If you’re a church pianist or organist, you likely have lots of opportunities to use hymn arrangements and creative hymn-playing techniques (like, multiple times in every service!).

But knowing what to do, finding well-crafted hymn harmonizations, and accessing published resources can be challenging. In some cases, these resources 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.

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?

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.