Storytellers: “The Time is Now”

When we decided that the series and church emphasis was going to be entitled “Now,” I wanted to write a song that could serve as a sermon intro video, a recap song, and an intro on the CD.  I didn’t want to write a song that was cheesy.  I didn’t want to force the song.  But I knew I wanted the word “now” to end the song in a big bang, and I just had to figure out how to do it.

Since I wanted to write an intro song to the CD, I didn’t want it to be a full length song.  So I had to get to the point quickly.  I then had this idea of Jeff preaching over the music at first and then leading into the song.  I came up with the melody.  I wanted the melody line to stay the same but I wanted to use some jazz chord progressions to form a rock song that continued to build via chord selection – weird, I know.  So I know how long each phrase needed to be, and now I just had to shorten down all I wanted to sing for God’s design for his church in eight short phrases.  Easy, right?

After many versions and many changes, I finally came down to this:

The time is now
We can’t delay
We’ll follow our King
All of our days
May Your kingdom come
May Your will be done
As we go to the world
The time is now
The time is now

After I had the chords and words, I had to find a way to make it lead into track #2 on the CD.  I decided “Let God Arise” would be track #2 which was great thematically.  The problem was we recorded the song in the key of B which made my melody line on “The Time is Now” a tad high.  I wanted it to be a loud anthem, and well, it was going to have to be.  So I transposed the song to the key of B to allow the two tracks to run together.

On the first track of the CD, I have two vocal parts.  I am singing in my “nice voice” – my head voice singing softly on one track.  On the other track, I just belt it out.  Anthony thought this sound would give it a nice full melody.  Add Cynthia wailing behind me and about 4 or 5 guitars by Cory and myself, and you have track #1.

When I gave Anthony the track list and all my weird reprise and intro ideas, he said, “We might as well tag ‘The Time is Now’ at the end then too and bookend the whole deal.”

I was hoping he would say that.  So coming out of “Amazing Grace” on track 13, Amanda and I got to sing “The Time is Now” in the chill key of F to bring the whole musical project to a conclusion.

Here are some chord charts for your jamming pleasure:

The Time is Now – Key of B

The Time is Now – Key of B (4th fret in G)

The Time is Now – Key of F (3rd fret in D)

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