Collaboration Curve

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Linda Bonney Olin

After a two-year hiatus while I worked on other projects, my Holy GhostWriter plunked me back into hymn-writing this year, with an exciting new twist!

Thanks to Facebook groups, YouTube, and the Hymn Society in the US & Canada, I’ve connected with several composers to work on new musical settings for texts I originally published with public domain tunes and for some brand new texts. In addition, I’ve written melodies for a couple of my newest hymns, with harmonization help from Diva Daughter, Theresa Olin (aka The Inexorable Juggernaut of Music Theory).

It’s been quite a roller coaster ride, careening up, down, and around the learning curve of collaboration. I mean, it’s one thing to tweak a hundred-year-old tune written by a guy who is, shall we say, in no position to argue with my choices. It’s quite another to communicate and negotiate with a living composer who brings a different vision and style to my lyrics, and who is as new to the art of collaboration as I am. Fortunately, my HGW has blessed me with partners who possess a gracious heart as well as musical skills.

Our newest pieces are not going public yet, in order to preserve eligibility for competitions and publishers which require unpublished work. Stay tuned for those!

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll enjoy the lovely new setting written by talented young composer Jared Bernotski for my text “How Long Is the Longest Night.” Jared himself sings HLITLN, accompanied by Cade Johnson, in this video. (Lyrics below.)

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Faith Songs with Andrew Remillard

Posted on May 12, 2018 by Linda Bonney Olin

I’m tremendously excited to announce that pianist Andrew Remillard has completed the project of recording the hymns and faith songs in Now Sings My Soul: New Songs for the Lord. One hundred sixteen in all!

The recordings are posted as videos in a special playlist on Andrew’s popular YouTube channel. (A playlist is a collection of videos that YouTube will automatically play one after the other if the viewer selects the autoplay option.)

Andrew’s recordings are strictly instrumental, no singing. However, he displays the score (music + lyrics) as the visual on his videos, as you can see in the screenshot of his video for “Now Sings My Soul a New Song.”

In this way, my lyrics are being presented along with the music to a worldwide audience they never could have reached otherwise. Andrew’s Now Sings My Soul playlist has attracted more than a thousand views already. What a gift!

3,000 Hymn Milestone

Incredibly, Andrew Remillard recently passed the milestone of 3,000 (yes, three thousand!) hymn recordings, encompassing seven full hymnals:

To celebrate, Andrew and I decided to share a conversation with you all here on Faith Songs.

Chat with Andrew Remillard

Linda: First of all, Andrew, tell us how you got started on the path of recording hymns for YouTube.

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Song Fest Grace Notes

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Linda Bonney Olin

Now Sings My Soul Song Fest Choir 2018 opened on a high note, with a song fest celebrating the launch of my new collection of hymns and faith songs. Harpursville United Methodist Church in Harpursville, New York, hosted the event on January 20.

Featured singers Theresa Olin, Tony Villecco, Greg and Joanna Jenkins, Kristy Garlitz, Tom Blake, Sherry Ticknor, and Lida Bassler presented thirteen solos and duets drawn from Now Sings My Soul: New Songs for the Lord. The multi-church choir sang five hymns, and the audience joined in for seven more, all having new words set to such familiar tunes as “Sweet Hour of Prayer” and “To God Be the Glory.”

The music was wonderful, and so was the fellowship, with singers from ten churches representing at least five different denominations. What a great opportunity to find common ground in making music for the Lord!

An especially exciting moment for me (besides discovering that the new travel mug I’d filled with pineapple juice was not watertight) was Diva Daughter’s performance of “Only Then.” This is one of the dozen or so songs in the book for which I wrote the music as well as the words, with Theresa’s help in developing the accompaniment. I hope you’ll enjoy her expressive rendition as much as I do.

Only Then video

That video plus 20 more clips from our elderly camcorder are posted in a special Now Sings My Soul Song Fest playlist on my YouTube channel. The clips in the Song Fest playlist include introductory remarks and chatter, to give you a taste of the actual event.

Tony Villecco & Theresa Olin

I plan to edit some of the recordings for music-only listening, with lyrics displayed. Those versions will go on the regular Now Sings My Soul playlist on YouTube. Theresa & Tony’s incredible a cappella duet, “Love the Lord” (recorded at rehearsal), is already posted there.

Love the Lord video

I’m very grateful to the singers, the audience, and everyone who posted flyers, made desserts for the reception following the program, or contributed to the event in other ways. DJ Dave Smith generously loaned a mic stand for the choir. Special thanks to accompanist Lida Bassler, a living, breathing grace note if ever there was one! And of course I give thanks and praise to my Holy GhostWriter for a creative partnership that can’t be beat.

Blessings,
Linda

Song Fest playlist:

Now Sings My Soul playlist

Now Sings My Soul book info

Song Fest photos by Michelle Noyes, used by permission

Now Sings My Soul~Song Fest

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Linda Bonney Olin

Event poster for Now Sings My Soul Song Fest

Forget the bottle of champagne. We’re going to launch Now Sings My Soul: New Songs for the Lord with a musical celebration!

