A song I wrote with a friend about thanking God in the midst of struggle. I recorded the drums, guitars and keys for the song. Galen Coe wrote the lyrics and recorded the vocals.
Incredible instrumental piano music by Josh Brahm! He also records with guitar, bass and drums.
My name is Josh Brahm, I'm 21 and I've been playing music for 17 years. I play piano, guitars, bass and drums, so I usually record my music alone in my home studio. Most of my music is inspired by love and friendship, and the memories I have of growing up.
Story behind the song
I wrote this last year with Galen Coe, a good friend of mine from my old band. He had wanted to write music together for a while now, and said he had this idea for a song. He wanted a song about thanking God for everything in life, even the hard parts of life that make us stronger, and have the verses be about this bad stuff happening.
I went to his house with my guitar, (I had never written music with a guitar before) and we talked a little more about the song. I thought that the verses should be in a minor key, as they're going to have whatever bad stuff is going on, and write the chorus in a major key, for an uplifting sound to go with the prayer of thanks. Galen liked the idea, so I just started playing. My first idea sounded a little to much like a progression from another song like this, so I started over, and in about 2 minutes we had the chords for the verse. I went from Em to G for the chorus and played a basic walkdown, with an upbeat edge to it, and that was our chorus. Galen and I were excited, thinking that this was going to be easier then we thought! Unfortunately the words were harder to come up with. At first we had this really silly verse about a guy who gets up and his alarm clock was dead, and there's all this traffic on the way to work, but it never went to the chorus, it just kept going on an on. It was really bad!
So we decided to work on the chorus. Galen asked me to play the music for the chorus over and over, and he started writing in his notepad. 5 to 10 minutes later, he had written the chorus! I loved it! He wrote a cool melody to go with it too, and it felt like we were working on a real song, now. By this time though, we were mentally exhausted, so we typed out what we had done, and decided to work on it later. Days after that, I went home to work on the music. I sat down with my guitar, and worked out the bridge, the guitar solo, and ending. I came up with the slow chorus with the triplets in the intro later. At first the song started with the Em and the harmonics that comes after the chorus part now.
I was still trying to think of ideas for the verse. Then it hit me that many parts from the book of Psalms are about going through trials, and still praising God, so I had my Dad write down some references for me about that, and then went to Galen's house and told him my idea. We sat down on the couch together and started looking through the Psalms together, writing out phrases that we liked in that same notepad. After a while we had enough to work with, and Galen went to work on putting them together. Someone asked me later if we wrote this song while we were depressed, and I said no, the words mostly come from the Psalms!
Anyway, with the song done, we showed it to our music pastor, who really liked it, and we performed it at church a few weeks later. It got a really good response, and we recorded it on a CD the church did several months later. That's what you hear now. I recorded the guitar intro first, and then recorded the drums, with Gregg, our music pastor playing along on keyboard, so that I would know where I was in the song. I then recorded the same acoustic guitar part twice, one for each speaker, and Jay, our engineer added chorus and reverb and stuff. I also found the vibra slap sound on our keyboard, and added that when the chorus intro goes into the minor intro. Later on, Galen recorded the vocals, our bands drummer Steve recorded the conga's, and Gregg recorded a strings part. Our bass player Mark added the bass line, and I later added the guitar solo and organ to complete the song. It took a long time, but it was worth it! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. My heart and soul went into arranging and recording this song! See ya later!
Lyrics
Chorus:
Thank You for giving me this day
Thank You for loving me always
Thank You for all that you do
Thank You for just being you
Thank You in everything that's wrong
Thank You for never leaving me alone
Thank You for everything that's right
Thank You for being in my life.
Verse 1:
The water keeps on rising,
the flood sweeps me away.
But that's a perfect ending,
to a perfect day.
That for which I did not steal,
I am now forced to pay.
Lord, You know my careless ways,
there is nothing I can hide.
You see me when I tell the truth,
You see me everytime I lie.
Yet no matter what comes up,
this will always be my cry.
Verse 2:
The pit is all around me,
It's mouth closes in on me,
I cannot hear a sound,
there's no light that I can see.
I shout to you, O Lord,
hear my cries and set me free.
Those whom I've shown love,
only want me dead,
Those who hate me for no reason,
outnumber the hairs on my head,
Even still I've walked down every path you've led.
