I decided to share for FREE….transitions for an Easter prelude.

A late intermediate to early advanced church pianist would benefit most from this IF they already know how to improvise hymns from the hymnal.

The following PDF includes four hymns that I printed from Timeless Truths Free Online Library.

Keep in mind that the hymns in the following Easter prelude are taken from a hymnal as is  but I’ve also included  a separate sheet which includes the transition for each song in the prelude collection. (These hymns are in the correct keys to match the transition sheet below.)

Easter Prelude Contents:

There is a Fountain (B flat Major)

When I See the Blood (C Major)

Since I Have Been Redeemed (F Major)

Glory to His Name (G Major)

Click here to download Easter-Prelude

Click here to download Transitions for Easter Prelude

Hopefully this helps the church pianist who has difficulty with adding transitions/modulations between hymns during a prelude.

Special note to my readers:  This advanced sacred piano solo of The Haven of Rest & Wonderful Peace is available in our music store. (It was available for a short time after publication but now for sale in our music store.)

Last week, a church pianist friend of mine who I met through my website was asking if I would write another advanced devotional piano solo.  She couldn’t have asked at a better time since I was wanting to start a new advanced piano arrangement.

I began thinking about The Haven of Rest and tried to think of a song that would go with it. The chorus of “Wonderful Peace” just seemed to flow in thought and rhythm at the end of Haven of Rest chorus.

What a blessing to know as a Christian that…”I’ve anchored my soul in the haven of rest” and now I have “Peace, peace, wonderful peace…coming down from the Father above…”

The Haven of Rest was written (unsurprisingly) by an Irish sailor, Henry Gilmour, who came to America at an early age. (more on Henry’s life)

 Purchase Here

Update on Free Piano Arrangement of Haven of Rest Medley:

Just put the first two handwritten pages into Finale today….took about 30 minutes.  I have three pages to go 🙂

Just talked with the lady today who’s helping with the permission/license for my arrangement of “I’d Rather Have Jesus”.

The process has begun!  I will keep everyone posted.

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately but have battled different sicknesses since January and now I have the shingles 🙁

I’m working on an advanced sacred piano solo that will be available for FREE.

Medleys are my favorite piano specials and looking forward to sharing this particular arrangement entitled “Haven of Rest w/ Wonderful Peace”.

The hand-written version is almost complete!

A Great Find for Church Pianists!

I just subscribed to Dorothy Taubman’s youtube channel. I’ve known of Dorothy’s work and have gleaned from several of her youtube lessons over the years.

I would love to attend piano clinics but distance is usually a factor so I bring learning to my living room via youtube and other internet resources.

If you want to play with ease, you will enjoy the following video.  I was encouraged to discover that I teach some of the same solutions for technical passages but enjoyed hearing Dorothy’s easy-to-understand solutions!

Helpful Resource for Church Pianists!

Over the years, I’ve met many piano friends who are classically trained and say they have a hard time improvising because they only learned to play what was on the page…leaving no room for creativity.

I found the following article to be very enlightening…

Why Don’t More Classical Musicians Improvise?

Just wanted to alert my readers that I just posted two new books for sale on my “used music for sale” page.

I have accumulated so many books over the last couple of years and just parting with some of them. I will post a few more for sale soon.

Click on this link to see sample pages of each book

I found out today by accident that the melody of “I’d Rather Have Jesus” that I’m  using in my piano solo… is copyrighted.  I always check to make sure hymns are public domain before arranging them and had checked this one out as well.

I verified that the tune and melody were public domain and didn’t click on the music image to view the song and later discovered the tune was different than the one I was arranging.  Guess it’s better to find out BEFORE publishing!

So…I’ve been online with Music Services (provides a variety of ‘a la carte’ services to music publishers – song registration, licensing, royalty collections, royalty accounting) to obtain a “print” license for this arrangement.  This is my first time to deal with a copyrighted work.  I won’t do too many of these for the sake of added expense but will try this with “I’d Rather Have Jesus” since I had already promised it to my readers.

The downside is…there will be a delay in publishing until I get the clearance from Music Services.  I will keep you all posted and sorry for the delay but I want to be above board!

I (hope) to publish the advanced sacred piano solo of “I’d Rather Have Jesus” by this Monday, February 2, 2015.