What was that song again…???
Choosing songs for Mass can be both exciting and daunting at times. Sometimes, when I read through the readings, songs will immediately pop into my head. I won’t even need to look at a planner. Other times, I find it more difficult to find something that fits that particular Sunday, especially from our existing repertoire. I’m finding more and more that I need to come up with creative ways to remember songs (and lyrics) or to discover something new that would really fit our music ministry.
1. One thing I do is keep a running list of songs that, for whatever reason, I find interesting. It could be that a song has really powerful lyrics, or is a good call/response type song, or has a great melody that keeps running through my head, or is simply a great fast song! Other times, I might run across one or two titles where I think, “I want to do that song again sometime soon, but it won’t really work for this week.” Whenever that happens, I add that song to the list. I keep it on a dry-erase board near my desk. It’s basically a list of songs I think we should try, use again soon, or check out for later. I’ve found in the past that I’ve missed the boat on something that would’ve been great simply because I forgot! It’s also good to refer to that list when I’m searching for a specific need in a liturgy. Often times it’s right there on the board.
2. Another tool I’ve found helpful is keeping all of the lyrics for every song in a Word document or some other kind of searchable database. If I’m trying to find a song about “thanks” I might search that word in the document and see what lyrics pop up. If I still don’t find what I need, I’ll try different searches like “grateful,” or “thankful,” etc. Most of the time this will yield some good possibilities. Other times, even though the word is there, the song just isn’t a good choice for that time.
3. I use every planner I can get my hands on and read through as many commentaries as I have time for, every week. It’s helpful to see what songs are consistent from planner to planner, as well as other points of view on style, placement in the liturgy, etc. A comment, a suggestion, a footnote…whatever…might spark an idea in my own mind or lead me to another title I had forgotten about.
In case you were wondering, I use AIM (WLP), Today’s Liturgy (OCP), GIA Quarterly (GIA) , Liturgy Planning Guides (Life Teen).