write songs about what you’re going through, write out of your own passion, write out of your own emotions but stick to your theme (no tangents!). Make sure the language you use matches your theme.

Nine

Good melodies feel good to sing. Make sure you write melodies that are familiar, with easy intervals that stay within the octave. The stressed syllables of your melody should match the stressed syllable of your words. Don’t break up your words! Don’t have big notes fall on words that don’t matter.

Ten

God is a giver of talents and an annointer of hearts. He doesn’t ask us to succeed in writing the next great worship song on our first try. But he does ask us to practice, work and to step out in faith.

This is my favorite Mia Fieldes song. If anyone knows where you can buy this album let me know, I can’t find it on iTunes.

One

Greetings friends. Today I am broadcasting live from my couch where I sit sipping on Echinecea Complete Care tea (it’s gross). I got up this morning with a sore throat and thought, “Sore throat! No big deal. I can still go to work, I’m tougher than that.” I made it until about 11:30 and then developed a fever and started seeing black spots around the corner of my vision so I decided I should probably head back to bed. So here I am. First sick day of 2012.

Two

The good thing about having an epic three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon? Totally crazy dreams. For example in a two hour period this afternoon I dreamed the following:

• That I was on a tropical vacation with some friends and we thought it would be a great idea to go snorkeling and try to find some sea turtles, fish and polar bears (?). Our captain took us out to the a great snorkeling spot where we did indeed spot a polar bear (hooray). A British family who bore a striking resemblance to the Dursleys was also on a snorkeling trip in the same spot. Unfortunately their captain brought them out in one of those inflatable boats with a motor. A great white shark came and ate Mrs. Dursley.
• On my way home from the snorkeling expedition, I wanted to stop off at Safeway and get some ginger ale for my upset stomach. Just then a flash mob of about 50 women dressed in bridal gowns converged on Safeway, doing a full fledged song and dance number to A Whole New World. I tried to get a good video of it on my phone to send to my friend, because we had had to sing A Whole New World together at a wedding a few months ago (that part is actually real, believe it or not). But I couldn’t get a great shot and walked away all sad and “What’s the point, anyway?” I left without any ginger ale.

Three

In an effort to be more organized and better at scheduling myself, I have started religiously using this new app, teux deux to keep track of my to do lists. It is very simple and oh so pretty and design-y. You can also access it via the web if you don’t have an iPhone. This is a huge improvement from my previous system of scribbling lists on whatever piece of paper I had readily available. One of the things I like most about it is that if you don’t cross something off the list it pushes it to the next day. That way I never forget anything. This post also has some pretty helpful tips on how to make effective to-do lists if you’re a freelancer.

Four

The home button on my iPhone had been sticking pretty badly so I took it in to the Apple store on Saturday and they gave me a new phone. I’m super glad I bought Apple care because my warranty had actually expired two days before my appointment so if I didn’t have it I would have been out of luck. Overall I’ve been really, really happy with the customer care I’ve gotten on all my Apple products. It does make you wonder though, if it’s that easy for them to just give you a new phone…why do they cost so much?

Five

So it’s January and it’s cold and snowy. Pretty good time to daydream about summer, right? If you’re missing: camping, roadtrips, cliff jumping, going on major hikes with your friends (ew, why?), wearing shorts. Take a look at this tribute to summer.

Six

On Thursday night last week, Michelle tricked Tami and I into coming over to do a workout video with her. She even had sweat pants ready for Tami to change into. It was torture, and it’s a really good thing that I like Michelle so much because I would have walked out on most other people. When we were protesting too much(during the more challenging parts of the video), Michelle kept telling us, “Just keep in mind Ben does this with me!” As soon as it was over me and Tami wanted brownies.

Seven

Also on Thursday, Tami was thrifting and found this awesome leather biker jacket for me at the Salvation Army. I have wanted a leather jacket for awhile but have never been able to afford a nice one. I feel way more bad ass than I actually am when I wear it. Looking at this picture though, I don’t know if bad ass is something that I can really convincingly pull off, is it? Hm.

