Church Music

5 Simple Ideas for Creative Hymn-Playing

5 Simple Ideas for Creative Hymn-Playing

If you’re a church pianist or organist, you likely have lots of opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques (like, multiple times in every service!).

But knowing what to do, finding well-crafted hymn harmonizations, and accessing published resources can be challenging. In some cases, these resources aren’t available at all.

The good news is, you don’t need to rely solely on published resources to add creative hymn arrangements and harmonizations into your service-playing. You can learn to do some of this yourself.

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4 Strategies to Help Your Adult Choir Improve Their Sight-Reading Skills

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4 Strategies to Help Your Adult Choir Improve Their Sight-Reading Skills

It's one the greatest musical skills you can help your choir develop: singing and reading music for themselves with musical understanding.

Just like learning to read language, music-reading comes after listening and interacting with music aurally and developing a musical vocabulary of tonal and rhythm patterns (these are like words in language).

Think of how you learned to read: You probably spent a lot of time following along in a book as you listened to someone else read to you. Eventually, you started finishing the sentences and pointing to the words as you went along.

You learned simple words like, go and dog and identified them in other books.

Learning to read music is no different. We learn to recognize tonal and rhythm patterns like familiar words in books.

Fifteen Church Choir Anthems for Advent

Fifteen Church Choir Anthems for Advent

'Tis the season to be jolly (in July, as you plan music for Advent!)

Am I right?!

As a church musician, you know it's never too early to be thinking about Christmas, so today, I thought I'd share a few favorite choral anthems for the Advent season.

I've mentioned a few of these in previous posts (Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir and Fifty More Favorite Anthems for the Small Church Choir), but I thought it might be helpful to compile everything in one post for easy reference.

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26 Leadership Skills and Traits for Church Music Directors

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26 Leadership Skills and Traits for Church Music Directors

What does it mean to be a leader? And what does it take to be a great one?

Leadership has been defined as “the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” (source) Thus, a leader is one who inspires and directs that collective action.

This requires a certain set of skills and character traits, though experts say you can learn and develop these skills with time and experience. 

You don’t have to be born with all of these skills and traits to be a great leader.

What Type of Choir Director Are You?

What Type of Choir Director Are You?

Take a moment to think about the choir directors you’ve had during your lifetime. What was your first choir director like? If you sang in a choir during high school, what was that director like? Think about the directors you’ve had as an adult, whether in a university, church, or community setting. What were those directors like?

Each one had a different style, right? A different approach to leading, conducting, organizing, and communicating with the choir. What makes one director a stronger leader than another? Which communication style is most effective?

Each one had a different style, right? A different approach to leading, conducting, organizing, and communicating with the choir. What makes one director a stronger leader than another? Which communication style is most effective?

Three Ways to Plan a Summer Choir

Three Ways to Plan a Summer Choir

As you wrap up your school-year commitments and make plans for those lazy, hazy days of summer, now is the perfect time to start organizing a summer choir.

Here are three unique ways to organize and structure a summer choir at your church, plus some helpful strategies for making the most of your time together each week.

12 Anthems for Palm Sunday and Easter

12 Anthems for Palm Sunday and Easter

Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are big celebrations in the life of the church and since they come back-to-back in the church calendar, it's one of the busiest weeks of the year for church musicians! Here are a few anthems to consider for your choir this year.

13 Choral Anthems for Lent

13 Choral Anthems for Lent

Lent. A time of reflection, sacrifice, prayer, contemplating, and grace.

It's a time of stripping away, going without (for example, the practice of "burying the alleluia" during Lent), and quieting the heart and mind.

There are six Sundays during Lent, plus any services that take place during Holy Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter).

If you’re looking for a few new Lenten anthems to add to your library this year, here are a few of my favorites for SAB and SATB choirs.

Celebrating Women in Music Month: Church Music by Women Composers & Authors

Celebrating Women in Music Month: Church Music by Women Composers & Authors

In March, we celebrate Women's History Month around the world. And for those of us in music, we often celebrate women in music, as well.

There are festivals honoring the contributions of women in music, concerts celebrating repertoire by women composers, and publications about women writers and creators who have been relegated to the sidelines throughout history.

In church music, there is a rich history of women composers and authors sharing poetry, hymns, anthems, and service music. To celebrate Women in Music Month, here is a collection of church music written by women.

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Halloween 2024… …The Lion King 🦁 Swipe to see the outtakes, including lion-wrangling and the 20th photo we took before we realized Rafiki had his mask on upside-down. 😂
The October Musician & Co. Book Club pick is… 📘 Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World’s Most Successful People This book is a collection of stories, insights, and lessons learned from top performers, entr
Meet Jessie Ning - pianist, graphic designer, and founder of @opushaus, a lifestyle brand for musicians. A former Creative Director at TikTok, Jessie combines her extensive background in graphic design and scenic design with her musical talents. I