The Songwriting Process – Prepare Him Room

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Neil DeGraide, Steve Cook, and my son, Devon, to talk about different aspects of our new Christmas album, Prepare Him Room.

One topic we discussed was the songwriting process. Songs rarely come instantaneously. And that can be an encouraging thought for someone currently in the midst of writing a song that sounds remarkably mediocre. When we hear a song on an album we have no idea of the dozens of hours of labor, thought, editing, prayer, conversation, and study that went into it. We only hear the finished product.

So in the video below we take time to talk about some of the things that went into the songs on Prepare Him Room. We cover our songwriting retreat, adding additional verses to carols, having a conversation with your song as you write it, co-writing with your spouse, why writing sometimes takes months, and more. The conversation is interspersed with a couple clips from our Prepare Him Room preview sessions.

If you’re wondering why Devon doesn’t say anything here, he’s saving up some great thoughts for some of the other videos. Stay tuned.

A unique aspect of Prepare Him Room is that the songs on the album are paired with lessons from Marty Machowski’s Advent devotional Prepare Him Room, published by New Growth Press. If you’re a family with younger kids, looking for a new Advent tradition, I couldn’t recommend Marty’s book highly enough. It’s also available as a curriculum.

As always, guitar charts, lead sheets, and piano scores for the album are available for free at the Sovereign Grace Music website. You can purchase physical copies (a GREAT Christmas gift to give someone on Thanksgiving) at the Sovereign Grace store, and download it from iTunes, Amazon, or Bandcamp. Also, we’re selling orchestrations for O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and Prepare Him Room on our Bandcamp site.