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It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.
I Will Extol the Lord
A short, fast-moving anthem based on Psalm 145:1-2, and a joy to rehearse and sing.
Extra: I don’t ordinarily excerpt Children’s Choir pieces, but here is a link to the livestream recording for what they sang this morning. These kids sing harmony!
This was my screens week, running slides and captions, and I can tell you this piece really moves! I was surprised — playing back the recording — to see that the slide transitions were set for a slow dissolve instead of our usual 0.2 second dissolve. It looks a little odd to my eyes, but it works. It is kind of strange, using a slow dissolve with such fast music. The indicated tempo for this piece is 132 beats/minute in 4/4 (“lively“). The first line of lyrics looks like this:
It’s around half 8th notes (counting tied 8ths as quarters), especially for sopranos and tenors, and those would clock at 264. And it’s syncopated. This is fun choral music!
I provided special lighting for the kids, as best I could given that we have so many spotlights with burned out bulbs, another issue I’m working to get resolved. Somehow. The cameras compensated partially, and I think it turned out reasonably well.
Our run-through this morning was delayed because the kids had to be up first (no doubt because they were singing for all three services), but the CD for the accompaniment was nowhere to be found. It finally arrived from the early service, but then for some reason the CD deck wasn’t connected to the mixer. In fact, it wasn’t even plugged in. All in a Sunday morning’s work for the tech team.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 12, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.