Author: Lizzybear

New Music Upload

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Hi, it’s been a long while since I uploaded any music. I apologize.
The music I had prepared on the my broken computer still hasn’t been recovered – but there maybe a light at the end of that dark tunnel. Trying to keep hope alive.

A few weeks ago the choir director in my ward asked me if I could adapt “God So Loved the World” in the LDS church choirbook page 28-29 by John Stainer for the women in the choir. None of the sporanos could sing above mezzo. She also wanted the music to sing entirely thorugh without the codas or repeats. It took ten hours and only one correction by the pianist – yay – and it’s ready for the Easter program in a couple of weeks.

The music is primarily the same, except in the areas that the soprano sings the higher notes have been worked for the mezzo soprano voice – in these corrected areas I created alternative flow so the changes would segway easily into the original music.

The key is the same, the time signature is the same – note – I adjusted the tempo to a more prayerful 86.

I am very pleased with how it turned out. You will find the music under the “Other Music” tab or just click below:
Other Music to download it.

Note to choir directors…If you ask a composer in your area to adapt music and the pianist verifies that it is performance worthy, don’t ask the choir if they want to “vote on it”. It takes hours of prayer, deep thought and sooooooo many alterations to produced a performance worthy piece. I witnessed this after the choir stumbled through this incredibly simple piece – I nearly walked out I was so upset, especially since this is the third hymn/song adaptation I have created since Dec 2025 and the director chose to go in another direction completely at the last minute for the Christmas program.

Sometimes there is a good reason to become temporarily offended. It can instigate the setting of healthier boundaries

Enjoy the music – I do this for you! 🙂

Have a blessed Easter,
Lizzybear.

The Good, The Bad, and The Super Not Good. :(

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It’s been such a long time since I have posted or uploaded any music. I apologize.
I have been working a lot these past couple of years and that has taken up a lot of my energy.

Good things have been happening – my youngest son left for his mission on June 10th. My youngest daughter moved home with her little one – so I was only alone for a couple of months.
My new church assignment – as of Jan 2024 – is the Ward Music Chairman, so I am blessed to select the Sunday sacrament hymns. Best calling for an intovert.
I was just released from my Service Mission of 3 years and have transitioned to “Temple worker” – I still do the same service every Monday, I just wear a different name tag.

A sad thing happened though, a very sad thing. 😦
I drive for Amish occassionally – taking them to places they want to visit – yes this is a paying job.
Well, in July, I took a group to a city in New York. Since I was going to be in a hotel for three days, I decided to take my laptop and my MS Surface with me so I could do some computer work on the lap top and work on some music on the MS Surface. I had transferred all my music and the novel I was working on (85000+ words) to the MS Surface so I could be more mobile and separate my work from my creativity. It seemed like a good idea. I had not connected my MS Surface to the One Drive and I regret it greatly.

When packing my car for the Amish trip, I set my belongings and computer bag far over to the left of the trunk to allow the Amish to have the rest of the trunk for their stuff. After driving them to New York, I dropped them off at their family home, they removed their bags and I headed over to the hotel. Upon arriving, I checked in and took my bags to my room. As soon as I entered my hotel room, I quickly set up my laptop and completed the work I needed so I could get to my Surface and write some music. I had been commissioned to complete a song for a friend from a basic notated verse. My laptop and my surface were in separate pockets in my computer bag. I reached into the pocket the Surface was in and the lining felt strangely damp. I lifted the Surface out of the bag and it was dripping. One of the Amish had set their water jugs on top of their ‘dry’ belongings and it had tipped and leaked – worst thing was they had stacked their belongings on top of my belongings. The water dripped into the outer pocket of my computer bag. Ruining the Surface.

This has been devestating for me – the pro 6 hard-drive cannot be accessed if the computer will not boot – the harddrive is sodered onto the motherboard and has some kind of key encryption – so it cannot be removed and hooked up to a hard drive adapter so I can transferred the music files (and my novel) to another computer – a lifetime of music, since 1991 and a trilogy is gone…unrecoverable. It would take a real miracle and a computer guru to save my files.

I have the paper copies of some of my earlier music and I do have the pdf’s of the music on this website, but all the files in muscore format are gone – over 200 simplified hymns. Sigh…..

Oh, well – that is how life goes – we live and learn and start again.

Now there is new LDS music that is being added – most of it is simple enough and if you download the guitar pdf, there are pedal hints there – I could look and tweek them for organ, if I have time.

I most likely need to update some of my own music that I have written and posted – now that I have had a few years and I can see the weak spots.

