Can You Worship Without Music?

I have often wondered what would happen if we got music out of the way, especially in its upfront dress, and spent abundant time in interceding prayer, reading and searching the Scriptures, sitting in silence, prophesying and perhaps only then singing and making music. Stated another way, I wonder if Christians would be able to enter into such personal and experientially ecstatic praise of God - corporately or privately - without music, with just the Word, words about the Word and sheer silence within which the work of the Spirit cannot be related to or equated with anything we craft or shape....I would encourage all contemporary songwriters to go beyond the usual worship-related constraints and to explore the whole counsel of God, the extreme width and depth of the human condition, to leave no doctrinal stone unturned and to make sure that the body of Christ is fully equipped to sing its way through the entire catechism of the work of God. This is what the tradition of hymnody has done for the church and what, so far, the contemporary music movement has failed to undertake.- Harold Best, Unceasing Worship, 139-140