Hours and hours and hours of "Hymning"

OK, so here's my newest trick: play hymns to learn to play the guitar.


If you didn't know, it works great. I'll have a series on this soon.



In a short while, I'll do nothing but spend countless, non-paid hours agonizing over what I can play and what's most important to practice...and suffering from periodic attacks of anxiety and jealousy if my archenemy, The Hymn Box 200, ever gets a hymn in edge-wise.



Since Mr. dataDyne, my guitar teacher, has "a real job, isn't a country hick, and doesn't have time to waste arranging hymns," the responsibility falls to my untrained ear to arrange chords to the hymns. I learned D7, and perfected my changing between and to Am, F (Mr. dataDyne says to just do F as 003210 instead of 003211), and C. One song requires a rapid Am, C, F, C, F, G and C which sounds cool in addition to being great practice.

I also learned A7, Dsus2 and G7 (A7 and Dsus2 are simpler than A and D, G7 is trickier than a C- I can hit C's pretty well now). Did I mention I did most of this today? Yes, yesterday I compiled a list of 15,260 hymns and am currently working my way through assigning chords to each song- though many already have simple chords. A few songs, despite their simplicity, sound amazing. That hymn box pales when compared to actual music- if one day I want to make the songs extremely sad, I can use minor chords.

If I want to make a normally sad song triumphant, I change the time a little and use all major chords and an alternate strum here and there (as long as it isn't sacrilegious). Don't even get me started on capo possibilities- cause I wouldn't go far, I don't have a capo. And as Mr. dataDyne says, "Hah. We don't sing as fast as they want us to...they sing as fast as we want them to."


I spent many hours today arranging hymns- I only got 5 hours of sleep- and it'll be many, many more sleepless days. I try to keep the hymns simple to play; this is involuntary. I've been playing 3 months now, so I can only play them if they're easy. It's actually getting to the point where I could add chords with no prior base of chords, allowing me to create my own hymns (songs), which I'll be doing sometime in the future. Can you say "sacrilege?" I think you can, it's only 3 syllables long.




Also important is to learn what the point of music in worship is, how to choose hymns, how songs overshadow themselves (i.e. indulge the flesh or become obsolete in their obscurity), the right heart attitude to have, biblical examples of worship and teaching through hymns/songs, why we should or shouldn't play contemporary worship songs (if they're intact retuned hymns? If they're not?), and the meaning behind songs- I also need to be taught how hymns direct an assembly and how to judge the assembly's acceptance of a song.

In short, I need to learn how to be a hymn leader. Three Hymn Leader class hymnists under the direction of the main leader will do better than a Hymn Leader class hymnist with a pair of Can't Sing Sally and Can't Play Danny classes. I'm certain it's not as complicated as I'm gearing myself up for. For sure, just being involved develops the skills through osmosis, but a crash course can't hurt. Mr. Bruckner likes teaching me about hymning, I might ask him. He is like a honeycomb, with many pockets of knowledge covered by wax.



On that last note (knowledge, that is), welcome to my new idea: Hymnfotainment! Yes! I feel certain hymns require an explanation (especially if they're not played often), for example, Holy, Holy, Holy. I had no idea what an[sic] seraphim was, so I asked Mrs. Brucker, the hymn leader's wife. He and she then explained it to me as best they could, then sent me what little information they could find on them. Result? I feel much more comfortable singing the hymn. I'm certain at least a few could benefit from this, and it might make others think about what they're singing.



Another example: why is it "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me"- what operation did a sound play in my salvation? Is grace a sound? Faith cometh by hearing, hearing by the word of God- how shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard, how shall they hear without a preacher (Rm. 10:17, 14)- but surely the blood was still the operation. I'll add this to my book I'm (not) writing: Parables, Difficult Theories, And Outright Confusing Lies to Ask Your Pastor.