Music from Mars

Apr 19

Mike Pittmanmp3, music, Uncategorized , No Comments

I’ve never checked out the music section of the Mars Hill Church website before, but just the other day I did, and my (admittedly preliminary) view is that it’s well worth a look. Mars Hill is a mega-church, it’s American, and in many ways it couldn’t be more different to the average Aussie family church, but the songs here are largely biblically driven and will stretch us just by being from a different context. The trick is not to realise that not everything from their context will work, or is even helpful, in our context.

There’s a whole range of different stuff for different tastes – some bluesy stuff, lots of rock and grungy and kind of stuff.  I downloaded a whole swag of stuff that I’m still working through, but here’s some starting points if you’re interested… If you’re after something bluesy/funky, try Brothers Of The Empty Tomb. If you’re after something rocky with a touch of Jeff Buckley, try Ghost Ship.

The Good Friday album has a variety of styles, obviously as performance only, from Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Rage Against The Machine to orchestral. There’s an interesting take on How Deep The Father’s Love that starts how you remember and ends up quite different. There’s a great update of the hymn Jesus Paid It All that contrasts nicely to the Sovereign Grace version. Last year’s Good Friday was apparently even more radical.

If you snoop around, there are also songs of the week available from their Downtown campus, including a great arrangement of O Holy Night, and a version of All Creatures that contrasts with the version by David Crowder that’s also worth a listen.

Now, obviously, not all of these songs are going to be good for your church or my church. Though they are biblical, the taste and style factors put many out of reach for traditional church services. Many of these songs were performed and can’t be adapted for congregational singing. Some won’t be as directly from the Bible as you’d like. Some might just be good for your personal listening pleasure. Most churches won’t have the anything remotely like music resources of a Mars Hill. You may, however, hear a new song you can do at your church, or you may hear a new way of making an old hymn workable for a contemporary congregation. I also like hearing different takes on and old hymn that contrast (see above) and might give the musos at my church ideas. Sheet music is also freely available for many of these songs, right next to the download link.

Some last tips – if you’re wanting to download a whole lot of these songs at once, it can take quite some time, so you might want to use a download manager to save you time. I used a plugin for the Firefox browser called Down Them All that allows you to quickly download all of a particular type of file from a page. I just ticked the mp3 box and said where I wanted to save them, and it downloaded every mp3 on each page. You can also subscribe to the rss feed or the iTunes podcast, but these only have more recent additions. Looks like they’ll also be offering music, mostly for sale but some free, from the Resound website.

Happy listening…