From Melody to Music

On Thursday, September 9, 2021, we talked about in class taking a melody and adapting it to a text or taking a text and adapting a melody to it.  This was very interesting in trying to create music from a melody and some biblical text.  As this was something I had never really tried or done at first, it was a daunting task and was difficult in trying to find a melody that would convey a rhythm and emotion that would fit the biblical text.  At first, I started with finding a song and melody that I was familiar with and then taking it and then finding the text that would fit with it.  This helped as I was able to rule out certain songs and melodies that wouldn’t really fit any biblical text and once I had my melody I got to start looking for verses and Psalms that the melody could possibly fit with.  Once I started adapting the text to the melody one thing that helped in having to paraphrase some verses was looking at different English Bible translations such as the ESV and NIV, as they might use different wording.  This helped in finding different words that needed to be added or removed in order to fit the melody I had chosen and to keep with the gist and theme of the Psalm.  The main thing that helped in creating the music from the melody was that I just needed to adapt the text and not come up with the text on my own and for it to be original as that is much more difficult.  In the end, while my music may not be an amazing rendition, it was very satisfying to come up with and intriguing to listen to and sing the music I had created myself.  I find it very interesting the different melodies that can be used in creating biblical songs that are very common and easy to remember and in turn make the new song and biblical text much easier to remember in turn.