In October of 2019, I felt God speak to me about writing congregational worship songs. This wasn’t the first time I’d tried; I’d had a number of failed attempts (by my judgement) to write songs in the past, where I’d given up quickly due to my unfortunate tendency towards perfectionism. I’ve come to learn in the past few years that perfectionism is one of the biggest obstacles to creativity. But I hadn’t learnt that lesson yet, as I sat down one evening in October to write; the only thing that I had was a strong leading from God to start working on a song, as if He was gently but firmly saying “you’ve put this off, but now is the time”. And by His grace, He let the first song that I wrote come very easily. Over the course of a few hours I wrote what became my first ever published congregational worship song, “Glory”. It was at that time that I felt His call to write songs for the church.
Over the course of a couple of months He inspired me to write again, and out of that time came “Jesus, You Are” and “We Crown You” (the recordings are still a work in progress, but you can listen to them on my songs page). Joy, my ever-supportive and wonderful wife, encouraged me to play Glory to the leader of our church, Ali, who loved it and encouraged me to lead it on a Sunday. With some resistance, I eventually followed through on that in early 2020. I think that the reluctance was caused by a mixture of false humility and a genuine fear that people wouldn’t like the song. But it was well received, and gave me the encouragement I needed at that stage to keep going.
I thought the next logical step would be record the songs I’d written so that I could share them with my church and beyond. But instead of recording a simple guitar + vocal demo (that would have been too easy), I had grand ideas of electric guitars, drums, synths - I wanted something polished and produced. I happened to be able to play drums, guitar and bass, and I could hold a note singing. I also had a microphone, an audio interface and Cubase, so I had everything I needed, right? I had no idea what I was about to venture into, and the next couple of years proved to be challenging musically, spiritually and in facing up to some of my character flaws.
In 2020, lockdown hit. But I had a project to be getting on with: recording “Glory”. It was a couple of months before I realised that I’d bitten off more than I can chew. I had high expectations, as I was directly comparing my output to modern, highly produced worship songs, and I was nowhere near meeting those expectations. Recording is simple, until you want a perfect take - all of a sudden it’s hard. Mixing can be simple until you listen to anything created by even a semi-professional - matching that is hard. Recording a vocal is simple enough, but to make even a well-recorded vocal sound good can take hours of editing, and that’s if you know what you’re doing in the first place. It’s not surprising that all of this is difficult; it’s why audio professionals exist! Because of these challenges, I kept feeling like I was hitting ceilings, unable to progress. When I hit the ceiling with Glory, I moved on to recording one of my other songs, and that cycle repeated. I’d lost focus, and ended up going round in circles.
Despite this, after months of toiling, I was improving. But there was an even bigger problem that I couldn’t solve just by working hard, and that was the sound of my voice. There’s nothing like recording the sound of your own voice to break down any preconceptions you have about the way you sound! But I knew that the problems ran deeper than simply not liking the sound of my voice. I knew that I was doing something wrong: when I’d lead worship for longer than half an hour I would come away with a sore throat. There was something fundamentally wrong with the way I was singing, so it was time to sort it out.
I was referred to Maggi Ballantyne by a neighbour who runs a drama group, who testified that she worked wonders on the cast. We were well into lockdown by this point, so when I started lessons with her it was over Zoom. I was amazed at how much nuance she could detect despite the way Zoom mangles audio - she would pick up on what seemed like the most minute details! Crucially, she was able to immediately identify the problems in my voice, and we started the long process of fixing it. In short, I was singing from my throat, and forcing too much air through my vocal chords. It created a sound that was breathy and undefined, and I had problems with pronunciation caused by bad singing habits. But I was desperate to learn, and she expertly guided me through the process. I still meet with her now as there’s more work to be done, but I’ve been free of pain for a long time and the difference in the sound of my voice is enormous.
Shortly after I started my singing lessons we went on a family holiday to the Greek island of Kos. This was a miraculous holiday, because it was during the summer of 2020 when almost everywhere was off limits. In fact, Kos was only on the green list for a matter of weeks, and the 2 weeks we had scheduled just so happened to be in that window. Before the holiday, I had been given a prophetic word by a close friend about an upcoming season of productivity in song writing, and I immediately knew it was referring to the holiday. And, sure enough, that holiday was incredibly productive; I ended up writing 6 or 7 songs during that time. I then had the idea of producing an album of all my songs.
I’d love to say that 2021 was the year of change, where I was finally able to complete songs and send them out. But it was more of the same - recording a song, mixing, failing and moving to another song, round and round in circles. My voice was improving, but I was still nowhere near where I wanted to be. I sometimes lost motivation and would go weeks and weeks without touching my mixes. I barely wrote a song the whole year. And this is the saddest part of it all, that God had given me the gift and means to write songs, which I had done, and no-one was hearing them. The only song I’d played at church was Glory. By this point I had 9 or so songs that only Joy and God had heard. If I had recorded simple demos, others could have listened to my songs months earlier. I was justifying and rationalising an idea that, when I released a song, it needed to be the finished product; it needed to be perfect. I was chasing an idea that was impossible to catch, and as a result I was neglecting the call that God had given me.
The other problem was that I was doing all of this on my own. There was a not-so-hidden pride in the fact that I could write, arrange, play, record and mix music. But having no-one else involved in the process meant I frequently got inside my own head, and there were no second opinions, no creative collaboration. Essentially, I was a lone wolf, but didn’t realise the paralysing effect that was having on my ability to create.
