Well, the list as it stands has 149 songs taking up 474 pages. We only have 415 pages to work with (including contents etc) so unfortunately there will be cuts made.  These eliminated songs will still be available through our website once composer permission has been gained. One thing we've done to reduce page numbers is to use Times New Roman font for the lyrics, commonly used across many sheet music publications because of its readability. It's a smaller font than Helvetica but means the book will have a bit of a different look. Below is a picture of the completed file of notated/formatted songs... lots to go through!

Well, we're progressing through our task list, accompanied by the sounds of the Pacific ocean, kids, and the cricket (that last one is not by choice). Between us all around 20 songs have been transcribed/notated/edited - that's 12.5% of the book, which is progress. Amy 'amazing' Parkin from the UK has taken on some transcribing (notating music by ear, a task not for the faint-hearted).  Timon Burney, Dan Hardy and Phil Rosser are providing fantastic help, and we've also had help from Dan Osborne. I've typed out all the lyrics and they've gone off to Sam, Ken as per the last blog and Stuart Muir (another lovely lyric consultant). Our printers (Ligare) have started providing us with colour samples (see below!), updated quotes, as well as answering important questions like 'if the book is 400 pages long, how many can we fit in each box for postage?' I'm also setting up the preorders page so we can plan for print numbers. We have to finalise these numbers by April, a hard thing to judge! The other hard number to judge is 'how many songs can we actually fit into the book?' - a persistent question.

An exciting update on one of our previous blogs Moving Towards a Songlist is that Hartmut Sieber from Germany (Esslington ecclesia radio station) has offered to help with our radio station idea. We've also had helpful advice from Andrew Longman (UK - the only other Christadelphian radio station that we know of!). I'll provide more details about this project as we go, but the general idea is to have an internet radio station that is basically a playlist of Christadelphian music (not only those in the Worship book). If we can set up the project now, we can hopefully save chasing and include permissions for airplay with the Worship book printing permissions. 

It's so wonderful to have so many people contributing to this project, every single skill is needed, and the amazing technology that exists today means that we can do this across the globe. Exciting!

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

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.

Finally, the closing date for song submissions has come and tonight we will close the submissions page down. It's the end of step one for us and follows on from the many emails, Facebook posts, and some tweets, that we've used to promote the project. It's been great to see how pro-active many composers have been about their own music, about organising it, cataloguing it, and sending through only those pieces they were happy to share. This is such a different process to when we started the original Worship book. At that time, we were the ones trawling through all the songs we had collected over the years, which meant some composers were left out and others needed to be chased for publication details. 

For Worship 2, we created an online database where composers were able to upload their own songs along with all the details including each song's history. This gives us some idea of how well our community knows each song so that our choices are as relevant as possible. The online database also allowed composers to choose their own theme and offer suitable biblical quotes for their songs. In Worship 2, we are hoping to section the book into themes to increase the discovery of, and engagement with, each song. 

At this very point in time, we've received 264 song entries. It's an amazing response that has come from composers worldwide. We will close the submissions page at 12am Pacific Standard Time and then begin the planning for step two.... sifting through and analysing the songs. We won't know what type of book we will have until we see all the songs, so we have an exciting adventure ahead of us. Please pray for this project, for its success as a blessing to our community, for all of those composers who have shared something personal about their relationship with their Father, and that it will be accepted by our Father as an offering of praise.

Calling all composers, lyricists, musicians, creative people....
Worship 2 is due to be published in 2015 DV and we are looking for contributions
If you are a composer or lyricist and have one or more great song/s that you know would benefit others, please submit your song/s for consideration for publication. 

Submissions can be in the form of notated music (e.g. via Sibelius) or lyric sheet/audio (e.g. mp3s, word docs) and these can be uploaded through our website.

This is the only way to submit a song, otherwise we will not be able to consider your song for publication.

Submissions are due November 30, 2014, but it would be really really helpful if you can submit your song earlier!
Please refer online to our FAQs for more information about Worship 2 including song themes and submission requirements.

We are really excited about this project and we know many others are too!
We've seen a lot of great music written since the original Worship publication and we hope that these pieces will be included in Worship 2. Please make sure that your piece doesn't miss out!

Keep in touch through our website, these messages, and our Facebook page. Please pray for the success of this project. 
God bless
Rachel, Nita, Jacqui
www.theworshipbook.com