You may have noticed that when I talk about composers or musical influences, I’ll list off a few of the top Classical composers, maybe mention a few of the top 20th century popular music composers… and then I’ll pick a random pop artist’s name out of a hat: Ben Folds. Since I first started listening to his music about 15 or so years ago, I discovered that he’s not as widespread famous as many of the others, and that he’s more of a “niche” pop artist, in that those that know his stuff really know his stuff, and then many others who don’t know his stuff are like: “who??” when asked if they know about Ben Folds.
For more information on who he is, please check out his Wikipedia page. In sum, he began his professional career in the 1990s as a rock pianist and has since transitioned to an “artist-in-residence”-type role in which he
works with orchestras and a cappella vocal ensembles.
I first heard of Folds my freshman year in college, when my
roommate invited me to a concert he was playing on campus. I’d never heard of
the guy before, but when my roommate mentioned that he played piano, I was in. My
takeaways from that concert were: 1. He’s awesome! 2. He reminded me
of me on the piano. I was never the teenager that went to rock and roll
concerts. Once I began attending college, the school did put on a few concerts during
orientation week, which I went. However, this was still a new experience for me,
and I was soaking up every moment of it.
It wasn’t until a couple years later that my childhood best
friend, who had also gotten into Folds’ music, also in college, burned me a mix
CD of about 100 of his songs. (There were also some Coldplay songs on it.) I
was hooked. Even though I would look back at my junior year and now say that
God was playing a role in helping me grow spiritually that year (it was also
the year I began reading the Bible for myself), Folds was another part of that
growth. I rarely listened to songs prior to that point in my life, in large
part due to the hearing loss I have had making it difficult for me to hear and
understand song lyrics. So to listen to his songs and follow along in the text,
it was like a whole new world opened up for me. Among other things, a number of
his songs gave voice to a number of the myriad struggles I had in ways that I previous
was unable to voice. If you go back through this blog’s history (specifically,
if you scroll down on the right side to the “labels” section and click on “Ben
Folds,” it’ll take you back to a few of the posts that I have decided to share),
you’ll notice several posts where I copied and pasted lyrics from a few of his
songs. Granted, my worldview was quite different then vs now, but, I still see
how his songs played a role in my growth at the time.
After I graduated, I underwent a gradual shift in my
composing/songwriting. Because of Ben Folds (and somewhat because of Coldplay,
the other primary band whose music I listened to), I wanted to write music like
him. I wanted to write pop songs, with creative piano parts, interesting song
melodies, and of course lyrics about interesting various topics. “Weeping
Separation” was my first (and first successful) attempt at writing a pop song.
Interestingly, this was Attempt #2 at writing music to those particular lyrics,
which were written by a classmate of mine for a poetry project he was doing for
his class (he was an English major). Over the next five or so years, I
continued honing and developing my craft as a songwriter. Like everyone else, I
produced half-completed duds that even now still reside in a sketchbook somewhere.
But I also wrote a decent number of songs, many of which took time to refine
until I was satisfied with it. Over time, as my repertoire of Classic rock,
pop, funk, jazz, and blues expanded, so did my rock/pop-style writing.
Today, I rarely listen to Folds’ music. It’s primarily
because of how I’ve grown over the last decade, especially spiritually. While
his music was instrumental (hah, pun intended) in my growth as a musician, I began
noticing how often his music was either heavy, depressing, or laced with
profanity and expletives. Not only that, but as I continued listening to his
music, I started finding myself more down and depressed than I was previously,
also a surprise given that in college I didn’t have that experience with his
music.
Early on in my time with the bands I was playing in, I had
landed a solo gig (my first) at one of the cafes that one of my bands
frequently performed at. However, for part of the set, I needed a bass guitarist
and a drummer. In one of the rehearsals, I asked one of them about one of my
songs which at the time had a swear word in it. He recommended that I do the
clean version. So, I changed the lyric, and it has stayed that way ever since.
I even went back over other songs I had written during the same time period
(but didn’t perform at this particular gig) and changed other similar lyrics
accordingly. Looking back, I’m glad I removed all the cuss words. I realized
that the songs still carried the same power and the same message well enough
without them. Also, as I continued writing new pop songs, the messages changed as
I healed and grew, to the point that most of the songs ended with a message of
hope or encouragement. A few examples:
- “Rocky Road”, which I wrote the winter of 2013 going into 2014, ends with the line “decide to have life beyond your wildest dreams.” That lyric alone is pretty self-explanatory, I think.
