For the past few days, I have been recording a set of five songs. I am extremely excited about them because in many ways, they are the most aggressive pieces I have ever recorded. They will be released as videos starting hopefully the end of next month. I am giving away one of my cheats. […]
I just published a new arrangement on my sheet music page. For Thanksgiving, it is a late intermediate take on “For the Beauty of the Earth.” If you are a member of the Monthly Hymn Arrangement Club, do not purchase this arrangement. It will be coming to you later today. One quick plug for my […]
I am in the middle of the series of how pianists can adapt to new more contemporary music in church and I want to take a small and very relevant detour today and discuss string reductions. The reason string reductions are relevant is because very very often, today’s church pianists are asked to play them […]
Read Part 1 here Last week, I gave a foundational principle about playing modern church music (sometimes called praise and worship or CCM). The principle was this: The first thing you need to learn is how to play the right chords at the right time. Let’s say that you have to make a choice. You […]
Here are the other parts of this series: Part 1: My story of abuse (Introduction) Part 2: Seven things you need to know about abusers Part 3: Dealing with victims of abuse Part 4: It started with a crossword puzzle Part 5: Getting help for an abuse victim Part 6: Taking the next step Part 7: […]
A few months ago, I published a post here where I promised to discuss how pianists can adjust when their church moves from traditional to more contemporary music. Sadly, I promptly forgot about my promise until someone pointed it out last week. Time to remedy that… Let me introduce an idea this week to get […]
If you are entering the arrangement contest I have been running all year, you have until midnight tonight to get me your arrangement. This is my final reminder. I just published a new arrangement of “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior” which you can download on my sheet music page. This arrangement is late intermediate […]
My first blog post here on this blog was in May, 2007 and it is still posted though the information is a bit dated. Since then, I have written almost 1200 posts over ten years which works out to about two per week. That is a staggering amount of words. Some of those words have been […]
If you are a professional in the arts, you will be invariably get asked to work for exposure. By that, I mean people will come to you with a “great” idea and they will say something like this: This project is going to be huge and seen by thousands (or millions) of people. I can’t […]
Here are links to this entire series: Part 1: My story of abuse (Introduction Part 2: Seven things you need to know about abusers Part 3: Dealing with victims of abuse Part 4: It started with a crossword puzzle Part 5: Getting help for an abuse victim Part 6: Taking the next step Part 7: My […]
Several have asked what I am looking for in the contest I am running so let me go through that fairly quickly. Thanks to the many that have sent in their arrangements. If you haven’t, you have through the end of the month. If you want to send in a revised version after reading this, […]