This post does end with some good news – my oldest son sent me a Macbook Air – so after I have conquered my learning curve and downloaded musescore I can set up a new file, download all the PDF’s from this site, review them and rewrite anything I need to then maybe…begin working on music again.

I hope everyone has a good rest of the year.

Elizabeth 🙂

I’m back..

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I know it’s been a very long time since I last posted.

I set my writing aside when life began to overtake me. I had become a very fatigued working-mom and homeschool parent. I struggled with a general lack of confidence in myself and someone dissed my writing in a comment which had me question my attempts.

I was already so overwhelmed and discouraged, I set my music aside for a bit.

I’m better now. I have a customer service job at home where I wait for calls to come in, during the quiet times I have returned to my first love. 💗🎼

I have found this quiet time very productive. I can feel the music flow through me again and within the past few weeks. I have been able to simplify for organ the first 49 hymns in the green hymnbook. Hymns that at one time seemed complicated are unfolding themselves allowing me to see through the complexity and draw out a simpler design.

What i love about the organ is the sustaining of sound. Other than the melody, it isn’t necessary to play each note in the supportive body, as long as the sustained sounds support the harmonizing vocals.

Because I am an imperfect person/writer/composer and daughter of a couple of awesome heavenly parents, there may be some errors in my notations and spelling, so I will need a few extra pairs of eyes and ears to test drive my compositions.

I am not uploading these hymns until they are good-to-go.

Please drop me a line if you would like to beta-test these simplified hymns for organ.

*Note: These hymns are adapted for the LDS organist and current LDS church organs.

Have a blessed day!

Candlelight Carol Correction uploaded

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Hello kind Followers and Visitors,

I made a mistake in a recent choir piece I uploaded a few weeks ago.  I had rehearsed it with the choir a several times and weirdly no one noticed that I had accidentally written the soprano line at the bottom of page five an octave lower.  They had just been singing what had felt right to them.

sigh…….moving on…..

So, I have updated the Candlight Carol and fixed the error, you can find it here on my 
Christmas page.

I feel a need to add a disclaimer: 

“I am not a professional musician, so any music you download from this site is for entertainment purposes only ~ this music is not intended to be used as a substitute for real music written by trained and schooled professionals.”

I think I will be adding that to my footer later.

I am grateful to those who do visit my site and choose to follow my updates and occasional blogs.  I hope that overtime, I can improve my ability to catch the flaws or find a bestie music friend who can help me catch them before I fling them all over the globe.

If I don’t post again before Christmas ~ Have a blessed one.

Love you all,

Elizabeth 🙂

Middle of the Night Uploads

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I have two songs to upload today:

Come Ye Children of the Lord, Hymn # 58 – in three formats: standard, inline and pedal cheatz

A simplified choir arrangement for America the Beautiful, Hymn # 338 – can be sung with the standard hymnal accompaniment.

Check them out on the Free Sheet Music page.

Off to get some shut-eye!  

Enjoy, ❤ Lizziebear 🙂

New Hymn: #26 Joseph Smith’s First Prayer – Three Ways to Play

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June is often a month of reflection for Latter-day Saint members as they remember and honor the courage and sacrifice that Joseph Smith made June 28, 1844, 173 years ago, when he was assassinated, with his brother Hyrum for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I already have a simplified version of Joseph Smith’s First Prayer, this is a slightly different version, written because I forgot that I already had a version ~ silly me.

Still, all is not in vain.  I decided that I would alter it so that there would be three versions of the same arrangement:  

  • Pedal on the third line,
  • pedal in-line on the tenor/bass line as second voice and
  • pedal as Organ Cheatz – a new way to play – (really an old way for me)  I have been perfecting this method and it is my, proprietary, preferred way for me to play because, in using this method, I do not have to lower my eyes to look at extra notes ~ my pedal markings are at eye level with the treble cleft.  I hope you like my little ‘invention’.  

Click on the Free Sheet Music Link to try these new methods out and see what works for you.  
Please feel free to let me know what you think.
Lizzybear.  🙂

 

President James E. Faust recalls that sacred time when the saints needed to put their full faith in the Lord and continue the work with the foundation which their beloved prophet and the Lord had laid…

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1981/11/the-expanding-inheritance-from-joseph-smith?lang=eng

 

 

New HUGE Updates to Musescore!

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Hello, Music Friends! Quick Note ~  I just received an update notice from Musescore that has me soooo excited!  

