▶ Posts tagged with hymns .
Don’t forget that you can download music from General Conference! The October 2011 conference page is here (click on “Show Music”).
There have been several updates to Sally DeFord’s music web site since the last time I checked. Below are the free MP3 tracks that are new (sorry, this is quite a long list). For a more complete list of updates to her site, click the link above!
23 October 2009
“My All Is Thine” — MP3 Piano Track (link)
“If I Listen with My Heart” — MP3 Recording, simplified version (link)
“If I Listen with My Heart” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“I Glory in My Jesus” — MP3 Recording by Allyse Smith Taylor (link)
22 November 2009
“How Can I Keep From Singing?” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“How Can I Keep From Singing?” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Heaven’s Embrace” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“Heaven’s Embrace” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Everywhere I Go” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“Everywhere I Go” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Write Thy Name Upon My Heart” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“Write Thy Name Upon My Heart” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“If the Savior Stood Beside Me” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“If the Savior Stood Beside Me” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“I Have Not Seen, Yet I Believe” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“I Have Not Seen, Yet I Believe” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“A Believer’s Prayer” — MP3 Recording by James Loynes (link)
“A Believer’s Prayer” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“For Me Alone” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“For Me Alone” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“I Come to Him” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“I Come to Him” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Abide with Me” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“Abide with Me” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Cast Your Burden on the Lord” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“Cast Your Burden on the Lord” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
“Whole Again” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“Whole Again” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
16 December 2009
“My Gift, My Offering” — MP3 recording by James Loynes (link)
“My Gift, My Offering” — MP3 Accompaniment Track
In just a few days, I will be leaving to the Missionary Training Center and then I will be off to the Arizona Tempe Mission, Spanish-speaking! This means that I will be setting this blog aside for two years as I serve the Lord as an LDS missionary.
Therefore, I will not be able to provide readers with “free music alerts” from sources such as Positive Music and Downloads. Here are the sources that I check, if you would like to keep up-to-date!
- Positive Music and Downloads has a new free song every Friday for the first 100 downloaders daily for a week. After the week is past, the song won’t be free. There is a link to the left of the site (“Free Download”) that will take you directly to the current free song. Or, you can sign up for the site’s newsletter; the free download link will be at the top right of the newsletter on Fridays.
- LDSTunesNow features a new free song about once a month; usually within the first week of each month. There is a link to the free song’s album page, directly from the home page. They also advertise a newsletter, but I haven’t received one yet; so the newsletter is not a reliable source for free song info.
- Sally DeFord is an arranger of hymns and other music, mainly for choirs or performances in a church setting. To be notified when there are updates, you can sign up for a Yahoo! Groups mailing list through her web site.
- LDS.org/CM is a good source for hymns and children’s songs, even in different languages. The Seminary video soundtracks are also available. Updates aren’t frequent, but they are occasional. The Church has been expanding their internet presence tremendously in recent years, so I expect there to be major updates (especially for other languages) in the next couple of years.
- General Conference archives for recent sessions include music from the various choirs that sing during Conference. A link for music is near the top of each General Conference page since October 2008.
- LDSMusicWorld hasn’t changed for a while, but it’s worth mentioning as a top source for free, legal, uplifting music. A few links are broken, but they can be accessed with a tool like Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
- Liahona.net is also a good source for free inspirational music, though the content is not updated frequently. Most of the music is hymns, and there is some overlap with LDS.org/CM.*
- MormonMusic.org is a new web site by the More Good Foundation that also provides free music. Liahona.net is one of their sources for music (though not all Liahona.net songs are included).* Apart from Liahona.net, MormonMusic.org offers foreign-language inspirational music and a few selections of more-contemporary music such as Sam Payne (LDS) and Voice Male music.
Note, I will be gone for two years. Any of these sites may change without notice. If you’re following me via RSS or other means, expect an update within 25 months!
*Information about the LDS.org/CM, Liahona.net, and MormonMusic.net overlap:
LDS.org/CM contains the official recordings of hymns, children’s songs, selected YW songs, YW camp songs, music from Church magazines, and seminary music; vocal and instrumental, English and other languages.
Liahona.net contains some of the English content from LDS.org/CM. The overlaps are the following sections: “Hymns” (vocal and instrumental), ”Children’s Music” (vocal and instrumental), ”YW Select Music” (vocal and instrumental), and “Choir Music” (vocal only, with 2 exceptions). Everything else on the site originates from Liahona.net. The “Seasonal” songs are duplicates of some of the songs in other sections.
MormonMusic.org contains an incomplete (seemingly random) selection from Liahona.net, divided into similarly-named sections as those at Liahona.net. The other (currently 6) sections originate from MormonMusic.org, as well as some foreign-language songs. The organization of MormonMusic.org is hard to follow, but I really enjoy some of the music, such as the Sam Payne music. Also, MormonMusic.org is a good source for “album artwork” for the sections at Liahona.net.
Music from the most recent LDS General Conference (April 4-5, 2009) has been posted at the Church web site (at the above link). Music is also online from the October 2008 conference.
Saturday Morning Session (Mormon Tabernacle Choir): The Morning Breaks; Press Forward, Saints; Israel, Israel, God Is Calling; Now Let Us Rejoice (congregational); Consider the Lilies; My Redeemer Lives.
Saturday Afternoon Session (Combined Choirs, Salt Lake Area Institutes of Religion): Come, Thou Glorious Day of Promise; Come, O Thou King of Kings; Let Us All Press On (congregational); Sing We Now at Parting.
