Discover Worship: Hi! Welcome to Discover Worship! My name is Vince Wilcox, and I’m here with Luke Woodard who is an engraver, editor, writer, arranger, and major contributor to what we do here at Discover Worship and has been since 2010. Today, rather than you offering some blog insight and technical perspective on things, I really just wanted our folks to get to know you a little better. Tell us your story – how you got here and how it involves music.
Luke: Sure! Thanks for having me. My parents met in the church choir, so I’ve grown up completely involved in church music. The earliest memories I have, I sang with my parents. When my little brother came along, we formed a quartet and sang at our church in Detroit, Michigan. My father was in a local Southern Gospel quartet, and early on, I started going to those rehearsals, playing bass guitar and piano for them a little bit. They were attempting to sound like the big quartets of the time. Their attempts were less than what they had hoped for. But they were attempting to do what they had heard the quartet that came through on the weekend do.
Discover Worship: Like the Cathedrals?
Luke: Yes, the big quartets would come through town, and they’d buy the sheet music and go to rehearsal the next week and try to sing. They were confused that it wouldn’t sound the same. So, my earliest experience with arranging was that I would listen to the recording and say “here’s what they did, here’s the note, this is the part you should sing, this is how the ending went” because they usually don’t give you that in musical form. You have to listen to the recording. I had played tenor saxophone in 5th grade so I knew my note names. So I just started sketching out by ear those great Lari Goss Cathedral Quartet arrangements. I am fortunate they were actually listening to great stuff musically for that genre. So that was my earliest experience with arranging and developing an ear for hearing those kinds of things.
Discover Worship: So you were in High School doing this?
Luke: I was 13 – Middle School or something like that when I started, and that was a great joy. So, I was all in with quartet music and thought that’s what I was wanted to do. I ate it up and loved every minute of it. But then I would hear things like the Beach Boys. The first time I heard that I got obsessed with Beach Boys and how they put their songs together. And bands like Chicago or things like that. I grew up in a Baptist upbringing that was pretty strict. Not necessarily my parents – they were kind of just in the same system – but Christian school and the church were kind of the “You don't smoke or chew or go with girls who do” kind of thing so they didn’t like guitars and drums. Musically, it was kind of sheltered. The church wouldn’t have been pleased that I liked the Beach Boys or something like that, but my dad loved them. So it wasn’t in the home that there were restrictions on that. But those experiences in Christian school were somewhat frustrating with musical things I would do or wanted to do, and they would not like it – that would be too “something” for them. So there was some aggravation and discouragement, which looking back is really sad…I feel sad for those people more than angry or anything else. But it was a challenge I navigated through.
Then I went to Liberty University to major in music. They were a little more open-minded musically. I sang with a PR group there that had great singers, and I was able to write some arrangements and expand in that way with some great, stellar voices that could sing anything I wrote for them. Then after that I worked in the church and came up against “Oh, these people can’t just sing anything I write for them” and started adapting to real singers and real people and moved to Nashville shortly after that.
I did a variety of things. I ran sound, sang on the road and did different things and didn’t really think the arranging stuff I was personally fascinated with could lead to an actual career. But then as I was in town and felt I had a capacity for this and a real interest in it, I found my way to eventually making a living freelance, doing a lot of transcription for a publishing company, or maybe a new song from Worship Together, and they call me when they want the sheet music written out. Or some work for individual churches who call, and they want to do a certain song that’s not available currently, or do an arrangement of a song a certain way for their youth choir, and add strings or horns or something, I can write those things. I feel really privileged and blessed to be able to do it for a living. Again I’m deeply fascinated with music and the physics of it, all the theory and everything behind it. And then somewhat mesmerized by the magic of it. It’s numbers and math and vibrations and everything, but it’s this amazing thing God has given us that is endlessly fascinating to me. I feel grateful that here I am today and able to make a living playing in that world.
Discover Worship: We’re honored to have you as part of our team. You’ve also done work for Brentwood-Benson and who else?
Luke: Word Music, Worship Together, Mercy Me, Matthew West and some individual artists who, if you want to buy their songbook, I might be the guy who made the songbook.
Discover Worship: You mentioned your musical influences: Chicago, Beach Boys. Today who are some artists who inspire your creativity?
Luke: There are some people within pop music and stuff – I think Bruce Hornsby is fantastic. He’s a little bit off the beaten path but musically, I’m fascinated with the things he does. There’s a lot of very talented pop artists and things like that that are music inspiration. But I also love classical music. We go to hear the symphony, Mahler and those kinds of things – I love that.
Actually so far as what I listen to in the car? More often than not the CD I would put in, if it’s not classical, would be movie soundtracks – John Williams, Danny Elfman. It’s a classical bent, but kind of a neoromantic version of classical music. I find even in choral arranging and thinking about things for the church, I find a lot of musical inspiration in the “alphabet” of movie scores cause that cinematic style – even when I’m writing an a cappella piece at my own church - I love to bring in that cinematic element, those kind of progressions, because it’s a very transcendent sound that is very fitting for a hymn or something like that. Compared to pop music which is great in and of itself but while I’ve been to a U2 concert - and it was a transcendent experience - by and large, I don’t consider pop music as transcendent in the same way musically. It’s good for what it is, but so far as the things that really take my breath away, they tend to be classical, orchestral, and movie soundtracks.
