I grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s during Contemporary Christian Music’s early days. Before I was 13, I got my first vinyl records of Petra and the satirical Steve Taylor. It wasn’t long before I had cassette tapes of Michael W. Smith wearing argyle socks and Amy Grant singing a Michael Card song called El Shaddai. I enjoyed singing along with the harmonies of the group “Glad,” and was inspired by the sounds of The Imperials, DeGarmo & Key, and Wayne Watson.
These may not be familiar artists to you, but they helped to shape my interest in writing songs that were true to what God’s Word says about what’s true, what is true of culture, and who we are as Jesus followers. Most of these artists also had what I would call “worship songs” in their repertoire – songs that we sing directly to God to tell Him how we feel and to praise Him.
After almost 40 years of song writing, with some long pauses in between years, I am once again writing music, and I have shared two of my new songs in our Sunday Worship Services this month.
I wrote my first song in 1984 and wrote dozens more over the years. Some songs come from pure inspiration where they come flowing onto the page as fast as you can write. Other pieces of music come from perspiration; hours and hours of work, praying, toying with a musical line or a lyrical line, lots of scribbles in a notebook and the feeling that the song will never come together. I have written songs on piano, on guitar, and even in my own mind on an airplane.
As we tune our ears to hear what the Lord is saying, we can be inspired and gifted by God to write the notes, rhythms and lyrics that are on His heart.
It was St. Brendan, an Irish Saint in the 5th and 6th century who prayed this phrase,
“Tune my spirit to the music of heaven.”
I have prayed for years to hear “the music of heaven," and every now and then, just when I am falling asleep, I will hear just a few bars of full orchestral music in my head. I believe that is my loving Heavenly Father giving me just a quick sample of Heaven’s music.
It all began for me in 1982. Chico Christian School recorded and produced a vinyl record of a simple kid’s musical production. It included choirs singing worship songs along with some dialogue. I was 12 years old and one of the lead characters who sang a solo – my very first time recording with professionals.
In January of 1985, in an effort to help save local school music programs from being cut, a small group of middle school kids from Butte County were chosen to make a musical recording. Don Drowty, a ‘50s singer-turned-producer living in Paradise, California pulled kids from Chico, Paradise, Oroville and a few other smaller towns to record music at A&M records in Hollywood. Our recording session was delayed that Saturday morning by a group that recorded all night on that Friday night under extreme secrecy. We later discovered that a group of more than 50 of the biggest pop stars of the day were recording, “We Are the World,” to benefit African famine relief. It is the 8th best selling single of all time, and the song was co-written and recorded principally by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.
That experience inspired me to write more songs and learn to play piano, dedicating myself to rehearsing most days for more than two hours after school. In high school I had the privilege of learning classical music from Mr. Duarte, one of my spiritual fathers. Mr. Duarte imparted the heart behind music as being the goal of transmitting and transcending what is here on earth.
While at Chico State, I was singing classical music and also writing my own temporary songs, and I had the opportunity to record in the studio for some Recording Arts students at the university, a project that I later released as a cassette tape. It was a labor of love for myself and my friends, trying to capture songs I had written for friends’ weddings and other Christian songs I had composed.
Even though I continued to write songs, it would be 20 years before I would record another project.
My 2003 album Alone is designed to put you to sleep in peace. I jokingly tell people not to operate heavy machinery while listening to this CD. Our firstborn, Katherine, was age four and Michael was age two, when I realized that they were going to sleep to someone’s music one night. I thought to myself, “Why not record some piano music for them to go to sleep to?”
So, I began working with a few friends at the church and recorded 12 songs of live piano music. There was no click track in my ears for tempo, and no edits. The music is just as if I sat down in your living room and played your piano. You can hear the thump of the sustain pedal and the strings of a grand piano vibrating back and forth.
First, I chose to record my own arrangements on three of my favorite hymns: "Be Thou My Vision", "Holy Holy Holy", and "It is Well with my Soul". Then I added six songs that I had previously written. The other three tracks were moments in recording where I felt inspired and simply recorded the music that was flowing through me. Those three tracks are "Waking", "The Reflection", and "Place of Wonder".
After the success of Alone, I felt inspired to record a second acoustic piano project of Christmas songs in 2005 named Christmastime. Again, I recorded on the 8-foot grand piano, but this time I added some small keyboard parts in the background to the mix to sweeten up the sound. I ended up recording 18 tracks of music that include a few hymns like: "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" and "O Come All Ye Faithful". This project includes songs from a few hundred years ago to the most recent one written during the 1940’s.
This 2007 project was a fun effort to capture Christmas music with more of a full band sound. It was largely recorded in home studios and was available online for a few years. However, it can’t be streamed at this time, but can be purchased as a physical CD titled Vintage Christmas.
After writing a series of songs for over a decade, in 2009 I felt that it was time to get back into the studio and release these songs to be heard by the world.
This group of songs on the album Proof in the Mirror are all pieces that were written from God’s perspective. If worship songs are the songs that we sing to God, these are the songs that He sings back to us.
Zephaniah 3:17 says,
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
Since God takes such great delight in us, He sings his love songs over us. The songs recorded on this project contain the truth about who we are as described in God’s Word. My hope is that people will listen to these songs and hear the truth spoken, or in this case, sung over them, and they will begin to believe it. I believe it will start setting them free.
This season, Season 2 of the Andrew Burchett podcast, as well as this blog, will contain the stories behind these songs, the inspiration behind them, the Bible verses that inform them and the songs themselves. It is my prayer that in this form, you can appreciate what is true about you from God’s perspective even more. May you hear the music from Heaven as you go to sleep tonight
This concludes the first message in this series. Watch for Part 2 of Music From My Heart to be published tomorrow (Friday).
If you'd like to listen or share the podcast version of this message, click here.