Excuse Blog

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 🙂

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

 

Added Hymn # 175 to the Sacrament sheet music page

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Yep, I have been pretty quiet lately.  Sorry about that.  

I haven’t been writing any organ music lately – mostly because I wrote gobs of Christmas arrangements for last years Christmas program to accommodate our super low bass section.  I am still re-arranging music for them as needed.  I will try to post them on this site before next Christmas.

A few weeks ago I wrote a choir arrangement of ‘O, Come thou King of Kings’ and submitted to the Stake Music Director for consideration for next month’s stake conference.  It was accepted.  🙂

The Stake Choir Director wanted to sing the high soprano descant, so she asked me if I would be willing to trade places with her on that particular hymn – she would sing my soprano part and I would get to direct the stake choir – Cool Beans!  I will upload my arrangement for this hymn after Stake Conference next month. 

Tonight I looked over the pathetic list of sacrament songs, which two years ago, I promised to arrange, but allowed life to get the best of me.  So tonight I sat down and completed ‘O God, the Eternal Father’, Hymn #175.  I know I have said this before, but I will concentrate on trying to complete a hymn a week.  It takes 2-4 hours of time for me to arrange a hymn that I have pre-notated, so hopefully I can find a block of time each week to sit down and get one done.

Here is the link to this new organ arrangement ~ It’s free to download and use for non-commercial and church purposes.  
O_God,_the_Eternal_Father for Organ
You can also find this hymn listed on the Sacrament Hymns and Alphabetical Hymns Pages.

Enjoy!  
Elizabeth   🙂

 

I did not mean to be neglectful…

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it’s just….earlier this year I was blessed to be called to be the Music Director for our little branch.  It was a pretty easy calling, choosing hymns and leading the congregation and though I felt the need for a challenge, I … Continue reading →

I have been majorly distracted….

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Sorry about not getting any music uploaded in the past few months.

I was visiting my daughter in another state, closing on a home in a new location in Missouri, moving and have been heavily involved with getting to know new neighbors and friends, unpacking boxes, looking for furniture and rehabbing important aspects of our home.

I have finally set up my keyboard and plugged in the organ that came with the house.  It is not a fully functional organ, the pedals unfortunately do not work.  😦  Our branch does not have a pedal organ.  😦  But, there are 12 other church congregations in this little town, maybe one of them will have a full pedal organ.

As for what is distracting me….

I have been prepping the bathroom by knocking out plaster, roughing in electric and installing insulation.  My goal is to finish before Friday when the Amish guys come to do their stuff.

Tomorrow the plumber comes to replace all the metal water pipes with pex pipe, replace the cast iron sewer pipe with pvc and install a toilet and sink upstairs.  Friday the Amish guys come and completely rehab the bathroom – installing new hardwood floors, the support wall for my awesome shower and attaching the drywall to the ceiling. Maybe I can get them to mud the joints too so I can paint.

Then I need to hurry and get the leaking a basement wall fixed before the rainy season starts.  It rained today, not much, but we are still sweeping puddles of water into the basement drain.  :/

After the bathrooms are installed and water issues are done, I hope things will start to ‘calm’ down a bit.

So I apologize for being slow.  The music is still in scribble form.

I hope to get it notated a bit at a time.

Elizabeth

Wow, this year closed so quickly…

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First I want to apologize.

I felt like I had dropped the ball toward the latter half of December, undoubtedly dissapointing a portion of the 47 visitors I received on December 23rd.

I did not get as much as much Christmas music posted as had mapped out on paper.

 My Excuse???

Kids getting sick, part-time job sapping my energy and feeling super sleepy lately, I did not feel as productive as I could have been.

Other Excuse???

I also decided to test the Musescore 2.0 Beta program, which has some nice WoWs to it, but not enough to take a chance on losing my entire score – twice! – when it hit a glitch.

I found it to be unstable with my Windows 7, especially after listening to the music and then trying to make changes to the score.
I will let you know when I think it is stable and ready for prime-time. 

So I am back to Musescore 1.3  – which is without all the fancy stuff, but my scores are safe.

Moral of this story?: Don’t test a new software program when you have a deadline.

Wondering…

I am not sure if the music I am posting is helpful either.  
I see the visitors, but I am not getting much feedback.

If any of you have suggestions, or if you find a wrong note, please, please, please let me know.

This next week, I may work on ‘Ring Out Wild Bells’, but we will see.

My plans for the new year are:

Publish the sacrament hymns for simplified organ, in as simple a style as I can.
Add a sacrament hymn page tab to make them easier to find.
Publish themed hymns, ie: love, Easter, the Restoration, patriotic, some children’s songs and maybe even a few of my own pieces.

Thank you for visiting my ‘work-in-progress’ these past six months.  I hope I can work out the glitches and publish music that is helpful and enjoyable to play.

Elizabeth 🙂

Happy New Year!!!