Question:
I was messing around the other night, and started playing this song like...
Come, thou [E]fount of every [Emaj7]blessing, tune my [E7]heart to [Emaj7]sing Thy [E]praise...
and the same for the second/fourth lines. I like the tension between the C# that the vocals sing on "heart" and the D in the E7.
I voiced them
E: 079900
Emaj7: 079800
E7: 079700
Just thought I'd share...maybe you'll find it interesting or useful.
Answer:
I don't know about the E7, but the maj7 is great.
Answer:
There's also a really amazing riff that you can play with it...I'll post the tab:
Come Thou Fount
Tabbed by: Andrew Grimes
e|----------------------------------------------------------|
B|----------------------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------------------------------------------|
D|-------------------------------------9--11-9--------------|
A|-9--11-9--7--7--11-14-9--9----9--11--9--0--0---9--11-9--7-|
E|-0--0--0--0--0--0--0--7--7----7--7-------------7--7--7--0-|
Play it to match the melody almost dead-on, and it will sound awesome.
Answer:
Interesting. I can understand where you're coming from, but I'm not sure that I'd like it. You're not treating either of the sevenths as sevenths, but that's ok at times. However, when a person doesn't treat a seventh as a seventh, I expect them to treat it as some other type of tendency tone. In this case, the most obvious choice would be to treat the D# in the E"maj7" as a lower neighbor (on the leading tone) to E. That works great going from the fourth bar back to the repetition of the pattern, but I'm not sure how to justify the D# moving down to the D in the E"7". But it's that particular note that you find satisfying. I'm not sure what to do with that to make the progression make more sense theoretically.
Perhaps an interesting variant on your progression would be E - E"maj7" - Asus2/E (AKA Esus4) - E"maj7" voiced something like 079900 - 079800 - 009900 - 079900. (I'm not a guitarist, and I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here, so there's probably a better voicing for Esus that I'm not coming up with.)
Not that I'm criticizing what you came up with... just trying to analyze it.
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
Question about the lyrics. "...raise my Ebenezer?"
Shine a light upon the non-reformer.
Answer:
Ebenezer=pile of rocks.
more specifically, a pile of rocks raised to commemorate something, like God's faithfulness, as in the case of the Isrealites crossing the Jordan to enter the promised land.
"Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy great help I come."
could mean:
I here proclaim that it is by God's help that I have come to where I am.
Answer:
Originally Posted by niangelo Question about the lyrics. "...raise my Ebenezer?"
Shine a light upon the non-reformer.
Has nothing to do with Reformed theology, actually (at least not directly).
Ebenezer means something like "rock of my help" or "stone of my help". Like Bethel, the word's significance comes in that it was a name ascribed to a rock that marked a place where God did something noteworthy (haha, as if everything God does isn't noteworthy) for a person or a group of people. The story surrounding the name Ebenezer is found in 1st Samuel 7.
1 Samuel 7:1-12
And the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took the ark of the Lord and brought it into the house of Abinadab on the hill, and consecrated Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark remained at Kiriath-jearim, the time was long, for it was twenty years; and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. Then Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, "If you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve Him alone; and He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines." So the sons of Israel removed the Baals and the Ashtaroth and served the Lord alone.
Then Samuel said, "Gather all Israel to Mizpah and I will pray to the Lord for you." They gathered to Mizpah, and drew water and poured it out before the Lord, and fasted on that day and said there, "We have sinned against the Lord." And Samuel judged the sons of Israel at Mizpah. Now when the Philistines heard that the sons of Israel had gathered to Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel. And when the sons of Israel heard it, they were afraid of the Philistines. Then the sons of Israel said to Samuel, "Do not cease to cry to the Lord our God for us, that He may save us from the hand of the Philistines."
Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it for a whole burnt offering to the Lord; and Samuel cried to the Lord for Israel and the Lord answered him. Now Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, and the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day against the Philistines and confused them, so that they were routed before Israel. The men of Israel went out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, and struck them down as far as below Beth-car. Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the Lord has helped us."
