Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Music Lessons: Lesson #1 The Language of Music

Back in the 70’s I remember occasionally watching an early Sunday morning children’s program called Marshall Efron’s Illustrated, Simplified and Painless Sunday School. I have borrowed the program title because it articulates well the approach I like to take when teaching people how to read music. Reading music is a skill anyone can learn. Many people are intimidated by music notation and therefore feel uncomfortable about participating in music. The more comfortable our congregation is with reading music the more confident we will be in singing.

The best way to approach learning to read music is to accept several basic facts up front. First, you have to accept the fact that written music is a language. No one person sat down and developed our system of written music. Think about it, no one is that psychotic. Music notation developed over a long period of time. Second, since music is a language, like most languages it has some really weird, illogical, inefficient, confusing and seemingly pointless elements which you have to just accept. Back in elementary school you may have asked your teacher how can “through, tough, bough, though, and thought” all sound different but are all spelled with ‘ough’? She probably gave you the all inspiring and informative answer, “Because that’s the way it is.” This is also the answer to the same sort of questions when it comes to learning to read music. The third and most important fact you must accept is this. No matter how good your ideas to improve music notation may be, no one is going to rewrite the 1200 or so years worth of notated music we have to accommodate your improvements. Besides, that’s the way it is.

The earliest music writing involved making marks to indicate the rise and fall of pitch. For instance a gifted bard may have wanted to share this portion of a song with a fellow musician.

As you see, this only conveys a general idea of how the melody should go. In later developments a line was probably added to indicate the beginning pitch for the song.


Over time more lines were added to indicate more specific information for pitch. Eventually 5 lines came to be accepted as the norm.

The pattern of five lines and four spaces came to be called the music staff. No, I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is.



During the same time that the staff was developing, the accepted music scale was also developing. Letters came to be used to indicate names for the notes. As we ascend through pitches we use the seven letters “A” through “G” to identify the notes, and then we start back over with “A” through “G” again. The music staff provides us with five lines and four spaces. That gives us nine levels where pitches can be represented. But, we needed a way to mark which line was which pitch. Some brilliant, well intentioned person decided we needed to place a symbol on the staff that would identify the second line from the bottom of the staff as the note “g”.

This is what the symbol they drew on the staff looked like. They called it the G cleff. You will notice that the G cleff symbol makes a crosshair on the second line from the bottom of the staff pointing out that line as “G”. The space above would be “A”, the line above that “B”, etc. The space below “G” would of course be “F”, the line below that “E”, etc.

Since there are a lot more than just eight or nine pitches used in most music we needed to be able to show more than is possible on the G cleff. Someone had a brilliant idea to take another music staff, put another cleff sign on it and let it represent another set of nine notes. This cleff marks the second line from the top of the staff as the note “F”. You’ll never believe what we call it. Yep, that’s right. This is the F cleff.

When we pair up these two sets of music staffs we make what is known as the Grand Staff. Between, over, and under the staff additional pitches can be represented as needed by drawing very short “imaginary” lines called ledger lines. In the hymnal you have noticed the words of the hymn are written between these staffs. The G cleff has the higher sounding notes played with the right hand on the piano or organ. In a choir like ours, these notes are sung usually by the ladies of the choir. The F cleff indicates the lower sounding notes played with the left hand on the keyboards, and sung by the men’s voices in the choir.

These are some very basic foundational ideas in the development of music notation. None of what we have covered is earth shattering and none of it will make any of us the next contestant on American Idol. I do hope, however, that when you open your hymnal this Sunday, instead of seeing a bunch of decorative lines above and below the text of the hymn, you will begin to see the language of music and begin to recognize some of its elements. We will continue to build on these ideas each month. There you have music illustrated, simplified, and painless. Why? Because, that’s the way it really is.

Accusations of a Church Musician

February's Newsletter Article

Last month I explained how, at the beginning of my career in church music, I had endorsed the use of contemporary worship music in corporate worship. Later, I began to develop concerns about the direction in which was going. Now I want to explore this issue further.

Contemporary worship music has helped to promote the development of today’s market driven worship-style. Worship is no longer seen as a sacred thing taking place between God and His children, but as a marketable, sellable, media event. The entertainment value of modern worship is shamelessly promoted by billboards and television ad campaigns. The publishers of worship choruses and chants have developed a booming business based on this desire for more entertainment in church music. The worship experience has been reduced to just another marketable product.

