Finding the right tools for WORSHIP with limited MUSICIAN resources
Churches with limited musician resources seem to be occurring in epidemic proportions. Also, many churches want to be able to utilize modern worship songs in their times of worship, but find it difficult to do so without proper instrumentation. Today, we have technologies available that provide great solutions for churches that need help. In this series of posts, I will be talking about many great solutions for churches of all worship styles–whether you need just a pianist or an entire band to assist in your times of corporate worship. This post is about one of several solutions for churches needing just a pianist or organist for their times of worship.
Kenny
I have featured several great options for providing piano and/or organ accompaniment in the past articles. Today, I share a number of other possibilites that may be helpful in some situations.
Classic Hymn Collections
Three volumes of Classic Hymns can be found on Amazon.com. Each collection contains 15-18 hymns with piano accompaniment and costs $7.99. You can also download the mp3s at a cost of $.89 each from the product pages on Amazon.com.
Here are the links to the product pages. You can listen to audio samples of the songs on these pages as well.
NOTE: These files can also be streamed at Spotify.com and Apple Music (fees may be imposed for memberships)
YouTube Playlists
There are a number of YouTube videos that have hymn accompaniment with lyrics. Several of these are are poor quality, but a number of them are adequate for congregational singing. Look through these and see which might be appropriate for your setting.
If you want to download non-copyrighted content, use a YouTube downloader and download the highest resolution mp4 that is available. You can embed the video in PowerPoint or your church’s worship presentation software like ProPresenter.
The first playlist has 71 hymns from the Baptist Hymnal with lyrics. The first two examples on the left come from that collection. The accompaniments are very consistent and useful. These are all done in widescreen format.
The second playlist has 300 songs and has some good and some bad examples. Be careful in your selection; quality varies greatly. Most of these videos are in the old 4:3 format. The third example on the left comes from this series.
HymnCDs.com
A large number of piano & organ tracks for hymn accompaniment and service music are available for download from www.HymnCDs.com. While the majority of the hymns are not of the Baptist tradition, you may find some great selections to use for other service music as well as weddings and funerals. Note that the pricing is in Euros, and can be purchased on their site or the UK Amazon site. Probably the easiest way to purchase the files is through the iTunes links.
Here is an alphabetical linking of all their titles with links to purchase. One product is geared toward the Baptist Hymnal.
Check out their organ music for weddings and take a look at their other resources.
Abide with Me
Bach: Toccata in D minor
I deeply appreciate the Hymn Track (from HymnCDs.com) that we purchased from you a few months ago. It was absolutely marvelous and, once we played over our system, several people came forward after our worship service somewhat bewildered and said, “I had no idea we had a pipe organ here…”
Final Thoughts
The Classic Hymn collection mp3s give you another option for piano accompaniment of hymns when you are lacking a live pianist. I have presented a number of other great resources in previous weeks for meeting this need that you should review as well.
The YouTube playlists may be great for small group gatherings. They also provide an all-in-one solution if you want to display lyrics on a screen while singing with an accompaniment track. The quality of many of these products is questionable.
HymnCDs.com has amazing quality organ hymn accompaniment. The collection specific to the Baptist Tradition and their wedding collections may serve you best if you are looking for great organ accompaniment to add to your mp3 collection.
Kenny
