Here's (part of) My Philosophy.

My hope is to take these hymns and put a little complementary twist in them. Probably the same as most any player of hymns. There are a lot of musical tools and techniques that have developed along since most of these hymns were written and I suspect most of the orignal authors would enjoy having many of these musical developments employed in the presenting of their masterpieces. I can't help but have my entire history of musical experience well up inside of me as I play through many of these hymn pieces, and consider it a privilege to let them share in the growth that has occured in the musical arts since their own beginnings. Music is........form and content. All of it's form is 'of ' the world, and there is none which is by itself unclean. But it's content springs from the heart, and for the 'new heart', there is a spiritual standard. Looking forward to explaining that further as time permits. And as the Lords gracious teaching enables.

That's all I know for sure tonight, because, my time allotment has run out and my daughter just let me know that.

I'm awfully excited about the He Hideth My Soul arrangement. Not necessarily the recording of the present arrangement as it stands. Because it's time in line finally came to sit down with it and decide where I was going with it and, it wasn't until I was done slogging through it many times, and I was done recording it, that the theme really firmed up. So I'm looking forward to a few weeks of learning how to play it and then coming back and tentatively finishing it. And then singing through it. And that's what I'm looking forward to almost the most. That, I have to emphasize, is the great hope I have that many of these pieces will useful for to others than myself. That's more of the philosophy thing...there are many who love to sing these vintage hymns that simply need some musical accompanyment that presents a pleasant opportunity to do just that. I'm still trying to figure out how to best manage that. At least I can finally play them.

I'll be resinging all of these as my sort of self taught voice training progresses. All of them that make the website that is. There are many that won't, but will, however, be formally recorded and ultimately shared. I've learned I can't sing very well in the morning but that that's when I start on a song and the voice track needs to get in early so I can build onto it as opposed to the other way around. I'm doing most of these in the course of one or two days. As a means to figuring out how to do them the next time better. Or just socking them away until I can get them to a better producer than myself. But the ones on the website will be slowly evolving all the time.

I sat down the other evening and resang, "I Sing the Mighty Power of God". It sounded more like yelling. That let me know that my voice conditioning was working. It's nice to know that the pipes are starting to pump pretty well. But now I have to work toward that happy medium. I've got to work on improving the voice. Speaking of that tune, that was my first home recording effort and wasn't really intended to come out as such a pop tune. But I've fallen in great like with the end product. It's all from my electric effects piano so I know I could easily reproduce the whole song for a crowd of people and that has some practical benefits. But not a lot of my stuff is going to have that sort of sound. Just wait until half of the hymnal I've turned into a jig. Yikes. Still working on my technique there.

So on it goes.

http://toddsaunders.us/livemusic.html



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