Market driven worship, along with other cultural anomalies has created a number of issues of concern in the modern church. As a church musician, the impact it has had on congregational singing is of particular concern to me.

Singing in harmony is almost a lost art in our churches. While working as a youth minister, I was amazed at how often I encountered teenagers and adults who had no idea what the word harmony meant. As I mentioned above, there are other cultural anomalies at work here. The lack of general music education in our modern school systems is the major blame for this particular dearth. Modern worship trends, however, have exacerbated the issue. Churches with their large screen projectors flash the text of simple choruses or even the words for hymns on a wall. The congregant can slump his way through the worship service without even opening a hymnal or looking at a single sheet of music.

Now, I will be the first to admit there is no Biblical mandate to sing in harmony versus singing in unison. I also know that not everyone can read music. But the truth is many of the richest hymns fall flat when they are not sung in harmony. Gentlemen, have you ever wondered why that last line in the chorus of “And Can it Be That I Should Gain” is so uncomfortably high for you? That’s because you are supposed to be singing the men’s part, not the ladies’ part. As a musician, it seems to me that well-meaning churches utilizing text posted on a big screen are running up a white flag of surrender. The not-so-subtle message to me is, “Well, none of you know how to read music anyway. We really can’t expect you to be bothered with singing anything other than a group chant. Therefore, we’re just going to flash some words on the wall along with some pretty pictures. Just follow the bouncing ball.” One can not help but wonder about the other supposed advantages of hands free worship. You don’ have to be bothered with picking up those dusty hymnals or making all that racket flipping pages in your Bibles during the sermon. I cannot help but wonder if advocates of the big screen are also thinking that participants can get to their wallets easier when the plate is passed.

(Unfortunately, I realize this particular rant backs me in a corner. If the schools are not going to educate our congregations in general music knowledge, then who is? Ok, I guess the church’s music department will have to take care of that. Be watching for those opportunities. Believe it or not I am working on some ideas for that.)

Resistance to more ancient tunes can also be blamed on market driven worship. Have you noticed that the various styles of modern music are beginning to sound alike? If you have been thinking that today’s country music sounds like yesterday’s rock, and today’s rock is sounding a lot like hip-hop, be encouraged. You are not tone deaf. In the book, “Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns”, author, T. David Gordon makes an excellent case for the fact that all modern music styles are devolving toward a common sound. This common sound assaults us all day long. We hear it on the television programs, on the radio, in advertisements, and in department stores. We even hear it on our co-worker’s cell phones. (Let’s face it. There is something wrong with anyone who uses “Crazy Train” for a ring tone. Keep an eye on this person.)

Since we are bombarded by market driven music all day long, is it any wonder we find traditional church music odd? In days past, the sound of church music did not vary much from the classical or folk music people might have encountered in life. Even in the early days of recorded music and radio the melodic and choral structures of popular music did not vary greatly from worship music. Today, there are very few similarities between traditional worship music and modern pop. This is a primary point made by advocates of contemporary worship. They view traditional worship music as being so out of sync with the modern world that it is no longer relevant and should be replaced with a more modern version of itself. Unfortunately, this commonly held belief has gained great momentum in the last twenty years.

Should we abandon music in our hymnal that draws on a history easily documented from the 1500’s and before? Should we renounce the employment of music that utilizes 12th century plainchant as its musical foundation? Perhaps we should not utilize the highly structured music of Beethoven or the rich theology of Luther’s hymn writing. Has Handel seen his best days? This choir director naively believes the problem is not with the music, but rather with us. I do include myself in that statement. We need to rise above choosing music that is convenient or entertaining, and seek to utilize Biblical principles in selecting music which challenges and changes us.

Shouldn’t worship music be different from market music? I really don’t believe our worship music should sound like a Muzac version of the Bee Gee’s greatest hits. Our pastor is faithfully guiding us to deepen our understanding of worship. Likewise, we need to grow in our knowledge of worship music. That means we need to learn hymns that are theologically rich and traditional in sound. I am hopeful that through the Hymn of the Month, issues we will address here in the newsletter, and even through online interactive methods, we may be able to increase the musical knowledge of our congregation and encourage hymn singing and participating in worship on a level we have never known before. Watch for future articles that will be addressing these issues.

