check out the theme song from “A River Runs Through It” (movie about fly fishing) No words, but the chord changes are so evocative, and it plays at the end of a very emotional movie about nature, family, and relationships..and works perfectly with the video. I play it often when I am doing solo music on my piano during communion, prayer, etc.

David,
Appreciated your video this week. Actually most of your weekly videos have been a good source of information or a confirmation for my growing understanding of being a worship keys musician.
This week I would say that your subject can be seen through several lenses in relationship to the emotion to a song. So many of our worship songs can be led in a plethora of directions and create the feel or emotion you describe. I am invested in a medium sized church that has the privilege of not feeling the need to reproduce a given song to the original arrangement (we do, do that from time to time as desired though). It is common for our church to color the songs with a solo electric guitar, sax (from soprano to bass and in between), Violin, cello, flute, and many other woodwinds (typically one or two solo instruments on any given Sunday, we don’t have the budget or accommodations to do full scale orchestras like some of the larger churches can do) and they can completely transform the feeling or mood of the piece we are singing.
The beauty of a good keyboard musician and many quality sampled instruments available today provides many churches with less available resources the ability to create this emotional environment as well and fill out the sound.
I also believe we get what we put into our preparation of the service music. Many songs can easily be rearranged to create the environment or mood we seek by simply substituting chords (your suspensions being a classic example, alternate chords or use of the 9 / 11 and 13’s additions to the chords for color. Moving verses, bridges and choruses around and using other intimate transitions can also change the feel or mood of a song immensely.
The biggest struggle I have observed in some churches is a lack of investment of time and strategy in song selections (ie. always depending on the latest new songs or constant use of the standby songs and not truly doing the hard work of finding the most appropriate pieces to fit in the service, build logical cohesion through out and then arrange those songs to build in those moments we want to feel or generate.
In conclusion , I believe we have many songs out there, choruses and hymns, and that we simply need to take time to invest in the arrangements or look for arrangements by third party if required to get the most out of our song selections for each service. I have observed a large Mega Churches such as Grace Community Church in Southern California, using nothing but Hymns for their morning worship that have nailed the art of weaving in and out through their services, music that truly touches our emotions and leads us into heart felt worship.
One final note; I truly appreciate all our worship pastors and leaders out there who are each week diligently at leading Christ’s church into a special time of worship and preparation for the teaching and building up of the church for our precious savior.
Keep it up, Don.

David, I can heavily related to this video. “When Somebody Loved Me” always gets me. Chords movements like these were pretty common in ‘80s/90s’ worship, but I think that worship songs which incorporated them were careful not to impact the simplicity and singability for congregations, especially considering the lowest common denominator singing skills of participants. Personally, I cry or come close to crying almost anytime I worship congregationally because the Spirit moves me, the words move me, the music compliment the words, and I hear us all singing with one voice, which only music/signing enables. I did write some “deep” songs years ago with this kind of chord complexity and melodic nuance that freely weaves around, but the music of the songs always seemed was more impactful for listeners than participants. My two cents…