When you’re making a full length studio album, you tend to get side tracked from all of the possibilities that an album can have. As Christians we are to write albums that inspire, change lives, spread the word of God, and ultimately showcase God’s will in our music.
Though there are endless possibilities as to what you can do in a Christian album, it’s helpful to write a concept album because it narrows down the subject by a lot. Picking out themes for your Christian concept album can be quite a chore in and of itself.
Today, we will talk about how to create a Christian concept album so that your studio album is a well-defined and well-versed album both lyrically and musically.
Let’s get started.
Pick a theme
The first thing that you want to do to make a concept album is to pick a theme.
What happens is that in order to make a full length studio album, there are literally endless possibilities as to what you can write. There are many avenues that you can go with and it can be a little difficult choosing the right words to say and how you want to shape your sound.
A theme is this, a topic that is a little narrow but broad at the same time. An Example of a theme would be: Love and how it relates to us through Jesus’ word. Even that is a little too narrow but you get the idea.
A theme is a topic that is narrow and broad at the same time.
Picking a theme, and the right theme, can go a long way when deciding what your lyrics in your songs are going to be.
What happens is that the world, and all the words in the world, are just too broad and wide for our minds to wrap around all of the possibilities, so creating a theme for our concept album actually helps us because it narrows it down to a point where we can talk a lot about it, yet not get overwhelmed by the amount of choices.
I actually quit listening to secular music, but I listened to 50 cent at a point in my life, and his number one advice for up and coming artists was actually to create a concept album. He attributes creating a concept album to his massive success early in his career.
Therefore, look up ways on how to create a theme and try making a few themes on your own. It can be a little difficult trying to create a theme at first, but once you get good at it, making albums will be a lot easier.
Try and stick to that theme and if you can’t, then write about what you were going to write and move on back to the theme
Now that you have your theme all set up, it’s time to create an album based off of that subject that you said to yourself.
However, there is no hard and fast rule about sticking to that theme.
If you decide that your album is going to be about love, however you had a bad day and you want to write about hate, there is nothing and no one stopping you from writing about hate.
Of course, I’m Christian so I wouldn’t write about hate, I’m just trying to give an example and show the contrast.
If need be, go ahead and write about whatever. Sometimes when we think about the same subject for too long it gets a little dull.
However, do it smart.
The main reason why you decided to make a concept album was to write more lyrics and figure out different sounds.
Don’t get off the theme and just stay there because now you’re just running through whatever is going through your mind and you’ll find that making an album is a little harder this time.
If you want, create a few themes at first and make like a separate notebook or folder on your laptop and keep all of your lyrics about those themes in there.
Combining concept albums to make your full length studio album
Now that you have a few themes and concept albums set up, it’s time to make your full length studio album.
At this point it’s easy to make that album because all you have to do is pick and choose the songs off of those concept albums that you made.
I understand what some of you are saying, “German if you make a whole bunch of concept albums and you only need 10 songs to make a full length studio album, aren’t you just doing more work for less product. Also, how many concept albums should I make then?”
I mean like you could make a hundred concept albums if you want, however, everyone knows that’s not feasible.
Try and make at least 3 concept albums and if you want try and go up to 6.
I know that It’s a lot of work to make concept albums, but your final product is going to be worth more if you just do it.
When we’re making music. We often times say, oh yeah that one sounds like a hit. However, that’s when you just made it. We don’t know for sure if something is going to be a hit until it’s completely finished and we’ve done everything that there is to do about it.
We have to listen to it a few times in order to see it’s catchiness and power over people.
If it strikes a chord in people, then we know we got something. However, that’s extremely hard to do in a single song.
So, we have to make multiple songs, and a lot of them too, in order to improve our craft, lyrics, music.
I know I’m speaking to a group of people that could include indie musicians that aren’t signed to a record label, but once you are an established artist, you will have meetings with managers, agents, A&R reps, execs, producer, etc. etc. and they’re going to want to listen to your music.
They are going to want to hear the songs themselves and decide which ones they want on the album.
I know that sounds like selling out, however, it is what it is.
Broadcast
I hope that I have inspired some people to take charge of their music career. If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and Jesus will get you into heaven.
Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. I hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time. German Gonzalez, signing out!
Here is an article that talks about if you should play at a bar as a Christian musician.
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