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.

Just thought I’d share a sneak preview of the advanced piano solo I’m working on of “I’d Rather Have Jesus”.

Sorry for the delay in posting…our household has been down with the stomach bug.

Here is the excerpt of Isn’t the Love of Jesus Something Wonderful which I shared with my hymn playing student last week.  The left hand ideas resemble the improvisation I shared in the free piano prelude arrangement of “I Am Resolved”.

It’s always helpful to see the same ideas in several different keys and songs of like nature for ample reinforcement.

(Due to the copyright still active on this hymn…I could only share a portion as stated in the “fair use” copyright law.)

Having said that…if I could have shared more…I would have branched out the right hand an octave higher during the chorus to stretch my student’s playing ground.

Special note: When trying to apply the above left hand ideas… choose hymns of like nature (same time signature; similar rhythmic structure; peppy mood).