Top Catholic Songs – share, learn, promote

I am so grateful that we get to work on several songs for the past weeks.
I notice that we are approaching different styles of the song lyric into music:
1.  "God's gifts for all the world" is beautiful done by Richard write his own song lyric for the song and Dan Vi Nguyen think of the original ideas for the song.
2.  "For the love of humanity" is a chant style of music.
3.  "Christ makes our world so beautiful" is a song lyric turn into poem style of music.
4.  "Enchristment" is an old prayer at heart from sisters/nuns taught at childhood, and the goal is to turn the prayer into song.

I am now taking the Songwriting courses at Berklee Music teacher Pat Pattison.

But I still have so much challenges in writing as you know.
 

I've approached songs different ways, sometimes starting with a poem scratched on paper, sometimes starting with an instrumental track someone gave me. I have co-written, too, helping someone improve their lyrics or add verses. Sometimes the words rhyme. The stanzas normally rhyme, but you can do free verse, too. Important thing is the meter and flow. Do the words flow easily from your lips to the ear of the listener? Are you stressing the syllables correctly? That's especially important in English and Dutch languages — stressed vs unstressed syllables. Don't use big words unless you absolutely have to. Finally, if you are a Catholic songwriter, you are probably telling the story of God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. You are telling the Good News. You are expressing hopes, visions, joys, fears, sorrows, triumphs, or simple tales of love. Each song is a narrative. Keep it simple but make each verse "gain weight" (as taught by Berklee Music teacher Pat Pattison). What is gaining weight? The story unfolds, the plot thickens, more characters are added to the story, or the story becomes multi-layered in meaning. The final task is to record the lyrics with prosody and passion, melding your voice with instruments and perhaps other voices.