New Tutorial on YouTube!
This afternoon, we went live on our Instagram page, @beautynblacknwhite, for a Q&A session on hymn-playing. These tutorials are so much fun for me! I absolutely love answering your questions about hymn-playing on such a wide range of topics. When we ended, I couldn’t believe that we had been live for more than 40 minutes! […]
Developing the Ability to Play by Ear
There’s just something special about a capella singing…especially when it combines rich family harmony with the incredible acoustics of an old chapel in the woods. This past Saturday, on the way from a family breakfast in Sevierville, Tennessee, we stopped and visited the Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains. While there, we visited the […]
Arpeggio Tutorial
Of all the questions I receive about hymn-playing techniques, how to do arpeggios tops the list. This beautiful, flowing piano technique can add so much to your hymn-playing, but many hymn-players feel overwhelmed about knowing when to add arpeggios, how to make them clean (instead of sloppy), how fast to play them, how many octaves, […]
Thinking about the Text…
Thinking about the Text of a Hymn While You Play So often, we church pianists can easily forget that we are a part of the worship in a music service. We mark our pages, plan our introductions and transitions, and then play three or four verses of the hymn as the congregation sings. The song […]
New Tutorials Uploaded!
Hey everyone, I just uploaded two new tutorials to my YouTube channel, “Natalie Raynes.” These are conducted as live Q&A sessions on our Instagram page, @beautynblacknwhite. So, while they’re very informal, they’re very informative! Viewers ask questions about key changes, left hand patterns, key changes, arpeggios, good sources for sacred music, and more. We’ve also […]