By the end of 2021, I was tired. I had almost a dozen songs that were in various states of completion, but was becoming increasingly aware of my shortcomings in getting stuff done. An idea popped into my head (read: “God put an idea in my head”) to ask my brother in law to get in touch with Luke Fellingham, whom he and my sister had worked with on a recent project, and ask whether he’d be happy to talk with me. Luke is a professional recording and mix engineer who runs Luna Sound studio in Brighton. I sent him a couple of my mixes, and we chatted over a phone call. I told him my story about going round in circles, and that I’d reached the limit of what I was able to do. I particularly appreciated his honesty in his feedback, although it was hard to hear, which was that my mixes sounded like an amateur having a go! He presented two options to me: firstly, he could mix Glory; secondly, I could continue mixing and he would offer advice for improvement. I opted for the latter; at the time, I justified it as something like “I think God has mixing for me somewhere in the future, so I want to learn what I can”, but I think in reality I just didn’t want to let go. Luke understood, however, and - I’ll never forget his kindness - spent the proceeding few months listening to mix after mix, giving intricate feedback on changes to make. All in all, I think we went through 23 mixes! The difference was enormous from where we started to where we ended. My original mix was washed out with reverb, thin, with drums that sounded like paper. By the end, we had something that sounded… decent!
But at this point, “decent” didn’t feel worth it. By this point, I’d spent 2 years trying to produce this song. I knew that when I completed it, I’d never go back to it. It’s not like recording a demo, where you know it’s not going to be the final track. I asked Luke where he thought things were at. He echoed my thoughts - it’s pretty good, but we’re going to struggle to make it much better over a long email chain and back and forth mixes. By this point, I had again discovered my limits. I was starting to recognise that my desire to hold on to every part of the process was halting my productivity, and I’d had enough of it. I thanked Luke profusely for all the help he’d given me, and asked him to mix my track. He was very happy to, and the good news was that he was extremely familiar with the song by this point!
I mentioned before that I’d spent 2 years trying to produce Glory. Well, Luke mixed it in 2 days. And the mix he sent blew all my attempts out of the water. It was a moment of stark realisation for me; Luke was working with all the same individual tracks as I was, but the result was worlds apart. I could no longer blame anything other than my own ability, and I realised that professionals are professionals for a reason! Another thing I realised in working with Luke was that I desperately needed collaboration. Having someone else to help make decisions, to judge quality and, crucially, to help decide when something is “done” is so imporant.
After a week and a couple of mixes, I had a finished song. I then immediately realised that I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t thought about artwork, I didn’t know the first thing about publishing or CCLI, and I didn’t know how I was going to get the song out into the world. I was also having to face up to the fact that it was finally going to happen: my first song was going to be released. There was an underlying fear that it would be a flop, that no-one would be interested and that all my work would have been for nothing. This raised difficult questions about why I was doing this. Was it truly for God and to answer His call, or was it to satisfy some need in me to appreciated by others? The answer was, and still is, some of both and I think that will always be the case, but my hope and aim is that the motive of doing it for Him will outstrip any other.
Christmas came and went and I still hadn’t released the song. I then felt a urgency that I’d felt before, back in 2019 just before I sat down to write. I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer and that I just needed to do what needed to be done. I finished the artwork and started researching publishing in earnest. I wanted to register Glory with CCLI, but in contacting them was presented with a dead end: they don’t take submissions from individual songwriters (I’ve learnt since that this wasn’t always the case, but seems to be now). I needed to go through a publisher. But, of the few publishers I could actually find online, they seemed impossible to connect with. Integrity music refuse to accept submissions of any kind. Another I found, songsolutions.org, seemed to be exactly what I needed, but unfortunately they didn’t respond to my enquiries. The whole thing seemed impenetrable, and I was starting to despair.
A name came into my mind, a friend of mine who I knew from university days, Chris Juby. Chris is an experienced worship leader and songwriter, and I felt sure that he would have shared experience and would be able to offer advice. In turned out to be one of those God moments. I sent Chris an email, explaining my situation and asking whether he had any wisdom, and he responded with “You couldn’t be asking a question more up my street!” It turns out that Chris runs Church Songs, which is a worship publishing company that specifically exists to allow songwriters, such as me, to get their songs published and made available with CCLI! The way God had set this whole thing up - I couldn’t help but laugh.
I got Glory published, and distributed it to streaming platforms using OneRPM. It released in March 2023, more than 3 years after I wrote it. Although it’s been a long time, it’s been in no way wasted time:
- I’ve built up a lot of new skills. I’ve learnt how to record well, how to edit, how to mix and how to sing! There is still so much to learn, but when I listen to things that I did 2 years, 1 year, even 6 months ago, the difference is amazing to me.
- God has worked on so much stuff in me. I’ve grappled with my perfectionism head on, and I’ve identified areas of fear and need for approval. I’ve also had to really clarify my reason for doing what I’m doing. Producing this music for the enjoyment of others is shaky ground: everything rides on them actually enjoying it and wanting more! But doing it for Him is solid ground. To know that I’m pleasing Him should be my only aim.
I’d like to continue working on the album. I feel like God is with me in that. But what I’ve realised is that it musn’t come at the expense of writing new songs. I can’t again spend months and months spinning my wheels trying to perfect a song while in the meantime no-one is hearing the music that I’ve written. So, the album will come in time, but it comes second place to the main calling that God has given me, which is to write songs for the church. Over the next year I’ll release another single or two, but in between those releases will be a whole bunch of demos of other songs that I’m writing. I now know this is what I need to do to be faithful to his call.
I hope you enjoy Glory. If you’re a worship leader, please consider introducing it to your church, and feel free to check out my other songs. If you’re a songwriter, please get in touch and share your songs with me - I’d love to connect with hear from you!