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Kevin's Notes

I have heard a few "Apostle's Creed" type songs from Hosanna, Vineyard, and Graham Kendrick. All the songs I heard were great but have all had a strong "Pentecostal" theology. I wanted to write a song that all believers (charismatic, non-charismatic, and anti-charismatic) could embrace as a statement of our faith in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. So, that's how We Believe It began.

It all started with a funky guitar chord I "discovered" one day. You play a B7 chord at the second fret and then slide it up to the seventh fret and play all the strings. It's a funky E7 chord and it just has kind of an "attitude" when you hear it. The bass line came next, and then the words.

So, I constructed the words based on common theology and stuck with repeatable meter as much as possible to make it easy to sing. It is in a low key for me but that makes it easier for the women to sing. The D7 section (the tag at the end) came by accident when I did not slide the chord far enough. I thought "cool," and discovered a slide-able 7th chord that sounds kinda cool. I used the same chord on You're So Good to Me.

In the studio, we used Grant Nordwall and his homemade fretless bass (the words "fret not" are inscribed on the headstock) for the bass and Russ Sechler did the V drum thing again. We didn't add any electric guitar until late in the game. I ended up playing a semi-clean Stratocaster (Chris Kohler's) through the Line 6 pod (Darren Clarke's) and mirroring the acoustic line to fatten up the rhythm section. Terry Lawless did a real horn section with four saxophone parts and Chris Kohler did a "conversation" with him on his electric.

To build the song dynamically, I sang the first verse, Cindy Dirlam joined me one verse two, Randy Sechler joined us on verse three, and then Alysha Bengs joined us on verse four. The group vocals came in at the D7 section and we all sang the "we believe in You" part together. It was really hard to mix all those voices together and have each one still be heard. With time, patience, and EQ tweaking, we finally did it!

Lyrics

We believe in one true God, that Jesus is His only son.
We believe in one Spirit. We believe that the Three are One.
We believe in one true faith, one hope, one baptism,
We believe in one holy church, His desire is that we be one.

We believe it, we believe it Lord.

We believe in Your cross Lord, That You died for all of our sins.
We believe that You rose again, conquered death,
Are seated at the Father's right hand.

We believe that You'll come again for a bride with no spot or stain.
We believe every knee will bow, every tongue will say You are the King.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, we believe in you!

©Kev-X music 9-98

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