Eight

Dustin Penner took a lot of flack from a lot of people when he played in Edmonton, but he was always one of my favorite Oilers. I still have a huge picture of him on my fridge even though he’s moved on to greener pastures (debatable). Anyway, last week he missed a couple of games due to back spasms. He explained to the media that they overtook him when he was sitting down to a pancake breakfast made by his wife. Pennercakes became a big thing on twitter and he was the laughing stock of the hockey world for about 10 minutes. He wrote a response to one of the LA Kings hockey blogs and it really made me laugh (also…who knew there were LA Kings hockey blogs?). Goodness knows Oilers fans need to laugh these days so they don’t cry. Anyway, he should start a hockey blog when he retires. I’d totally read it. It should probably be called Pennercakes.

ps— this is the water bottle incident he references

Nine

I’ve had a lot of freelance work the past few weeks. Which is really, really, great. The more I do it, the more I love it. Unfortunately though it did mean being holed up in my house all by myself all weekend. Things to add to the future dreams and goals list: my own cute office space. Separate from my house if possible.

Ten

On Saturday I was forced to do another redesign for sarahmiller.ca when wordrpess automatically updated on me and erased a bunch of CSS work that I’d done. It was super annoying but ended up being a blessing in disguise because I’d been meaning to do an update here anyway. You like?

1. Welcome to the first Tuesday post of 2012, kids. It’s a whole new year. Anything could happen!

2. Can I interest you in some high quality free fonts? How about the most popular typefaces of 2011? I think this one is my favorite from the list. but it’s hard to choose.

3. Ten days into January I have managed to stick to my Read the Bible in a Year plan. I have been reading the chapters from 1 Chronicles last just in case I fall asleep. Then at least all I’m missing is genealogies, right? It has been a lot tougher than I thought. I’m learning that when you commit to something like that you will undoubtedly face a whole lot of spiritual opposition. I feel like God has been bringing to the surface a lot of gross, pride filled things in my heart through it. It’s not fun to face the dark parts of yourself, but it does make me love Jesus even more and helps me to understand grace and how desperately I need Him.

4. Holy cats! Have you guys see the Coachella lineup?

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY (yes, all caps), Bon Iver? The Head and the Heart? Florence and the Machine? The Shins? Feist? Tuneyards? Radiohead? The Black Keys? I want to go so bad! It’s a pipe dream, for sure. Maybe they’ll do the live Youtube stream thing like last year and I can crank my space heater and put on some shorts and a hippie headband and pretend I’m there.

5. After my twitter feed exploded on Sunday night with PBS enthusiasts, I was inspired to finally check out Downton Abbey. I’d been hearing so many good things about this show but I was a tad skeptical because most of the rave reviews I heard were about the clothes and sets. Last time I watched a show for the clothes (ahem, Mad Men) I was super disappointed. Good clothes and handsome cast members do not make up for depressing and uninteresting storytelling. Or cheaters.

Thus far I have watched two episodes and am happy to report that it has lived up to the hype. The characters are complex and interesting; it is well acted and subtle in that British way. Maggie Smith is hilarious as always. It’s a lot like Gosford Park except with less murder mystery and more girls trying to find husbands. I’m really excited to get to the second season which takes place during the Great War.

Gosford Park plus tragic WWI romances? Please. I’m all over it.

6. My hockey team is so bad, you guys. They keep losing in spectacular fashion and getting injured. It’s disheartening. When Eberle went down this week I let out an Eeyore style, ”Ohhh-kayyy”. It’s not like I expected them to make the playoffs this year, but I was hoping for maybe 10th place? Not another lottery pick anyway. Not another 2-8-0 stretch in the last 10. Yeesh. I is a sad little Oilers fan.

And don’t even say it. I would cheer for Toronto before I’d jump ship and cheer for the Canucks. So, never in this lifetime basically. Leave me alone Canucks fans. Go complain about Brad Marchand/Boston/officiating some more. Everyone loves hearing about that.

7. While I didn’t exactly make any new years resolutions this year, I did set a few goals for myself. One of them is to learn more about website building, coding and all that other nerdy stuff. There are some really good resources on the internet at Smashing Magazine and Code Year. The trick will be making the time to actual sit down and learn. (Thanks Ryan and Brook for the links).

8. My reading list is getting out of hand. These are the books I have either started or am supposed to read in the near future.

This does not include the long list of books that I would really like to read. Like War & Peace or Anna Karenina. Kidding! Who has the attention span for that? When I finished school I distinctly remember saying, “Fantastic! Now I can read for fun! Now I can read things I want to read!” what I didn’t realize is that this would be an even more daunting task than trying to make it all the way through a course pack before the final exam.

9. Since I came back from Christmas holidays I have been making a concentrated effort to make my lunch every day. This is more for financial reasons than anything else because eating out is expensive. But my pants are starting to fit a little better. Bonus! If you’ve got any recipes that are fairly easy and would feed me for weeks at a time feel free to send them my way.

10. Last night, Jimmy Fallon and Napoleon Dynamite went hunting for Mammoths.