My Vocal Arrangement of How Great Thou Art

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Putting on my music hat today

My vocal solo arrangement of How Great Thou Art is now available. Yes!!!

Find it at Sheet Music Plus, and Musicaneo for Low, Medium, and High voice. It’s also available for SA duet and Piano Solo.

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Here’s a video:

I’ve arranged several hymns for people before, but this one has a cool story.

With my fiction writing obsession, my music has taken a back seat lately. Which is fine. I love music and writing, and I’ll do whichever I’m in the mood for, because if I force either one, it never turns out great.

Cool thing #1

But about a month ago, I was in a musical mood and sat down at my piano and started goofing around. Before I knew it, I was plunking out a piano arrangement of “How Great Thou Art.” Not sure why that hymn since it’s never been on my top-ten favorites list, but okay. I grabbed my manuscript paper and scribbled (literally) all over it. My musical handwriting is worse than my regular handwriting, which is scary enough. But the music was coming faster than I could write.

I haven’t written a song that fast in a LONG time.

Cool thing #2 came a week later

A man in my ward was asked to sing a solo at the Detroit Mission Home Fireside. He approached me to see if I would accompany him. I said yes and asked him what he wanted to sing. He said,

“I’d love to sing How Great Thou Art, but I don’t want to sing it straight out of the hymnbook. I want to do some kind of an arrangement. Do you know of any?”

Now, at times like this my personality begs me to clam up and say nothing. I HATE my personality. But I went for bold, jumped uncharacteristically out of my comfort zone and said,

“Actually . . . I’m working on an arrangement right now. It’s mostly finished but it’s for a piano solo. But, it wouldn’t be too hard to switch it over to a vocal solo. What do you think?”

He was nice enough to trust me, so we gave it a try.

Not sure how he got through that first rehearsal. I was scribbling and scratching things out as he sang. But he put up with me. He’s an amazing musician. He even tolerated the funky timing I added.

Cool thing #3

Lo and behold, the song went great at the fireside — Thank you, Scott! I even had someone I don’t know ask for the arrangement afterward, which is the nicest compliment anyone can give. When I told her it was my arrangement she wasn’t completely shocked — another compliment. However, I only had one copy, and it had more scribbles on it. I handed it over anyway, hoping I would remember my last minutes tweaks.

I rushed home, made the changes, and had the thought — I should publish it. Might as well, right? It was finished and a whole two people liked it. I’ve had less motivation before. :)

Good enough.

But then came the hard part. Most hymns are so old the copyrights have expired. You can arrange to your heart’s desire and not worry about anything. ”How Great Thou Art” is not one of them. In fact, you can’t even copy it out of the hymnbook without permission.

That’s okay. I’ve been working with publishers and copyrights for eight years now, so I decided to take the plunge.

Cool thing #4

I did some research, wrote about 10 emails, and now it’s approved for publication.

Yay!

So that’s the long story for my short announcement.

My vocal solo arrangement of “How Great Thou Art” is available for purchase, as well as a vocal duet and piano solo.

Find them here:

• HIGH voice
• MEDIUM voice
• LOW voice
• SA duet
• Piano Solo

Funny how life works.

One more cool thing since I’m already blabbering on. I’m being featured on Musicaneo’s homepage right now. Kind of fun. Okay, really fun.

So check out the new song and let me know what you think.

And as always, have a great day!.

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PS: I always set out to write short posts. I tell myself, “Oh, today is going to be a short one.” 720 words later, I’m sorry. The author in me needs to learn to shut up.

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