Priesthood Session (Men’s Choir from BYU-Idaho): Sing Praise to Him; Father in Heaven; High on the Mountain Top (congregational); I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go.
Sunday Morning Session (Mormon Tabernacle Choir): Praise to the Lord; Sweet Hour of Prayer; You Can Make the Pathway Bright; Redeemer of Israel (congregational); This Is My Beloved Son; We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet.
Sunday Afternoon Session (Mormon Tabernacle Choir): Now We’ll Sing with One Accord; O My Father; Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah; God Be with You Till We Meet Again.
General Young Women Meeting (Young Women Choir from East Millcreek, Cottonwood, and Olympus Stakes): As Zion’s Youth in Latter Days; He Sent His Son; More Holiness Give Me; True to the Faith.
MormonMusic.org was released on Monday, April 6, 2009. It was actually available online a few days before that (though not officially). I haven’t been able to write about it until now due to time-consuming homework, General Conference summaries on my other blog, etc. Anyway, here are my thoughts.
Related Post: Coming Soon: MormonMusic.org (26 March 2009).
It’s clear that a lot of work has gone into the design of MormonMusic.org. On the home page is found LDS news and LDS music news. As of now, it mainly consists of LDS musician biographies – but hopefully the news will become more diversified and current as relavant stories arise.
To the left of the home page is an HTML hyperlink list of recently-added music and a list of randomly-selected music. I think an embedded sequential playlist would fit nicely here instead; there are tons of free embeddable music players online. Then people would be able to actually listen to the music as they are browsing.
On the right side of every page is a list of top-rated songs, top-rated videos, and users online. Again, a playlist would be easy to implement, even without extensive web coding knowledge, and would be much more inviting.
There are eight navigation tabs along the top of the page. The first tab is the home page. The second tab shows recent audio. The third tab lists all the available audio, divided into albums. The fourth tab is an index to some LDS music videos on YouTube (YouTube is blocked at BYU, so I can’t review the page very well). The fifth tab has links to some LDS artists’ biographies. The sixth tab is for your user profile (brief information, favorites, and playlists), and the seventh tab is a list of all the users. (The eighth tab is a contact form.)
The part that I was most excited about was the free music and playlists that were advertised in the announcement – the actual music. Unfortunately, the music pages and playlists are hard to use. For playlists, you can generate an embeddable playlist from selected songs, but there is no playlist directly on the page. The music pages are just really long lists with an individual (and buggy) music player next to each one. There is a download link and an “Add to playlist” link as well. Clicking on the song’s title gives you more information, but not much.
Most songs don’t even have an artist listed. In fact, a large part of the songs are just the ones you can get from the Church’s web site. I think, for those songs, a link to the downloads page at LDS.org would be easier. Additionally, all the songs have been taken out of their original context (for example, LDS.org songs), and sorted into generic and overlapping albums (with the exception of three albums by Michael Dowdle). In short, the page is hard to use and the categorization and information available about each song is disappointing.
Practically all of the songs are hymns, and similar kinds of music. Many of the songs are beautiful, and some are powerful, but it doesn’t appeal to a large LDS audience. I like stuff like Seminary songs, or EFY songs! What about songs by the artists whose biographies are listed? I realize, of course, that any music provided at all is wonderful: so much free music is amazing and to the artists who allowed their songs to be listed at no cost I express appreciation. But what about the Seminary songs, at least; those are free…
I realize that this review has been more critical than positive. I do want to emphasize that it’s a great idea with a lot of work put into it. However, I think that a little visual work and usability improvements could really make the site more drawing and more appealing to a wider audience.
UPDATE (5/30/09): 1. The original selection of songs at MormonMusic.org is from the collection at Liahona.net, which is a non-profit organization that cooperates with generous artists to provide free uplifting music. The limited information available* for each song and the selection of songs offered was a limitation based on the source of the music, Liahona.net, and is not MormonMusic.org’s fault. This was a misunderstanding on my part. 2. From the about page at Liahona.net, it seems that they cooperate directly with artists – implying, to some extent, that the range of musical styles included is only according to the range of artists who offer their music. So, it is no one’s fault, really, that there is no contemporary LDS rock music like I petitioned for in the previous paragraph. 3. MormonMusic.org has since added more free music to their original collection, expanding the range of music styles. :) My opinion of MormonMusic.org is much more positive than it was before. Compliments to the MormonMusic.org team!
*About the limited song information: Liahona.net provides more information about the songs in the “details” column than it provides with the mp3 track itself: specifically, the artist(s). So, when you import the tracks into iTunes or an mp3 player, some songs don’t have a specified artist. This information can be found at Liahona.net and typed into iTunes manually. The information typed into the iTunes field is attached to the mp3 file itself, so moving or copying the file will retain the updated information.
Sovereign Grace Music, a Christian music site maintained by Sovereign Grace Ministries, has 9 songs available for download (Christian hymns and Christian rock). They are sample tracks from some of their CDs.
Album: Psalms
“Praise the Lord”
Album: Come Weary Saints
“I Have a Shelter”
Album: In a Little While
“All I Really Need”
Album: Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man
“Glory Be to God”
Album: You and You Alone (Overflow 5)
“You Are Good”
Album: Na Band: Looked Upon (Nap Records)
“What a Savior”
Album: Together for the Gospel Live
“Oh for a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
“Jesus Paid It All”
“All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”
Four new songs have been added to Sally DeFord’s music page:
He Sent His Son
He Sent His Son (accompaniment)
An Angel to Watch Over Me
An Angel to Watch Over Me (accompaniment)
