Faithful One, So Unchanging – one of the favourites amongst churches, across various denominations too. It is personal declaration of commmitment to God, faith in him, and speaks in depth of God’s love to us, and our daily walk with him.
Here, let’s focus on the music aspect of Faithful One.
How far does the music / musical arrangement helps in our worship of God?
Does it “do” much more than the lyrics?
Could it communicate our worship more than what the lyrics intends?
Commenting on music is a dangerous activity as music is personal, it’s about preferences, skills and talents, it’s communal, and it’s something very precious, it’s best to avoid giving the expectation that someone or some music group should “change” the way they have been playing the music. In order to learn and gain something on this topic, we need to adopt some “constructive analysis”. In doing that, we will inevitably say something ought to be “better” done this or that way, yes, expectation of change. However, there is some space where we could review a piece of playing without getting too “personal”.
One way, and perhaps one of the easiest and convenient ways, is via online video or audio platform, e.g. YouTube. Spending a few minutes looking for recordings of Faithful One, will uncover 4 or 5 different “styles”. Most of them are in fairly “solemn”, “meditative” or “prayerful” style, but there is one which has a rather “upbeat” feel. Its introduction consists of “rhythm and bass” (with piano). The instrumentation does not change much throughout, and there is a high level of “chorus” in some sections.
I guess most of us would “prefer” other styles, with guitar introduction, or with piano inroduction. The original (or the first version) of recording of this song is most probably the one with guitar introduction.
On several occasions I had the priviledge of several other musicians on wind instruments. I introduced varieties in the music, e.g. change of texture, tempo etc. to see how far such gives more expression to the music, and so a greater depth of worship experience in the congregation. There response was positive which was a comfort to me.
Trying out different “styles” of musical arrangement can give very different “feel” to a worship song. Undertaking the “change” is the difficult part, but having one or two different musicians can help with the “colour” of the music on the basis of the different voices or instruments. Their own style of playing, blending in with others, give a different feel and experience.
