We Worship You, Emmanuel

Created as part of the 2024 Resound Worship 12 Song Challenge, this song was written to encapsulate the Mission and Vision Statement of my Church - Emmanuel Church Durham.

It also comes with a caveat that this was an experiment to us AI to assist in the writing process. Having used Chat GPT to draft lyrics based a upon a long prompt containing the church mission statement, the words were heavily edited to make them my own. After that, I gave those lyrics to Udio.ai to come up with a "modern congregational worship song". The resultant AI-generated melody and chord progression are still substantially recognisable in this recorded version, but the instruments and vocals it generated have been replaced by real human performance and interpretation.

Does it work? Is this a valid way to write songs? The jury make be out, but this is not something I intend to make a habit out of - it was an exercise of discovery.

Even though we know every human is influenced by what they have heard, this process re-affirms my desire to leverage the God-given creativity of the human, rather than allow AI to potentially source and plagiarise copyrighted material.