Well, we are right in the middle of the holiday season, challenged by the call of the pool/beach, social get-togethers, and crowded internet bandwidths. We've been spending our days lining up workloads for our lovely fellow-notators June Errington, Rosie Russell, Cameron Hillman (with more to come), and for our lovely lyric consultants Sam Dando and Ken Pooley (with more to come).  Some composers have been contacted for more information such as 'does sheet music exist for this' and 'please forward us the lyrics', but we've yet to officially notify anyone about the final song list, so please hang tight!  I've been playing through many of the songs on the piano, enjoying some of the songs beautiful chords with 7ths, 9ths, suspended notes, which really suit these blue-sky summer days that we are having. Luscious music matching divine days, praise God!

Photo: www.eurobodalla.com.au

After around 40 hours of meeting, playing, listening, reading and discussing, we've managed to bring the song list down to around 160 pieces but that could also change. We're now going over the list again, looking at themes and styles to see how we can best have an interesting representation of our community's music using a wide range of composers and lyricists. We've begun to divide up the tasks, working out how many pieces need transcribing, how many need editing, assigning names to each task, and also reviewing stats for the project. Next week's aim is to begin notating and transcribing amongst all the holiday excitement.

While I write this, I'm listening to the playlist I've created from all the submitted songs (whether accepted or not) and am loving the incredible range of music playing in the background. It makes me think that we need a Worship book radio station, something like iTunes radio or similar! My Worship 2 submissions playlist is over 8 hours long (bigger than any CD project). Any volunteers? Email me: rachel@theworshipbook.com

Today was our first meeting since the submissions closed. After a 6 hour meeting, going through the song titles alphabetically, we only got up to 'C'. We listened to audio files and sang around the piano. There's lots of work ahead, but it's such an enjoyable process. People have really written music from their heart and we are blessed to have such people in our community.  We feel lucky that we're able to listen to such a wide range of music in so many different styles, from so many age groups, backgrounds, and countries. Our next meeting is on Monday and we hope to finish all approvals by next week as our schedule is very very tight! For those waiting on an answer, please wait a couple of weeks. (PS Excuse the mess in the picture - busy people...)

At closing, our final submissions count is 366 songs. Wow. The great thing about have a strict deadline is that we've limited our workload by having a cut-off point, but 366 songs is a large workload! Here we go, time to work out what to include. Thanks to all involved so far and to all those helpful, proactive, engaged composers. This is not possible without you.