I met a nice young lady at the Composer Symposium this past summer who attends the church where my husband and I were married!
She is a great violinist and offered to add the violin bow & slur marks to my arrangement of “Nearer My God to Thee”. It has taken me a while to finalize the arrangement but now complete and available in our music store.
A big thanks to Abby Phillips for adding the violin markings! See video of Abby below playing her own arrangement of “I’d Rather Have Jesus” in her home church.
Sacred violin solo w/ piano accompaniment; 4 pgs. *Price covers two copies.
A nice solo piece for any occasion. The beautiful melody of this hymn flows gently back and forth between the piano and violin. *Bowing & slur marks included for violin.
Most of the editing was the result of a private lesson with Marty Parks. Very thankful for his input! He shared a great pointer on how to better communicate rhythmic interpretation in written music.
(Thanks to Robert Sterling and Brad Nix for pointing out the 9 over the tuplets for clarity). I just honestly had shied away from learning how to input tuplets with Finale and FINALLY learned how! 🙂 Thanks to Joseph Martin for his overall encouragement and teaching spirit 🙂 Also, thanks to John Parker for his written comments on the arrangement!
For example, instead of a breath mark (large looking comma)…just insert a rest…makes a clearer statement. Also, NOT to show key change too early which is what I ALWAYS do! 😉 *See key change illustrations below the video.
Due to requests for the critiqued version…there are now two different arrangements of Abide With Me in our music store…the advanced original version & Critiqued version. Those who like a challenge will enjoy playing the critiqued version….which contains minor editing changes…ending with a run up the keyboard. Listen to the critiqued version below…
Now to show you the original and new key change correction 🙂
One of my former piano students approached me at church a couple months ago and asked if I would write her an offertory arrangement of “I Must Tell Jesus”.
Well…I finally got around to it! 🙂 But what a surprise! This arrangement just flowed out of my little brain this week and I quickly penned it to paper. It’s not always that easy for me to arrange a hymn!
I tried to arrange this piano solo well within her early intermediate level…hoping she could learn it soon. Even though I’m an advanced pianist…I wouldn’t mind playing this for offertory.
So much music is racing through my little brain…can’t get it on paper fast enough!
Just had this one race through my mind this morning of “I Must Tell Jesus”. I’m writing this for one of my former students who I’m conditioning for church pianist.
“The Sands of Time are Sinking” dates back to the 19th century. Anne Cousin, the daughter of a doctor and later the wife of a Pastor, wrote this hymn based on letters and deathbed sayings of another Pastor name Samuel Rutherford. The original hymn had nineteen verses! Anne was careful to not copy Samuel’s words verbatim. She used poetic images of her own to replace some of Samuel’s sayings.
Anne’s purpose of this hymn was to show the “beautiful Christian reflection on death and what comes after, and on the beauty of the Savior.” Kevin White
What a beautiful hymn to use for a funeral service. Someone in the recent past asked if I knew of a piano arrangement for this song. My online search yielded no results. The individual needed the song pronto…so in a few spare minutes….I jotted this arrangement down and provided the person with the following hymn.
Maybe other church pianists can make use of this free hymn for a funeral service or general worship.
For the past couple of months…I’ve been creating “ready-made’ hymn arrangements for some of my church pianist students who are need of improvised hymns for congregational singing. (Can also be used as piano solo)
These hymn arrangements are nothing more than a copy of a hymn from the hymnal with my added improvised notes in red.
Just curious, would this meet the need for others as well? I’m considering adding them to our online music store if there’s enough interest.
The cost would be less than my regular “printed arrangements”.
Here’s a FREE copy of one of these ready-made hymn arrangements. (Also trying to decide what to call them….any suggestions?)
*Also…are you all ok with it being handwritten just as it appears in free arrangement below?
*Special note: THANKS for the feedback! After reading the comments here and on facebook….I will be putting these type of easy-to-play congregationals into print instead of by hand. I will do away with the original notes from the hymnbook and ONLY type in my (hopefully) easy-to-play congregational/piano solo arrangement. Thanks again for your helpful comments! I do have (more involved ) congregational piano arrangements for sale HERE.
Sorry for the low profile lately. I’ve been recouping from being sick since returning from vacation a week and half ago.
My daughter-in-law requested a violin solo arrangement of Nearer My God to Thee. I finally finished tweaking it! 😉
I enjoyed weaving the melody back and forth from piano to violin. Nearer My God to Thee is a very comforting hymn; making if a nice solo piece for any occasion but especially a funeral.
Sacred violin solo w/ piano accompaniment; 4 pgs. *Price covers two copies.
A nice solo piece for any occasion. The beautiful melody of this hymn flows gently back and forth between the piano and violin. *Bowing & slur marks included for violin.
At the request of one of my piano students…I sat down and wrote an early advanced piano arrangement of “In the Garden this morning.
The student actually requested it sometime ago but ideas just wouldn’t flow. So…I sat down at the piano this morning and the creative juices started flowing!
