Free Arrangement of Cornerstone

For some reason, cornerstone remains one of my favorite worship songs. The lyrics and music are powerful and filled with truth. I think what I love the most about it is the way you can play this song pretty much anywhere and get a unified cry of worship. I’m guessing that most people have this song somewhere in their rotation.

Over the years, I got tired of hearing the same IV, vii, V progression over the chorus when it seemed like there could be more. I started adding a minor two chord in stead of the minor six in the chorus and things started opening up for me. All of a sudden that fourth note of the scale wasn’t clashing with 5th of the minor six chord (think F clashing with E in the key of C). It let the melody rest in the pocket and created more motion.

The funny thing is that this chord progression is not all that complicated. Really all that needed to be done was to add a ii–V cadence and the melody locked in.

Another thing I noticed is how everyone just botches the third line of the verse. In the key of C the music usually indicates moving from the minor six to what most people interpret as some form of a G chord. Admittedly I usually played Am and the Am/G which really turned into a weird G chord and didn’t fit with the melody at all. Not to mention the rest of the band usually had a different idea of what that chord was supposed to be.

I’m not one to shy away from an interesting chord, but the best efforts to play that chord never seemed to line up with the music. I think most people just shrug it off and play a G because it doesn’t sound noticeably bad. In this arrangement I cleared up the confusion. The right progression should be moving from Am to C/G. That opens up the harmony and lets the melody sit at the top of the chord. It sounds really nice.

This arrangement is not some weird harmonization meant to throw your ear around and impress listeners. It is meant to enhance and clarify an incredibly popular song will keeping the music accessible for intermediate teams.

I hope you enjoy this arrangement that you can download for free at my store. You can sign up to my email list to get more arrangements and make sure to leave a comment to let me know if you used this arrangement in your church.