Discover Worship: You think about art and read about art. Who are some of the writers, both from a theological standpoint and an art standpoint, that you’ve been affected by or look forward to reading when something new is coming out?
Luke: Harold Best used to be the Dean of Music at the conservatory at Wheaton. He’s written very little; I think he only has two books, but they would be foundational. One came out when I was in college – “Music Through the Eyes of Faith.” It came from a background where they were worried about drums and such. There was a lot of cultural baggage with music where there was a lot of fear about rock music or things like that. That book really helped reframe my thinking from a Biblical standpoint that celebrates all the creative gift of music whether or not it’s attached to a Christian lyric…to recognize the beauty of music everywhere we find it.
He’s written something since called “Unceasing Worship” that really talks about who we are as people and that we are worshipping all the time, to recognize that to be human is to worship, rather than saying that worship is just the thing I do on Sunday morning with music. I’m always declaring something, I’m arranging my life in deference to something, something I’ve declared is worthy of my attention today whether it involves music or not.
How then should we use music in the service of worship? Music isn’t equivalent to the power of God – it’s something God has given us as a gift. It disabuses me of the notion that the goose bumps I feel in a great song – when we go a cappella on Holy, Holy on a Sunday morning – that wonderful transcendent feeling I might have…I too often have just said “Well, then God showed up.” We did the key change the right way, and I got goose bumps…that was God showing up, rather than acknowledging God was already there. And the power of music is a lesser power than the power of God. We should use it wisely, not manipulatively, or not equate it with the presence of God in a dangerous way, but recognize the beauty of that song helped me come to a place in my heart of really reflecting on God. I can celebrate the power of music and use it wisely and understand it can create an environment where I will be more reflective or I will be moved by thinking about the Gospel. But it is not something to be used to manipulate me into it, and I should always divide the difference. I’ve had a transcendent experience at the U2 concert, but Bono is not God. So I should recognize the power of music is different than the power of the Gospel, the power of God, and the presence of God, and I shouldn’t equate it with the musical “high” you can get in many other places. Stadiums are filled every week with people “worshipping” through music, but it’s not always that they’re worshipping God. Harold Best is an important thinker around those ideas as a church musician. Beyond that, C.S. Lewis and some of the usual suspects – Norman Wright, N.T. Wright, Tim Keller – some of those books are great books about faith, and I find them intellectually engaging.
Discover Worship: Wow! Those are some of my favorite writers as well. In terms of your writing and arranging, what are some of the guiding principals of those efforts?
Luke: I aspire to be guided by beauty. Music should be beautiful and moving, rather than just accomplishing a quick goal with the most shortcuts and as quickly as possible. I want to create beautiful things, and my greatest aspiration would be to leave something beautiful that would live beyond me. These little arrangements – if it’s an a cappella hymn or something like that – they’re kind of little “inventions” or a little “machine” that you can turn on, and let it go off into the world. All the math of it, the theory of it should all work. So I want to create good, beautiful art that is in and of itself excellent and not lazy.
But at the same time, I need to think about who I’m writing this for. It doesn’t matter if it’s beautiful if it’s impossible for the intended performer to perform beautifully. I can’t just say “Well, on paper, if you just sang all the notes the right way, it’s beautiful.” That’s not good art – if it just sits on the page, and in the real world, that little “machine” can’t create a moment of beauty. So if I’m writing for Discover Worship, then I’m thinking about the kinds of churches that are our subscribers, and the size of choir - and a lot of people may only have 12 people in their choir. I need to think about what’s going to let them create the most beautiful thing they’re able to create, not ask them to reach up to some height I want to set for them. I should give them something they can sing well, that engages them musically. It might have moments that challenge them, but that challenge needs to be worth it. If I’m going do something that’s a little difficult moment, the time they’re going to spend working on it should be worth that moment when we go to perform it. It should be beautiful, and they should say, “That was so worth the time we spent to get that chord right.” Rather than, “I think this would be fun,” and “I’m very smart for thinking of this little moment.”
Discover Worship: “Aren’t I clever?”
Luke: Yes! But if it’s too difficult, and it goes by so quickly, and no one knows whether you sang it well or not, then I think I’m making beauty for me, for my own cleverness, and not for the beauty of the moment, that will honor God, that will lead people to a moment of good beautiful music, especially set to spiritual lyrics and Biblical lyrics that should, in my opinion, create a moment where that message musically makes people think, “This music is so beautiful, I’m experiencing such beauty with these words, I am left with the thought maybe the Gospel is true.” Like “I’m swept up in the moment of this impossible thing of the Gospel – that God rescued us from our own selves.” Musically, how do I set that like a movie soundtrack, where in that moment people will say, “I think the impossible thing is possible.” And if it’s sadness, write beautiful sadness, and it makes it bearable because we’ve given organization and dignity to the sadness, and we’ve said, “There is still beauty being woven through this, and the bad things are bearable, and the good things are possible.” I think that’s the best thing music can do in a spiritual sense.
Discover Worship: Well, Luke, thank you for the years you’ve invested in our company and our church members. I just appreciate your heart and your mind and pray that God would let you build some more of those “machines” to let loose in the world. Whatever we can do to help tell our folks about those marvelous “inventions of grace,” we are honored to be your partner in it.
--Discover Worship offers more than 30 Luke Woodard choral arrangements including seasonal, kids choir, and simplified arrangements of our top titles, as well as a handful of instrumental pieces.