budafulmusic

Lord, I am Thine is the third and final of hymn tunes that I wrote for my composition lessons in grad school. I did arrange this one into a choral arrangement, some few may remember (while I try to forget) . This text is one of only two of Samuel Davies texts that are known to be written by him (or are at least available to the public). I came across Lord, I am Thine while researching for my American Hymnody class. If there was one consistency with my choice of texts for these three hymn tunes, it was this: that it (the text) should full of strong, doctrinally sound words conveyed in a beautiful and worshipful way and that text should be the driving force behind the composing of the tune and is harmonization.

This Davies text meant a lot to me when I wrote the melody and harmonized it. It speaks of our position in Christ that we have because of His “blood divine” and of what He has done for us. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, we ought to be compelled give our lives in full consecration. View and print the PDF here. Listen to a pianistic harmonization here.

As an engraving editor at SoundForth, one of my responsibilities is to get piano books ready for publishing. Just in time for the Christmas season, this new advanced Christmas piano collection, arranged by Amy Herbster from Herbster Evangelistic Ministries, was one of my first projects. It is exiting to see it come to print. It is a companion to the previously existing recording.

This second hymn tune in my short series of hymn tune postings is set to a common meter text by Isaac Watts. Based on Psalm 16, When God is Nigh is about God’s ever sure presence in our lives and the protection and comfort He provides us on our earthly journey and then talks of the glories and pleasures of heaven. This hymn tune is similar in style to the famous and gorgeous Passion Chorale. View and print the PDF here. Listen to a nice piano rendition of the harmonization here.

One of several projects I was given while in grad school was to write hymn tunes. Make them singable yet harmonically interesting and appropriate to the text; accessible to the average ear yet beautiful and compelling. Here is the first of three hymn tunes that I wrote. Of course, the first place I started was with the text. I discovered this Charles Wesley text on www.hymntime.com and renamed it: Eternal Praise. This text is about just that: the adoration and praise of Christ through all ages and for eternity in heaven. View and print the hymn here. Listen to me playing the hymn here. It is a cut above the cheap MIDI sounds on hymntime to be sure!

Over this past summer, I took on another project with Majesty Music. This time I helped edit and arrange about 30 songs written by Ron Hamilton. These songs, as the title suggests, are not just any of his songs but what could be considered to be classic Ron Hamilton. It is the first of at least 2 volumes, the second due some time early next year (something which here means: whenever we get to it) .

The songs are all arranged very simply by design and include a vocal line, piano accompaniment and guitar chords. A late beginning pianist could practice these songs up with relatively little difficulty and an intermediate pianist could play these pieces well. I sent a copy each to my parents and Aunt and they all loved the book and could both play through the whole thing. One thing I am grateful for is the page in the back that explains the inspiration for writing some of the songs that Ron Hamilton is best known for.

Songs range from his earliest compositions (Come to the Cross and Christ is Coming) to his most recent songs including Beautiful Hands. There need to be more collections like this from other publishers…hmmm, The best of SoundForth.

Sacredaudio.com now has all of the songs from ‘Shadow of the Cross’ available for purchase/download here.

This Sunday afternoon (October 4) at BJU is the second of a series of sacred programs known as vespers. For this specific program, I was asked to composed 25+ minutes of music to accompany 6 video segments that will appear in between sections of live drama and choir music. If you are in the Greenville area and would like to attend, performance times are listed on the BJU calender of events.

The six video segments mentioned earlier are a telling of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. This is an ambitious thing to attempt in a 40 minute program! Obviously much had to be left out of the 2-inch+ thick book. Various actors narrated the different characters in the story while the drawings of Doré’s Paradise Lost are displayed on screen and played out as the narration progresses. My job was to score the music, most of which is synthetic. I scored primarily to the narration track after I read the script. I didn’t see the visual material until I was done writing the music, after which I made several edits! I used a friend of mine’s voice, DeLaura Talbert, for portions of the score and they are some of my favorite sections. I also used my own voice as a bass drone for the more devilish parts.

This program combines so many artistic elements and comes together so well which makes the message of the program all the more powerful. God takes bad things, evil, problems that we create because of our sin and turns that very evil into something good.

Here are some audio samples of the music sans narration:

PL segment 3

PL segment 5

PL6 redemption