We've got awesome help once again with checking the new worship book (blue) lyrics for meaning, content and Biblical reliability, thanks to Sam Dando, Peter Hermann and Tim Hocking. We do allow a fair bit of personal/artistic expression and less formal approach in language when compared to a standard hymn book but we try to balance this with the fact that we are actually printing/publishing these lyrics. Not all songs will 'speak' for all people - some are personal songs, some are congregational... Psalms is a great model of the many types of emotions, approaches and intent used within 'praise' poetry. Life is varied with its ups and downs, so it makes sense that lyrics which authentically express might be as well!

Our next Worship book will be blue!!!! It's nice to go back to a cool colour, like our first book which was purple. We are limited by Buckram's colour palette, but the blue is one of the brighter colours, keeping in line with our previous colour choices. 

There were lots of excellent colour suggestions on our FB page, including yellow, pink, lime green, all possible future (??) colours....

We are currently working through a list of 144 songs, listening, notating, creating accompaniments, cleaning up scores. Thanks to our hard working notators from all over the world:
Timon Burney (Australia)
Dan Hardy (Germany)
Rachel Hocking (Australia)
Nita Lawrie (Australia)
Amy Parkin (UK)
​Phil Rosser (Australia)

In other news, we’re planning a launch April 6th, 2024 DV, to be held in Newcastle, Australia, in partnership with the upcoming Newcastle conference. Here’s the link to find out more about the conference: 
​https://www.newcastle2024.com/ 

We've officially closed submissions for Worship 3, thanks to all who have submitted! Just quickly scanning through the list of over 240 songs, there's a great blend of our old fave composers as well as some younger composers who have submitted! Very appreciative of everyone's efforts!

We will start listening to these soon, then divide up the worklist - hoping to launch the new book for May 2024, God willing. If you would like to assist with notating, please contact rachel@theworshipbook.com - please note, you would need your own copy of Sibelius and have an excellent working knowledge of music theory/notation (eg studying a Bachelor of Music).

Thanks!

Once again, it’s been a while since the last post. Covid is still here, but still new mercies and new praise is happening every day. In the past year, the Voices of Worship project has put out a few songs and tutorials which can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgz91ZPpuHOsV1cR0ZPnaOQ
​
Songs are also available on streaming platforms - just search for The Worship Book and look for our logo. We’ve also continued to do the spontaneous live videos on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/TheWorshipBook

Big news for this year is that we will be announcing production of a new Worship book including a call for song submissions. Hopefully all the lockdowns have meant lots more new music!!! 

It's been a while since my last post! Enforced time away from work has resulted in time for orange worship tracks. During these last couple of weeks, I've managed to record 65 tracks and popped them online. Joseph Cheek from Island Recording Studio is mixing/mastering these, thankful for his help with this. There's still a fair few more to go but it seems like we will be stuck at home for a while yet. We've also managed to put together an international performance of Amy Parkin's beautiful 'Lullaby blessing' from the orange worship book. Daniel Melching (Germany), Dan Osborn (Canada), Nita Lawrie (Australia), Rebecca Hocking (Australia), myself on piano, and the composer herself, Amy Parkin (UK) make up the ensemble. I used iMovie for the collage video, took a bit of experimenting but I think it's ok for the first. We're hoping to get more orange worship book songs known whilst everyone is relying on the online environment to get by. Please view our video, we hope you enjoy it!

On Thursday 7th January, our books were delivered from our printer Ligare to our two storage facilities (thanks Nita and Jacqui!). Since then, we've sold over 1200 books, which shows the excitement and thirst that our community has for their own praise music. Many have said that they couldn't wait to get home and play through the book, and Wellington bible camp have even said that they will be the first to use an orange book song as their camp song - we hope they have a great week!

Last week, we had the Australian Christadelphian conference in Sydney and attempted to sightread the entire book within 5 hours. It was never going to be achievable as there's over 7 hours of music in the book, but we did get through 68 songs, which I think is some sort of Christadelphian record! 

During the conference, many of the orange book songs were played, including: Precious promises, Now is the time, Whatever is true, God's mercy, God's tapestry, Son of man, Worship the Lord, He has died, Love the Lord, Listen, Good shepherd. 

We were also asked a few times as to whether the purple book will be reprinted. At this stage, it won't be because of copyright issues. We would also need a minimum of 500 pre-orders to reprint. 

Over and out for now!

Exciting announcement! We will be recording Worship 2 and we need a confident choir to help us do this. Each piece will be recorded exactly as per the sheet music published in Worship 2 so that ecclesial musicians can have a reliable resource to help them learn new pieces of music. 

The Worship Book Choir will meet regularly to learn the choral works in Worship 2. There are many pieces to cover, so choristers need to have sight-singing skills and be able to learn repertoire quickly. No background training in vocals is needed. Timetabling, including recording dates, will be made once the choir has been assembled. 

If you feel that this is a project for you, we would love to hear from you! Please follow this link to fill in the application form.

Choral Director
Rebecca Hocking
choir@theworshipbook.com

Well, today the files have officially gone to the printers. That's been 11 months of continuous work, sorting, liaising, notating, editing, notating again, and again, and again, and again, 1st draft, 2nd draft, 3rd draft, 4th draft, .... there are so many things I would recommend to the next person who may do this job (I won't be doing it again)! I can't count the number of hours in this as so many have been involved and each have given up a lot time to do this. For me, this weekend alone was 24 hours of solid work, and it's been like that for months. My family is happy to have me back - their mantra had become 'I hate the worship book' and 'when will you finish it'. But soon, it will all be exciting once again when those books arrive, looking pretty and brand new (and then even more errors will jump out and say 'ha gotcha'). Many have told me that they're excited about the new music, and it feels worthwhile when we actually hear the music being used for the reason intended - praise to God!

Well, there's been some developments and decisions made recently. I'm running behind time because of, well, life, so the book has not been released according to my own plans in September 2015. The times have been readjusted to meet the conference deadline, where we will introduce the book, workshop it, release the teaching resources and hopefully launch the radio station. At the moment, some talented pianists are sightreading through the book to make sure everything makes musical sense - thanks to Sharon Tran, Judy Collins, Prue Philp, Annabelle Young and Rosemary Nath for this. The total book takes between 6 and 7 hours to play through, so their work is much appreciated. I'm putting together the agreements for each composer/lyricist and continually revisiting the music, which is really enjoyable to play. Looking forward to sharing that with everyone!