January 20, 2018 at 7:00 PM

Soloists Theresa Olin (aka Diva Daughter), Tony Villecco, Greg Jenkins, Kristy Garlitz, Tom Blake, and Sherry Ticknor, plus a choir representing multi-denominational congregations, will grace the Harpursville United Methodist Church’s lovely sanctuary with songs from the book. The audience will be invited to sing, too, with new words set to beloved hymn melodies like “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “Trust and Obey,” “My Hope Is Built,” and “To God Be the Glory.”

This event truly embodies the last verse of the book’s theme song, “Now Sings My Soul a New Song”:

My soul, O Lord, is deeply moved to share
good news of all your grace has done,
to join my voice with people everywhere,
the many praising you as one.
Now sings my soul a new song,
an invitation to congregation.
Now sings my soul a new song,
yes, a new song for the Lord!

Admission is free, and a dessert reception will follow the program. Books will be available for purchase and I’ll be available to sign them. All proceeds from book sales and free will donations will benefit the ministries of the church.

Harpursville UMC is the historic stone church next to the fire station, 3500 Route 79, Harpursville, New York 13787.

Now Sings My Soul: A New Song of Promises Kept

Posted on November 25, 2017 by Linda Bonney Olin

If any single project could sum up my collaboration with my Holy GhostWriter, it would be Now Sings My Soul: New Songs for the Lord. Without our creative partnership, none of these songs would have been conceived, let alone brought into the world.

Admittedly, the labor pains got pretty intense at times.

More than a hundred of my hymns and faith songs were selected and polished. And polished some more.
The interior layout was designed for an 8.5″ x 11″ print book: fonts, sizes, pagination, headers, footers, sections, title pages, art, etc.
Lyrics were laid out in stanza format on individual pages, along with suggested themes and scripture references for every song—a monster task in itself.
Many thanks to my posse of Bible-loving helpers who contributed scripture suggestions, especially Lisa Kesinger DeVinney, Ann Marin Frizzell, Vi Gommer, and Angela Davis.
The musical settings were tweaked and formatted as book pages in a consistent style, with headers and footers and mirror margins.
(Many thanks to the developers and community of MuseScore, the free, open source music notation program I use to engrave scores.)

(Click on the image to download the PDF score. Click here to listen to my arrangement of the tune. If the mp3 doesn’t load fast enough on your device, try the midi file on the Now Sings My Soul~Audio page.)

Songs were sequenced so that closely related songs would be displayed on facing text pages and two-page scores would be displayed on facing pages to eliminate mid-song page turns. Every time songs were reshuffled, the scores had to be renumbered and margins adjusted for odd/even page location.
Five indexes were designed and formatted and built. Multiple times.
(I may write a separate blog post to share my hard-won experience with other writers who want to know how to add a scripture index to a Word manuscript.)
All the pages were fine-tuned for consistent layout, printed to PDF files, assembled into a single interior PDF file, and submitted to CreateSpace (the printer for my indie books) for trial processing. Multiple times.
(How to convert music scores to PDF for CreateSpace without either your music notation or yourself going buggy may be the subject of another what-I-learned-the-hard-way post.)
The book cover was designed, tweaked, sized, given a bar code with the book’s ISBN and price embedded, and submitted as a PDF file to CreateSpace for trial processing. Also multiple times.
Many thanks to Nel Bernard of Centrepole Art Glass Studio, who graciously gave permission to modify a photo of his beautiful Tree of Life stained glass window in Bradbury Chapel, Canton, Maine (below) for my cover image. Thanks also to Steve at Bookow.com, who creates price-embedded barcodes for book covers at no charge for indie authors like me.

Nel Bernard's Tree of Life window

The interior and cover were modified for a Musicians Edition, which omits the text-only lyrics section.
The interior, cover, and indexes were completely revamped for a 5.5″ x 8.5″ Readers Edition, which contains the lyrics section but no scores.

(Click on the image to download a PDF of this page from the Readers Edition.)

The Readers Edition was reformatted from scratch for a Kindle ebook version.
Book files for all the editions and versions were submitted for review, and tweaked, and resubmitted some more, until I was satisfied that I had done the best I could.
More than 250 audio files were generated in MuseScore and linked to the book’s audio page here on Faith Songs.

And that’s on top of writing all those hymn texts and song lyrics (plus a few of the tunes) in the first place!

Finally, the gestation period was over.

After some two years of work on the project, a sample of the paper-and-ink book was delivered. All the travails, all the months of anxious anticipation were eclipsed by excitement and a sense of accomplishment when I held my pride and joy in my hands. Three editions—triplets!

Yes, more work lies ahead. But it was a moment of sheer grace to see the tangible proof: Once again, the Lord has kept his promises.

I hope the same joy and grace will fill everyone who joins me in singing new songs for the Lord.

Blessings,
Linda

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