Hymns, People, and Christian Culture
I sell hymnals on the internet.
My Facebook ads generally cost about $5–$10 per purchase. That means that I spend that much to get Facebook to plop my video and photo ads in front of the people most likely to be interested in my hymnal and invest in it.
The most interesting thing, however, has been watching how folks have responded to the entire concept of hymns, worship traditions, and, more specifically, “lead sheet” style hymns.
Some say “Yes! I’ve been looking for this!” Others say “So what? Hal Leonard has already released this…” And still others say “How dare you destroy my beloved hymns!”
I only remove comments that embarrass the original poster or are rude and cruel to others.
Otherwise, all the engagement is eye-opening and beneficial in some way.
So why does a lead sheet hymnal seem like such a weird thing to some people?
“Lead Sheets” are simply the melody of a song printed on a treble clef with lyrics underneath, and then “chords” (ex. “C,” “Am,” etc.) written above it all.
It’s perfect for quickly jotting down the essentials needed to record and preserve a song or melody. It’s the musician’s job to then interpret exactly how to build those chords. All they see is “G” or “Em.” They have to decide exactly where to place the other 2 or 3 notes needed to “finish” the chord and “fill out” the song.
There’s an interesting parallel to this in the Baroque tradition of “figured bass,” which gave musicians a bass line and harmonic instructions without spelling out every note of the accompaniment. A skilled musician could then use those instructions to create the actual harmony and texture of the music.
The rules of musical note voice leading provide the needed roadmap to build chords using only chord symbols.
And this is what I love about lead sheets: they don’t simply tell the musician exactly what to play. They give the musician the essential musical structure, and then trust the musician to supply the realization.
That means the same lead sheet can produce very different music depending on who is playing it, where it is being played, and what is happening in the room.
If it is being sung during a somber moment, then the musicians can play the chords in a very different way than they would during a celebratory moment.
Same melody and lyrics, same underlying harmonic structure, very different “feel” or “atmosphere.”
This is why I love playing from lead sheets.
However, when we hear the word “hymn,” many of us automatically think “four-part harmony,” and rightly so. The bass-tenor-alto-soprano aspect of singing is definitely a major part of the hymn tradition.
And prescribed four-part harmony is beautiful. One of my “core memories” is locking in my tenor part while singing a cappella Palestrina chorales with my college choir at Canterbury Cathedral in England.
But a four-part setting is still a particular realization of a hymn.
The melody and lyrics are the soul of a song. The harmony provides the body, or framework. The four-part arrangement is one way of realizing that framework.
So it is very understandable for many folks who love the old hymns to raise an eyebrow at the idea of a “lead sheet hymnal.” It’s almost like I’m stripping away one of the most important parts (or 3! haha) of singing hymns!
But I’m really just approaching the hymn from a different direction: a direction called “folk”, or “chord playing”, familiar already to musicians like the Gaithers, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, or the Swampers and Nashville Number System players. Instead of giving the musician a finished four-part arrangement and asking them to reproduce it, I’m giving them the melody, lyrics, and harmonic structure and asking them to realize it themselves.
So a “lead sheet hymnal” is definitely a “niche” product. It’s a weird thing, I know.
Admittedly, for my part, it was born from necessity: I could not read four parts fast enough as a kid, but I could “feel” my way around chords. So lead sheets are how I was able to read music more quickly.
And that way of thinking about music stuck with me.
Lead sheet style music notation is also more in line with the way jazz players tend to see their music. In college, we’d play from something called “The Real Book,” filled with jazz standards in lead sheet format, all “trading fours” as we’d improvise around the melody line and try to play the extended chords underneath.
As a gigging lounge pianist, I would use “fake books,” which are simply popular songs written in lead sheet format. I could play “Memory” from Cats in a bombastic, Liszt style if I was playing on the street, or play it like a lullaby if I was in a hotel lobby late at night. Lead sheet playing let me do that.
As mentioned earlier, lead sheet is also similar to how Nashville studio musicians get around their songs. Often it’s just chords over the lyrics. But the idea is the same: Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley were thinking in terms of chords over melody, and very much not reading four parts on a grand staff.
So when I started working with hymns, I treated them the same way.
I had a massive stockpile of lead sheet hymns that I had accumulated over the years, and eventually I realized that I wanted to share them with everyone else.
And that’s how I ended up selling hymnals on the internet.
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