I watched the video update intro embedded below and was instilled with inspiration and musical joy to hear that the sound library has been abundantly added to and I am able to save my music with its custom sounds online too!  🙂

Here is the latest news as of May 2, 2017: 

“MuseScore 2.1 is released

While the development of MuseScore 3 is ongoing and we are rebuilding a lot of features from the ground up, we wanted to bring you some of that work sooner—so here comes MuseScore 2.1! Built on top of the 2.0 series, with cherry-picked developments from the in-progress MuseScore 3, MuseScore 2.1 offers a bunch of new features and 300+ bug fixes and user interface improvements, making it both our most powerful and our most stable version yet.”

Which is my favorite improvement???  The “swap command”!

You can find the entire list of improvements in the Musescore Release Notes.

Watch the intro:

What is Musecore?  

It is an opensource – FREE – robust music notation program that makes it possible to share music with the world without breaking the budget.  

We all know that most artists are often tight on means and usually have to hobby their first love to reality – the full-time facts of life.  Without musescore, I would still be writing my music on paper.  

~ Much thanks to all who are impassioned towards music for creating this amazing software and blessing our talents with the greater possibilities – for without this generous offering our music might not have ever been seen, heard or performed. ~

If you have not yet tried Musescore – this is a perfect time to do so: https://musescore.org/en/download

Happy Notating!  🙂

Battle Hymn of the Republic – SATBB

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flag shaped like USA

In the early 90’s, while residing in Salt Lake City Utah, I was blessed to serve a music mission on Temple Square – from 1990 – 1994 as a Mezzo Soprano and as a music librarian in the Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus.

Robert C. Bowden was our Conductor and he did a splendid job of being a silent mentor as I analyzed and absorbed his directing style, and basked in his love for the beauty of spiritual music as well as his passion for touching hearts with the message of Christ through music that is pleasing to the Lord.

I have moved on from so long ago, the MYSC choir had been integrated into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Symphony is now known as the Orchestra at Temple Square.  Even in 2016, I still recognize members of both organizations when I watch them perform for special productions.  (I would love to be singing with the Tab, but I am no longer in Utah and I have crossed the half-century threshold and now am approaching the 55 year – mandated – cut off audition age. :/

~ The Lord has kindly sweetened my longing by allowing me the opportunity to not only lead my own branch choir, write to my hearts content, but also to be the director of the Far West  Orchestra for this seasons Savior of the World Production to be venued later this year.)    🙂

One of my favorite songs from MYSC was, I believe, Bowden’s rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  I have never heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing it and so, based upon my memories, I recreated a slimmed-down version of Bowden’s rendition for my branch choir to sing.   I wish you could have heard the original, I hope you enjoy my recreation .

This particular song has a low bass part that is unique, but I think you’ll like it.
We will be singing it as a choir this Fast Sunday, July 3rd to honor the blessed freedoms that our God has given us in this wonderful country of the United States.

Sorry I didn’t have this up weeks ago – I still have computer issues and am using a friends computer to upload this.

You may find a typo or two – I will search and correct them as I go and upload the more perfected version sometime in the future.

Enjoy this new song – it’s free to download and print for your church choir or non-commercial setting.

Hymn # 60 Battle Hymn of the Republic SATBB:

Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic Hymn #60 SATBB – modified

Enjoy!  🙂

Tragedy Has Struck…

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Sadly, I must report that one of my two laptops has died.  The unfortunate complication of this is that all my music and my book – several years of data – was on the deceased computer.  :/

Brother G, who was working to save the pc, but now is just focused on rescuing the data, is racing against bad sector errors and I am praying that he is able to retrieve the data from both my book and my music files.

I had both organ and choir music I have written in the past that I have posted and more recently newer music ready to post, at the brink of oblivion…so I am praying that the data can be saved.

How fragile our technology is.  Moons ago, we were promised that technology would make our lives easier, even more fulfilling.  In someways it has.  The computer notation software I use – Musescore – has been instrumental toward my progression.I am in no means any writer worthy of accolades, yet I am able to fulfill my deep desire of enhancing sacred music and helping others grow in their own budding music capacities.  I feel that Lord is pleased with my attempts and I find myself growing as I rely on inspiration to fuel my aspirations.

The computer I am currently using was the one I expected to have the trouble with, so I transferred all my data from this compute to the ‘D’ sector of the now-dead computer.

So – I am not sure when I will be able to upload more music.  Hopefully the life in this computer will be extended a while longer. And I am hoping to have my data back and a replacement computer/s when my budget permits.

Please pray for me, that all will be well in this adversity.

Thank you,

Elizabeth / Lizzybear