Christ the Lord is Risen Today

This weeks download is “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” by Charles Wesley and Lyra Davidica. Charles Wesley is one of the great Methodist hymns writers, and I coincidently happen to share his name. As a kid, I would see my name at the bottom of some hymns, and I quickly decided that these were the best hymns ever written. The music is from the Lyra Davidica. I have not been able to find much information about the Lyra, other than that it was a hymnal that appeared in England in 1708, and no one knows who wrote the music.

For a man that goes to church a lot, I don't consider myself a particularly religious man. I probably got only two things out of all my church'n. First, I have a good shot at knowing the answer to questions at a pub quiz that start “In the Bible...” The other thing is a love of old hymns.

I recently drove my grandmother to Baltimore, and we spent most of the car ride singing these old hymns. My biggest problem with contemporary worship is that it loses this connection to past generations. Kids who only go to contemporary worship won't know these songs, and and what are they going to sing with their grandparents? Every Move I Make? I doubt it.

But as Kayne says, “I am not here to convert atheists to believers.” I present this song as just a well written piece of music, which unfortunately casts my namesake aside. When I recorded it I tried to go for that Southern Baptist feel. Upon hearing it last night, Kriston felt that the bass was too high and the song came perilously close to rock and or roll, I leave that up to you to decide. One interesting thing I learned while recording this was that a single clap doesn't sound believable. I had to record my self clapping four times to get the right sound. Also, I can't actually play that piano part, a lot of studio magic went into getting that down.