Just what the world needs—another updated version of a hymn. You’re welcome. This has always been one of my favorites. Thanks for letting me share.
HOW I MADE IT
Two of my favorite things in the past year have been the book Show Your Work and the podcast Song Exploder. Both of them celebrate the stories that go into the creation of a piece of art and encourage artists to share their creative process. So, in this vein, here is my creative process for “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
For this song I wanted to include sounds from everyday life. Sounds of nature, my daughter and her toys—everyday, ordinary things. If we keep our eyes and ears open, we can see examples of God’s holiness wherever we are—more to come in a future post on how we can experience holiness in the ordinary. I wanted this song to feel organic and raw—hipster descriptors that make things sound like they could be sold at Whole Foods. Here is the process of how I collected the sounds:
First, I wanted some samples from my daughter. I can’t wait to record us singing together but she is not quite to that level yet, so I needed clips of her singing and talking. Here are the originals:
These are pretty adorable, right? She called me “Dee” before she could say, “daddy.” But I needed them to fit the song. So, after some manipulation, here is what I came up with:
Next, I wanted one of her toys:
To add to the organic-ness, (extra hipster points) I recorded sounds of nature from around my house—stomping on leaves, the fire pit, some birds:
Finally, instead of using an electronic pad sound, I made a pad sound from my voice. This is slightly embarrassing:
After adding some stomps, piano, bass and an acoustic guitar, I had something that resembled what the word, “holy” means to me. A connection of the sacred, amidst the normal sounds of everyday life.