The Happy Frozen Chosen - A Visual Illustration

This member of the frozen chosen just realized that being in the frozen chosen means he is forgiven!

Confessions of a Contemporary Christian Musician

My recent contribution to our church's monthly newsletter.  

I must admit I have spent a large part of my adult life as an advocate for contemporary or blended worship and music.  However, even before I left my former denomination in 2004, I had begun to be concerned about the direction in which contemporary worship was going.  Having submerged myself for nearly seven years in traditional worship here at Main Street, and having completed my third Christmas season as choir director, I now cringe when I think about some of the things I took part in as a worship leader in days gone by.  My experiences at Main Street, the leadership of our Pastor, reading materials provided for me by the Session, and my own personal research, have led me to better understand the allure of contemporary worship music, and the deterioration of true worship that I had observed during my own time in the ministry.

In my former denomination, most of the pastors I met and worked with tended to view the worship service as an evangelistic tool for reaching the lost, a revivalist strategy going back to the second and third Great Awakenings of the 19^th and early 20^th century. Pastors were taught to design worship services, in part, to appeal to the lost, un-churched, and/or unsuspecting neighbor who might happen to attend a service. Songs from southern gospel, folk music, and even the occasional country song were quite common.  These song choices leaned toward sentimentality and building an emotional experience to “enhance” the worship experience of the participants.  Even the hymns were often theologically anemic, as most of the accepted hymn repertoire was the product of the same revivalist movements cited above. 

[This revivalist mindset can be illustrated by my own experiences. Toward the end of my time in full-time ministry, I began to make attempts to re-introduce some of the older, theologically rich songs of faith which I had discovered in my studies. I was shocked at the resistance I encountered from congregations and fellow ministerial staff.  I specifically remember being called on the carpet by a senior pastor for singing, “Fairest Lord Jesus,” a hymn that exalts the beauty and glory of Christ’s nature, in a morning service.  I was told I was going too “high church” and that I needed to put in more quartet numbers and more Bill Gaither songs so the congregation could “feel something.”]

With the emphasis on emotion and building a worship service that was more acceptable to the religious novice, the inclusion of contemporary music during the late 1970s was a natural development.  Many of the early contemporary Christian songs had the advantage of being based on scripture passages.  For me, these were actually a refreshing change from emotional descriptions of early morning strolls with Jesus in secret gardens, mansions and streets of gold, and post-mortem family reunions held around a family supper table in the clouds.  Unfortunately, as time went by, I have seen the contemporary Christian music I once enthusiastically embraced degenerate into sentimental love ballads about Jesus, which could just as easily be about a human loved one.  For that matter, some of them might be about your puppy.

For me, the allure of contemporary music was that it seemed to bring vitality and a greater emphasis on scripture back into the worship service, without alienating the evangelistic targets whom had been invited to the service.  This is the chief error I and so many others accepted. We were designing worship services to appeal to people who still did not know God or even why He should be worshipped!

It is not my intention to “demonize” any style of Christian music. The issue we must consider is, what is appropriate for corporate worship?  Corporate worship should not be a concert to captivate the parishioner. “But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will ….” The Westminster Confession, Chapter 21.1.  An individual may be encouraged or uplifted by various music styles. But are all of those styles appropriate for a time of worship?

As I said earlier, my seven years here at Main Street have caused me to reconsider my beliefs about appropriate worship. Pastor Strain has reminded us over and over, corporate worship is a time for God to be worshipped by His people.  If an un-churched, unregenerate person finds our worship service alienating, then we must be doing something right!  When this person visits, we should do all we can to make them feel welcome and their visit appreciated, but they should leave the service knowing we experienced something they did not, and in fact, could not experience.  Wouldn’t it be great for such a person to be touched by God in such a way that they sought a deeper understanding of what they were missing out on?

I am a student of worship, not an expert.  After all the years I have spent in leading worship, I find in reality I am but a novice.  All I once knew I have had to forget.  All I thought I knew, I am now learning again for the first time. I am truly hopeful that the old saying is wrong and it actually is possible to teach an old dog a new trick.  It is my hope in the coming months to share with you what I am learning as a student of worship and to share with you ways in which we can experience a greater enjoyment in singing praises to God.  Until next time, sing loud His praises.

Ron Simpson