Psalm 43 (Send Out Your Light)

I've decided to try out SoundCloud as a means of making my music available online, at least to preview.

I've put up a couple tracks on there, the latest of which is an early home recording (using GarageBand on my wife's macbook) of an original song based on Psalm 43.

This song has been published in Psalms For All Seasons, released this year by FaithAlive and the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. It's "43B" in the book (on page 270).

This version is mainly guitar, mandolin, and several layers of voices (mine), and it includes a pre-chorus that was not in the final printed version.

If you give it a listen, please let me know and give me feedback ... comment, facebook, twitter (@lukehyder) ... whatever. I'd love to hear what you think!

Here it is:

02 Psalm 43 (Send Out Your Light)

There's a Wideness

"There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" is one of my all-time favorite hymn texts (by Frederick Faber in 1862), but I've never been a fan of the usual traditional tunes to which it's been set.

So a while ago I worked out a new tune for it. I wanted to capture the expansiveness of the initial lyrical idea (with music that felt like it had some "wideness" to it), as well as express the longing quality of the text as it pleads with listeners to return to the wide-open arms of God's mercy.

I'm experimenting with how best to post these songs on this blog. Feedback is certainly welcome.

For now, I've uploaded a pdf to Google docs. You can view the song here.

A New Direction

Well if anyone has been checking out this blog (and that's a BIG if) ... you may notice that I have not posted since the month before becoming a father. So much for being inundated with baby pictures! That has become the role of facebook, which has indeed become overrun with pictures and posts related to my amazing, beautiful daughter, Eliza Lela, who is now 18 months old!

Now I've decided to commit this space to a new purpose ... the posting and distribution of my musical endeavors.

Who knows if this blog will ever draw any kind of readership, but hopefully it can provide a place where pastors, church musicians, and worship curators looking for new, well-written, scripturally-based corporate worship songs and re:tuned hymns can find a few songs that may be a blessing to their worshipping communities.

So ... look here in the coming weeks & months, and may the songs posted here be used as God wills.

Grace and peace,

luke <><