Filed under Music & video
Recently there have been a number of Facebook campaigns aiming to get Christian music to the top of the charts. This got me thinking a bit about music charts, what makes music good and the wisdom of jumping on the Facebook campaign bandwagon.
Why do we have music charts?
Music charts list top-selling singles, albums or artists. The point of having them is to provide information on which singles, albums or artists are currently selling well. They give an indication to individuals what music they might want to listen to or buy, radio stations what to play and music stores what to stock. This means that music charts are most useful when they feature lots of good music.
What then is good music?
In his little book Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer lists four criteria for judging art (i.e. art in general, not just ‘high art’). I’ve found them very helpful, so I’ll reproduce them here in an abbreviated and slightly modified form.
- Technical excellence — Is it technically good music? Are the lyrics well written?
- Validity — Is the artist being true to their worldview or are they only producing music for money or for the sake of being accepted?
- Intellectual content (the worldview which comes through) — How does the worldview that is communicated by the artist’s body of work match up to Scripture?
- Integration of content and vehicle — Does the style of music match the content?
These are the standards by which we should measure music or an artist.
One of the implications of this is that music isn’t good just because it is by an artist who is a Christian. Neither is it good just because it has Christian lyrics. This doesn’t mean that music by a Christian artist or songs that have Christian lyrics are always bad, just that they shouldn’t be judged on that basis alone as it ignores the other aspects of the work.
So what?
Where does this leave us? I want to suggest that to make music charts most effective in achieving the purpose for which they were made, we should make it our aim to buy good music. If any song makes it to the top of the charts, it should get there on its own steam — simply because it is good.
If you are a Christian reading this, instead of using your money, time and effort in getting music that you wouldn’t otherwise have bought to the top of the charts, why not invest it in living a life that is a work of art?
Filed under Reading
I’ve just finished reading Art and the Bible by Francis A. Schaeffer. It’s an excellent little book (only 94 pages!) and the first one I’ve read by Schaeffer — but not the last I expect!
Here’s a little quote from the end of the book:
No work of art is more important than the Christian’s own life, and every Christian is cared upon to be an artist in this sense. He may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each man has the gift of creativity in terms of the way he lives his life. In this sense, the Christian’s life is to be an art work. The Christian’s life is to be a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.
Filed under Web work
One of the long-awaited new features of WordPress 3.0 is custom post types.
By default, custom posts with the post capability_type (as opposed to page, attachment, revision, or nav-menu-item) are listed newest to oldest in the WordPress backend. This makes sense if these are blog posts, but if they are some other content type (such as quotes, movies, books or contacts) it is often desirable to have them listed alphabetically.
To achieve this, add the following code to your functions.php file, replacing POST_TYPE (line 7) with the name of the post type that you want to have listed alphabetically.
function set_custom_post_types_admin_order($wp_query) {
if (is_admin()) {
// Get the post type from the query
$post_type = $wp_query->query['post_type'];
if ( $post_type == 'POST_TYPE') {
// 'orderby' value can be any column name
$wp_query->set('orderby', 'title');
// 'order' value can be ASC or DESC
$wp_query->set('order', 'ASC');
}
}
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'set_custom_post_types_admin_order');
Filed under Web work
This week saw the launch of the Kingsbridge Project website that I’ve been working on with some friends from church.
The Kingsbridge Project is a consortium of faith groups, social enterprises, sports bodies and public bodies dedicated to bringing together communities in South Birmingham through sport and community activity. The initiative is currently in its early stages and the website is meant to serve its current needs of establishing a web presence and providing publicity. As a result I decided that instead of creating a custom design, I would use ‘PersonalPress’, a premium WordPress theme Elegant Themes, so that I could get site off the ground as quickly as possible.
Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment, thanks!
Filed under Web work
A few weeks ago I was searching online for gyms in Malaysia and found that there weren’t any dedicated gym directory websites. This got me thinking and the idea of setting up an online Malaysian gym directory was born.
Yesterday the website went live – you can check it out here: http://www.malaysian-gyms.com.
Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment, thanks!
- YJ L
- Michael Bailey
- Mark Leong
- creativereason
- YJ Liew