Turn Your Testimony Into Song

Well, I goofed in yesterday's email. (but don't let that stop you from learning a cool modulation you've never heard in General Conference before) Somehow, in an email announcing that my new sheet music site is up, I said that it ISN'T up and running. Bonehead move. It actually IS up and running. Unfortunately, the coupon code to get 20% off my new Christmas book of intermediate piano arrangements was also a flop. But it's all fixed now and working just fine. So, if you'd like to grab a copy...

Boy oh boy, has this been a long time coming! My brand-new sheet music site, Doug Pew Sacred Music, isn't up and running. And the physical copies of my 4 brand-new books of hymn arrangements for intermediate piano are now available! In fact, this week... ...you can get a physical copy of my new Christmas book, "Come and Adore," for 20% off. I picked up 500 copies of my books yesterday, and I'm all set up to ship them out ASAP. To get your 20% off... ...go to the link below, add the physical...

It's just about time for my new sheet music site to go officially LIVE! To celebrate, I'd love to give you a free copy of my new "Silent Night" arrangement for intermediate piano. Just to be totally clear, when you click the link below and download your free copy... ...you'll be added to my new site's email list. This list is completely separate from what you receive here in the Latter-Day Musiversity. I will be sending a weekly newsletter from the new site... Doug Pew Sacred Music... plus an...

If you haven't had a chance to follow along in this little series of 5 lessons I'm sharing from writing 44 arrangements for intermediate piano, you can catch up here: Lesson 1 — Lush harmonies with tiny chords.Lesson 2 — Melodicizing your accompaniment. Lessons 3 & 4 — Newer view on notation and chord voicings For our 5th and final lesson, let's talk about clusters. A cluster is a group of notes that make a sort of pile-up sound. A group of notes sort of smashed together. When I write, I...

Since I missed yesterday, we've got 2 of the 5 lessons coming in today... lessons 3 and 4 from writing 44 intermediate hymn arrangements. Lesson 3 I came across a challenge in the notation department. In trying to stuff in as much lushness and resonance in the harmonies without causing confusion or overwhelm for an intermediate pianist... ...the way I notated some of these harmonies caused some of my students to struggle quite a bit with the music. I think this is why... I'm used to studying...

What does "melodicizing your accompaniment" mean? Well, typically, when writers begin learning how to write accompaniments, they usually lean on blocked chords. This isn't a bad thing at all. You need harmony. And harmony's base form is blocked chords. However, if the whole thing stays blocked chords, it can become less interesting as your piece progresses. This is why I'm always on the lookout for ways to melodicize my accompaniments. This is not a new technique. But it's one I've grown a...

While writing 44 early intermediate piano arrangements this summer, I've had to work hard to overcome a natural tendency. That tendency is to write what my student Deb calls "man hands" chords. I admit, I have Rachmaninoff hands. And I love to use them to write big lush chords that give the piano a real resonant, rapturous quality. But that doesn't work for early intermediate pianists... many of whom have much, much smaller hands than I do. So, I had to go against my natural-man pianist...

Earlier this year, one of my students suggested I write some hymn arrangements for early intermediate piano. I'd been thinking about doing something like this. But her suggestion made me get serious about it. So, over the summer, I composed 44 hymn arrangements for early intermediate piano, and I'm now turning all of them into versions for beginners, as well as a duet version of each. I've had a ton of fun and have learned a LOT in the process... especially about writing for simplified piano....

Do you have a stack of songs, arrangements, or other pieces you've kept hiding in your desk drawer, or deep in a hidden folder on your computer? Have you ever looked through them and wondered... "Is this any good?" How can you really know? When I got to grad school, I was in this situation. I had a stack of pieces, but just didn't know if they were any good... ...or if they were worth going back to and revising/improving. There was no composition program at BYU-Idaho when I was there... I'm...

Due to various circumstances, this week I had one private composition lesson spot open up. If you'd like to take this spot, I'm keeping it open this week. But it's first come, first served. Here's how lessons work. You'll get 10 private lessons with me anytime between now and the end of December 2026. We'll plan to meet weekly, hopefully at a regular time (though stuff happens, and if needed, we can chat about schedule changes). There is a catch, however. Actually, 2 catches. Catch #1: These...