- “Ministry, My History,” which I first wrote in 2016 and then gave a musical facelift at the end of 2017 going into 2018, lists a version of the Twelve Steps to Recovery for the bridge (the turning point in the song), and ends on a grounding but encouraging note of self-kindness in the final verse.
- “My Own Man,” which I wrote in 2013 (and was the song in which the aforementioned bandmate advised me to change a lyrics), is a declaration song. The final verse, in fact, is a series of declarations of freedom from lies I had previously been believing.
Since about 2018 or so, I haven’t been writing any new
songs. I’m OK with that. Over the last couple years, I’ve primarily been composing
piano suites or a cappella choral anthems. When I’m not writing any
music, I’ve been going back through the archives and cataloguing everything
(see more in this post here). And I’ve been finding, among other things, that
songwriting is no longer as rewarding as I once thought. Part of it is that
music is again changing, something I’ve been noticing since about 2015. (Spoiler:
rock-and-roll is no longer the top current genre of “pop” music; rap, hip-hop,
and electronic music have since taken over.)
As for what direction I’m going to go musically, I’m still
figuring that out. My approach is to continue writing whatever comes to mind.
Also, a part of my approach will include treating composing, at least in part,
as part of my devotional time. In 2019, in the middle of the biggest
compositional drought of my life, I realized that I truly did miss composing
when it was “just God and me,” acknowledging that I had strayed from Him, not
just in my music-making, but in all areas of my life.
During that time, though, as I was wrestling and struggling
with my musical identity, I had found creative journaling – specifically, journaling
that involved either Scripture or words I felt the Holy Spirit was telling me
(or both), combined with art (trying to draw/color what I felt like God was showing
me) – as part of my act of devotion, since making music was just not happening.
I soon discovered that a valuable way to spend time with God (and specifically,
with Scripture), also included word-journaling. One of my Bibles has a
devotional on each page, often with a Scriptural passage of reference, and then
some thoughts and some questions to answer. While this was often
time-consuming, I soon found this to be a great way to ground myself with God,
since intentionally setting aside this kind of time has been and continues to
be a lifelong struggle.
Finally, as God gave me back the gift of composing in late
2019, among the many things I learned about how composing works (and has
worked) for me, I found that it can be a method of devotion to Him. He did,
after all, give me the gift. And while yes, He can take it away if I’m not
pleasing Him or if I’m straying too much from Him, He can also give it back.
While pop-songwriting was a good adventure for about a decade, I’ve been finding
that, more than any other genre of composition, it can become a great indulgence.
Yes, many of Ben Folds’ songs were valuable vehicles for me to give voice to various
struggles I had (the song I wrote titled “To Have You Or To Lose You / Goodbye,
Lust” was a great example of that), but I now realize that that was only meant
to be temporary. I was unsaved during much of that time. I didn’t yet have the
hope that I now have, so of course it was natural for me to produce depressing,
heavy songs. But once that hope arrived and began settling in my spirit, I
needed to change the music I was making, to feed the Holy Spirit in me and
cause Him to grow.
[OK – brief disclaimer here – there’s a growing population
who believe that God automatically lives in you. That belief is false. The only
way God lives in any of us is when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and
Savior, when we receive in our hearts Him and His blood sacrifice on the cross to
atone for our sins, and when we say yes to a relationship with Him and
to following Him in our lives. Only then does God (the Holy Spirit) live in us,
and not before. I feel like every time this comes up, I have to be very clear
about what I mean, given the pervasive belief (really, a lie) that somehow God
just lives in us without us having to do anything to grow or change, particularly
according to the Bible. That’s just incorrect.]
Now, I’ve been returning more to my roots, which partly
means writing choral music again, but more to the point it means setting passages
from the Bible to music. Not that I can’t ever again write pop-style music or
even secular music, but if the idea is that the music I make is supposed to
honor God, who gave me the gift of music-making in the first place, then I do
believe that part of what will guide the direction I go will be dictated by
that principle.
I will still occasionally reference Ben Folds, because, like
other composers and songwriters he has influenced aspects of the music-making I
do. There are still songs of his that I like, because of either the melody or
the harmony or the rhythm, or even how he transitions from one section to the
next. One thing I still particularly enjoy about what he has done is how he
often has employed what might seem like “unconventional” harmonic progressions (or
even “unconventional” melodic motions). I expect that, for the duration of my
compositional hobby, some of what he has done musically will continue to
influence aspects of what I do. Even if I reject other aspects of his music
(like the swearing or the heavy, depressing lyrics) in mine.