Continuing with my amplification of Fiona Dyball’s presentation:
O God You Search Me by Bernadette Farrell.
Dyball suggests this for wonder, God’s love and trust. The text is here and the sheet music can be purchased at OCP (NB the link on the handout is wrong).
Oceans by Hillsong (Matt Crocker, Joel Houston and Salomon Ligthelm)
This is noted to be a prayer of trust and the Spirit. The text is here and the sheet music is at praisecharts.
Sacred Silence by Tom Booth
This is a sung prayer with Trinitarian and Marian verses. The text is here and the sheet music can be purchased at OCP.
Send Us Out by Gen Bryant
This is a great recessional that Dyball notes has themes of discipleship and thanksgiving. It is also only the second Australian song used here. There is a heavy USA/OCP emphasis, and while there is nothing wrong with the usefulness of the material she has chosen, there is a distinct lack of Australian music generally and an allergy to Willow/AOV material in this presentation that I find rather perplexing, considering it is for Australian high school use. (The whole push of CWB II being the official liturgical music source for the Australian Catholic church always seemed to me to be a continuance of the hierarchy’s antipathy to Willow and jealousy over the success of As One Voice in Australia, but I can’t see why that should be an influence here.)
The text is at Gen’s site and the sheet music can be purchased at Willow, which I note is not linked in the handout – it may have too new for that at the time.
I’ve alluded to this before: I honestly think that Willow could do much more without necessarily spending a lot of money.
Its been many years since their last collection (AOV:NG) came out, so come up with a list of the best x00 songs suitable for liturgical and non-liturgical use as a replacement for As One Voice, but don’t include anything that the copyright holder doesn’t allow full access to. I’m not saying give it away: there are too many hymns outside the OCP/GIA spectrum on OneLicense missing words and music (hooray to Hope Publishing and boo to Oxford University Press!)
Produce an on-line liturgical/topical index as song titles on their own are useless. This may not be as difficult as it sounds since they already produce weekly music selections for church and school.
Then the difficult part: put them on YouTube! They don’t need to be professionally overproduced in the style of GIA/OCP. A midi file with just the words on screen would be fine. They might even be able to make an arrangement with you to use your band-in-the-box productions as they sound nicer than straight midi! Commercial YouTube videos allow off-YouTube links, so they can provide direct links back to Willow for people to purchase the songs they want to use.
You’ve posted quite a few Chris Brunelle videos over the years: he sings predominantly OCP material and is a one-man operation with just a guitar, microphone and video camera, recording in his church. I generally prefer listening to him, and I’m sure it sounds a lot closer to what the songs sound like in real life than with professional players and singers. Especially given that most of Willow’s material is produced by younger people, that shouldn’t be too hard to do, and just costs time.
I believe Willow’s a one-woman entity these days, so I’m probably being a bit hard: maybe there’s a super keen volunteer out there who loves contemporary music and has a basic understanding of liturgy that could lend a hand!
And a final comment: in this week’s music selections on Willow’s site there are 14 by Patricia Smith, none of which have demo recordings. Most of these are for use in class-rooms, so I have no idea how they can be used, since most teachers are not going to either play or have any idea what they sound like. I don’t know if its still common practise, but when I had some involvement years ago, many Australian children’s recordings seemed to be made available with a “karaoke” disc for use in class.
Thank you for the thoughtful comments, Chris.
Willow has always been a very lean operation and my impression is that it has long been a vocation rather than a profitable exercise.
To Monica O’Brien’s great credit, AOV 1&2 were so well curated, that many Australian parishes have never moved beyond them. AOV NG was a massive undertaking with accompanying CDs etc that didn’t get the same traction.
The digital only model being used now at AOV would certainly benefit from more sample recordings and backing tracks, like Burland and Mangan provide, but there is so little in it for publishers now that is really up to the individuals involved.
Occasionally, I go back and spend time putting backing tracks to AOV NG songs on YouTube, but it is tedious and video editing is not a passion of mine – obvious if you’ve ever seen them. If you are a busy school teacher who writes songs as a sideline, like Patricia Smith, there are probably other things you would rather be doing.
If I was to advise them, I’d would like a curated collection that could be purchased an e-book AOV 3, with the proviso that if your song was included you would need to provide a recording, Chris Brunelle style. Even if they were only Willow copyrights, the pick of Patricia Smith, Peter Grant, Gen Bryant, etc plus the older songwriters they have collected like David MacGregor, Leo Watt and Brian Boniwell, would be most useful.
I must admit though, I wouldn’t have had the stubbornness and strength to carry on like they have done. The Australian Bishops could have saved themselves a lot of trouble, money and time by paying Willow to do a CWB2 hymn book (the volume 2), with a separate liturgical handbook by the Bishop’s experts. (Vol 1)
cheers
Geoff