“Amazing Grace Variations” Tuesday, 10/19/2021
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I met a cellist, named James at the church I attended in Houston, in probably 1983 or 1984. He, I think, was on break from attending music school at one of the universities here in Texas. I had an idea to write a set of variations on “Amazing Grace” which could be used as part of a church service. At that time, instrumentals played during offertory were common; these were usually performed on piano at Spring Woods Baptist Church, but I thought it might be nice to break that up some since we had musicians capable of playing something other than piano. I believe I selected “Amazing Grace” for the variations because it was a favorite of my mother’s mother, Maw Maw (Dolly) Rogers. I would often play and sing “Amazing Grace” for her using the guitar on our visits to Bogalusa, Louisiana.
“Amazing Grace Variations” did not take much time to complete once I put pencil to paper, but I waited a little too long to compose it, because my new cellist friend had fairly quickly returned to his schooling. I, then, moved on to other things, so the variations sat in a folder in a box or on the shelf for a very long time.
Once I decided to complete “Look at the Birds of the Air” for recording on project one, I felt pretty strongly that it needed an instrumental prelude. Since “Amazing Grace Variations” was already in G major and included guitar and cello, which I had in mind for the final version of “Look at the Birds,” it seemed to be a very sensible fit. Also, after considering further, I realized that the scriptures regarding God’s provision for us paired nicely with the notion of God’s love and grace. Though we are a fallen race, He still graciously provides for us both spiritually, as emphasized in “Amazing Grace,” and materially, as expressed in Matthew 6:25-34.
“Look at the Birds” had always included a flute/whistling duet. I saw very quickly that I could introduce the flute in the third section of the “Amazing Grace Variations” where the guitar gets busy - the flute emphasizing the melodic element which, though clearly suggested in the guitar’s 16th note patterns, can get just a bit lost in the busyness. The original variations included four iterations of the theme, but when I decided it would serve as a prelude or introduction to “Look” I compressed those variations into two iterations with variations every eight bars.
“Look at the Birds of the Air” Tuesday, 10/19/2021
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This song and “Do You Ever Say a Prayer for Me” appear to date back to as far as 1984. My notes show “Do You Ever” in summer or fall of ’84 and “Look” in 1986, but both reflect a similar genre of composition, “Look” being the next logical step after the first attempt with “Do You Ever.” I had grown up listening to the music of The Beatles, largely as a result of my brother’s fascination with recorded music. His album collection is varied and extensive. When we were young, as soon as The Beatles or The Monkees would release a new album, my brother would have it spinning on our turntable.
“Blackbird” was certainly among my favorites of The Beatles from many years before, so when I began reading through the scriptures in the 1980s and ran across Matthew 6:25-34, the idea popped into my head “What if The Beatles had written ‘Blackbird’ based on this scripture rather than the lyrics they had used.” I also, thought, “What if ‘Blackbird’ had been written specifically as a Christian song or as a scripture song, wouldn’t this be the ideal set of verses with which to compose it?” Much of what ended up in the final product of “Look” derived its inspiration from “Blackbird”: the whistling, the patter song style, the bird sounds, even to some degree the chord choices and guitar picking style with a strong bass line. The choice to use recorded animal sounds was reinforced by Pink Floyd’s album Animals (which as much as I like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Animals has continued to be my favorite album of The Floyd). The theme song to The Andy Griffith Show which was whistled throughout the credits, also, prompted me to go that direction with “Look.”
“Look at the Birds,” for many years only utilized Matthew 6:26 and the whistling/flute duet which now runs from bar 17-68. As I approached recording project one I believed that in order to use this song it needed to be completed by adding Matthew 6:25 as a kind of first verse. Matthew 6:26 would act as a refrain with the whistling/flute duet as an instrumental bridge and Matthew 6:27-29 would serve as a second verse with transition to the refrain.
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The second verse/transition was the most difficult to write because I realized fairly quickly that the words clearly suggested a critical variation of the previous melodic/harmonic elements. It needed to have its own character to properly reflect the lyrical notions and it needed to logically rebound into the refrain. Some of it I wrote backwards from the refrain (a technique I learned about first from Dr. Newton Strandberg in my counterpoint class at Sam Houston) to meet up with the tail of the second verse. The music, at this point, now sounds easy and quite natural, I think, but it tended to be, compositionally, a challenge to get there.
I must give a special thanks to Craig Needham for his excellent work recording the cello part. His experience with recording for his instrument became critical in getting the right mic placement and his dedication to getting the part right was super. Also, I could not have asked for a better sound on Larry Bailey’s flute with really nice phrasing. Thanks to both.