Nagoya Psalms Project

Nagoya Psalms Project – 詩篇 27 (Psalm 27)

Posted on January 4, 2020

This was our first song in Japanese. Since our group was mostly more comfortable in English, the writing process was a bit more analytical. We still started out worshipping together and meditating on the Psalm, but then we split into two groups – one group working on lyrics using Japanese translations of the Bible, and one group working on the instrumentation, inspired by the Princess Mononoke soundtrack.

Nagoya Psalms Project – Psalm 25 (What Is There You Cannot Do)

Posted on January 4, 2020

Psalm 25 was the second Psalm our group in Nagoya worked with. This time we started, musically, with a bluesier progression and the verses became the expression of our common struggles. But when it came time to work on the chorus, we were stuck. We continued to pray and talk and eventually found the common missing piece in God’s response to Job. The image that accompanies these videos is a photo of a painting by Sarah Moor. Read more fromRead More→

Nagoya Psalms Project – Psalm 139 (You Hem Me In)

Posted on January 4, 2020

In the Fall of 2018, I started meeting with a group of folks in Nagoya to spend time making music together and trying to write songs, based on Psalms. We shared a desire to see new music written for the Japanese church, but we also needed to start with what we could do. Since English was the most comfortable language for the majority of our group, we started writing in English and our first Psalm was Psalm 139. The PsalmRead More→