accompanying hymns

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How to Accompany Hymns with Piano 4-Hand

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How to Accompany Hymns with Piano 4-Hand

A few months ago, I received an email from a friend:

“Hi Ashley! I am looking for hymn accompaniments for four hands at the piano. Not arrangements, but the actual hymn. We will be without our organ for some months and I want to beef up the piano sound by adding hands. Do you know of any books with this? Or websites? I guess we could just play in octaves, but maybe there is something interesting out there."

Can anyone relate?

Whether the organ is undergoing repairs, that F# is in need of a good tuning, or you show up one morning and the power is out…

Sometimes, you need to use the piano to accompany the hymns.

But if you’re in a large space, the piano may not be enough on its own to really support and lead the congregation in song. What’s a church musician to do?

5 Creative Ways to Spruce Up Your Hymn-Playing

5 Creative Ways to Spruce Up Your Hymn-Playing

As a church musician, you know the struggle:

You have numerous opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques in worship (like, multiple times in every service!), but access to hymn harmonizations and published resources is limited, and in some cases, they 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!

With a few easy-to-use strategies and a quick refresher on those 8 a.m. college theory classes, you’ll be creating your own artful hymn arrangements in no time.

Ready to get started? Mix up your approach to hymn-playing this month with these 5 creative strategies:

Creative and Practical Hymn Harmonization Resources for Church Musicians

Creative and Practical Hymn Harmonization Resources for Church Musicians

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.

Follow along with my creative work and daily adventures: @ashleydanyew

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