More Music for Small Churches, Plus a Resource Roundup

Photograph by Lindsey Williams

Hymns Without Words is an online source of free, high quality, easily downloadable mp3 recordings for congregational singing.   All the hymns are arranged and performed by Richard Irwin, who is  Director of Music for the Parish of Holy Cross Chiseldon, UK.  There are a number of different instrumental combinations.  Almost all the hymns are in the public domain and lyrics are included on the hymn’s page.   If you have the proper copyright licenses, you can access others that are under copyright for use in worship services only by emailing Mr. Irwin.

Here is “Holy, Holy, Holy” performed on the organ, and “Morning Is Broken” performed on the piano.

He also has produced two CDs, “Hymns Without Words,” volumes 1 and 2,  that include some copyrighted tunes, such as “Bind Us Together.”  You can access them on amazon.com by clicking here.  You will see that he has also produced a collection of carols.

I highly recommend this site!

Here is a roundup of my posts about the many free and low-cost music resources available:

Hymnpod.com: downloadable piano accompaniments.

Smallchurchmusic.com: downloadable mp3 files.

Worship Service Resources: a CD collection.  Downloadable mp3 files also available.

See also this review of three CD collections: Hymns for Church, the Hymn Project, and the CD Hymnal.

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Hymnpod.com: another small church music resource

My keyboard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A lay pastor colleague of mine called my attention to hymnpod.com, a free source of traditional hymn accompaniments online.  Christopher Tan, a pianist from Singapore, has recorded  many, many tunes using an electronic piano, and they are exceptionally clear and singable, and they are lovely to listen to.

The tunes are all in the public domain.  Here is a sample, the Swedish tune to which we sing the hymn “How Great Thou Art.”

You can download these tunes to your computer by right clicking on the play button and then select “save audio as.”   On iTunes you can download a number of them for free and also subscribe to podcasts of more tunes as Christopher Tan makes them available.   Then you can make audio CDs to use in worship, or you can sync them to your iPod and play them back through a compatible player.

For more music resources, see this post reviewing CDs for worship use, and this post about smallchurchmusic.com, a site that offers free downloads of hymn accompaniments in multiple formats.  You can also click the resources tab above and scroll down to the music section for more help.

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