The first line of the second verse of "Come, Thou Fount" reads "Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I come." This is an allusion to the story found in 1 Samuel 7, particularly to verse 12. Samuel placed the Ebenezer rock at the exact place where God had delivered Israel from the Philistines as a lasting reminder of the fact that "Thus far the Lord ha[d] helped [the Israelites]." When we sing "Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I come," we are acknowledging (like, and with, Samuel) that our deliverance and our salvation is a direct result of God's divine help. It's like saying "God, I know it's only Your help that has gotten me this far." When you throw in the second line of the second verse ("And I hope by Thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home."), the meaning of the first half of the second verse is something like, "God, you've gotten me this far by Your help, and I know that Your help will guide me to the end of my journey."
If you can't stomach the whole Ebenezer thing, many congregations sing something similar to the following:
"Hitherto Thy love hath blessed me, Thou hast brought me to this place,
And I know Thy hand will bring me safely home by Thy good grace."
Personally, I prefer the Ebenezer version, but I can understand why one would not understand it or would want to make it easier for others to understand. I take a minute about every other time we do the song to explain the meaning and significance of the second verse.
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
I've posted it before, but we do Come Thou Fount in 5/4.
Here is the file in Finale format: Come Thou Fount
If anyone is interested, I could convert it to pdf and upload that as well.
Answer:
Duh wha huh?
Yes... PDF please. Maybe we can even combine your metre and Jay Tea's progression and come up with something really crazy.
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
Originally Posted by Nate Duh wha huh?
Yes... PDF please. Maybe we can even combine your metre and Jay Tea's progression and come up with something really crazy.
In His love,
Nate Here it is in pdf: Come Thou Fount
Answer:
Originally Posted by Nate Interesting. I can understand where you're coming from, but I'm not sure that I'd like it. You're not treating either of the sevenths as sevenths, but that's ok at times. However, when a person doesn't treat a seventh as a seventh, I expect them to treat it as some other type of tendency tone. In this case, the most obvious choice would be to treat the D# in the E"maj7" as a lower neighbor (on the leading tone) to E. That works great going from the fourth bar back to the repetition of the pattern, but I'm not sure how to justify the D# moving down to the D in the E"7". But it's that particular note that you find satisfying. I'm not sure what to do with that to make the progression make more sense theoretically.
Perhaps an interesting variant on your progression would be E - E"maj7" - Asus2/E (AKA Esus4) - E"maj7" voiced something like 079900 - 079800 - 009900 - 079900. (I'm not a guitarist, and I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here, so there's probably a better voicing for Esus that I'm not coming up with.)
Not that I'm criticizing what you came up with... just trying to analyze it. haha....well, there's nothing wrong with that I suppose. But I just figured out the riff by ear. It has the root note for whatever chord would be playing, along with the melody line. That's it. lol. I didn't even think about theory when I did it. I just came up with a simple chord progression for it (I-V-IV-V-I), used that as the bass line, and added melody notes.
I heard it from Candi Pearson's guitarist who played at a youth convention in October. That's basically how it sounded, although I'm not sure if that's exactly how he played it. But like I said, it sounds good to me, and everyone else that hears it thinks it's pretty deadly .
Answer:
cool...i just looked at it. we don't use any of the VIIb's or the VI's. And during the climax of each verse (teach me some melodious sonnet...), every instrument holds the root for the entire thing, until it comes back to the original melody (...praise the mount...), where the bass plays the melody, the electric plays that riff with a little tiny bit of gain, and the acoustic goes back to the "cowboy chord" versions of the chord progression. The chords I use are as follows (In E, and I don't know what they would be called technically):
E: 079900
B: 7x9800
A: x07900
Sounds cool anyway...
Answer:
Originally Posted by agrimes87 haha....well, there's nothing wrong with that I suppose. But I just figured out the riff by ear.
I was talking about Jay Tea's progression.
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
Originally Posted by Tony Here it is in pdf: Come Thou Fount
Coolness. About how fast do you play it, and how is it pulsed?
Answer:
Originally Posted by Nate Coolness. About how fast do you play it, and how is it pulsed? It moves fairly quickly, 130 bpm. At that speed, the pulses are fairly natural at 1, the and of 2, then 4, 5. On the third line, where it goes to 6/4, it actually feels like a slow 3 feel, pulsing on the half-notes.
Make sense?