Hymn harmonizations are a great way to add musical interest to your hymn-playing and congregational singing. Use them to highlight particular verses, create a certain mood or expression, or heighten an important point in the worship service.
The trouble is, where do you find these hymn harmonizations?
Your denomination may have a few hymnal supplements available, offering some re-harmonizations, but these can be expensive and sometimes, not all that exciting.
You have all the credentials. You have a newly-minted music degree in one hand and a polished résumé in the other, but you wonder if you really have what it takes to be a great leader.
What does it take, exactly?
Some of us may have heard the words, "You're a born leader" in our lifetimes. Others of us may not. We may have been the kids that organized the game on the playground, assigning roles and explaining all the rules; or we may have been the kids who were perfectly content just being followers. We may have sought out opportunities to lead and make decisions, or been most comfortable in the middle of the crowd, safely out of the spotlight, and happy to not have all the responsibility.
This summer, I’ve been sharing my reading session picks for choirs - twelve anthems for Adult Choir, and eleven anthems for Youth Choir, so far.
The final post in the series this year is anthems you can use with your children's choir. Most of these are brand new this year and feature opportunities to develop part-singing within your choir and include other instruments: organ, flute, and handbells or handchimes. This is a great way to develop musical independence in your singers, help develop their listening skills, and create a memorable and meaningful worship experience for them.
I wasn’t really familiar with the term keyboard skills until I was in grad school, flipping through the course catalog one semester. The course description piqued my interest:
"Practical experience in score reading, figured bass realization, transposition, melody harmonization, and pop symbols.”
Needless to say, I signed up.
You want me to play that? Where is the left hand part? Where is the time signature? Why aren't there any barlines?
If you haven't guessed it by now, I'm talking about lead sheets and chord charts.
Last year, I put together a free online workshop on this topic (watch it here). Today, I want to share the transcript, for those of you that may prefer to read it. I’ll talk about chord types, chord symbols, lead sheets and chord charts, accompaniment styles, and variation techniques you can start using right away.
A few weeks ago, I shared my reading session picks for adult choirs - 12 new (or new-ish) anthems with good texts, singable lines, and interesting accompaniments, where applicable. Read it here, in case you missed it.
Next in this series is anthems you can use with your youth choir.
Now, youth choir can be tricky, depending on the size of your group and the ages you're working with (middle-school-age singers vs. senior high singers). As such, I tried to include a mix of things on this list: some SATB, some SAB, and even a 2-part anthem for those of you with smaller or younger groups.
The beginning of a new choir year is a perfect time to invite and recruit a few new members.
There are a few reasons for this:
People are often eager to sign up for new things at the beginning of a new church/school year
There’s energy and enthusiasm around new music, routines, and schedules
It’s a great way to engage new families that may have started visiting over the summer
It's that time of the year: time for my annual reading session picks!
Every year, I round up my top anthem picks from the latest publisher's catalogs, playlists, and reading sessions (plus, sometimes a few that aren't new that I've recently discovered and haven't shared here before) to give you a shortcut in your anthem-planning for next year.
First up, the Adult Choir edition. Here are my adult choir reading session picks from the last few years:
Have you ever been rehearsing an anthem with your choir and thought, "If only this were a half-step lower,"or practicing a song for Sunday and thought, "This feels a little low. I wish I had it in a higher key.”?
Chances are, if you’ve been in ministry long enough, you’ve had moments like these.
Transposing, or playing/singing something in another key (e.g. moving the notes of a piece up or down by a certain interval) is a practical and at times, very useful skill for all church musicians, teachers, and accompanists to have.
Looking for a fun way to reinforce rhythm and steady beat, play melodies, and introduce harmony to your children’s choir?
Let me introduce you to Boomwhackers.
Boomwhackers are great for older elementary choirs, though they can be used in certain circumstances with younger elementary choirs.
Here are a few ways you can use them in your rehearsals:
