6 min
Anthem 24 - Hail Son of God Anthem 52
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- Music Commentary
Welcome to Anthem 24 in my attempt to write a new choir anthem every week for a year. I’m Kevin Mulryne and I hope you will enjoy listening to my progress throughout 2024. Please do visit the website Anthem52.com, follow along on x.com - @realanthem52 or Instagram - @realanthem52 and send me a message to show@anthem52.com.
I managed to make a little progress with the new Plugin this week, which is pleasing. Without going into a lot of technical explanation (which would be pretty boring) I ended up being able to set the first phrase of this week's anthem in the wordbuilder function. So you can hear a very rough approximation of the opening words sung by the software - Hail Son of God Savior of Men. The first part, Hail Son of God, is repeated in different ways across the different parts. I know I could have made the words sound better but at least they are almost all recognisable, if you also look at the words as they are sung.
It took a long time to set up the words in this first phrase. Each syllable needs to be typed individually - and repeated where the notes change on the same word. Once you have worked out a short phrase, this can be saved and reused on other voices but then has to be tweaked when the rhythm and the word lengths are different. I can see how the long-winded process produces good results but the time investment is huge. This is fine if you are creating a piece of choral music for a film or something but for my weekly workflow, I am going to have to practise and improve my speed. We shall see how I get on with that.
So I resorted to setting the rest of the anthem to a simple 'ah' sound. It's not too bad a sound overall.
I'm fairly pleased with the short anthem itself. The lyrics come from a different source to recent weeks. It's a prayer from Paradise Lost (at least I think so), a work by John Milton, the 17th Century English author.
Here are the words:
Words for Anthem 23:
Hail Son of God, Savior of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.
Welcome to Anthem 24 in my attempt to write a new choir anthem every week for a year. I’m Kevin Mulryne and I hope you will enjoy listening to my progress throughout 2024. Please do visit the website Anthem52.com, follow along on x.com - @realanthem52 or Instagram - @realanthem52 and send me a message to show@anthem52.com.
I managed to make a little progress with the new Plugin this week, which is pleasing. Without going into a lot of technical explanation (which would be pretty boring) I ended up being able to set the first phrase of this week's anthem in the wordbuilder function. So you can hear a very rough approximation of the opening words sung by the software - Hail Son of God Savior of Men. The first part, Hail Son of God, is repeated in different ways across the different parts. I know I could have made the words sound better but at least they are almost all recognisable, if you also look at the words as they are sung.
It took a long time to set up the words in this first phrase. Each syllable needs to be typed individually - and repeated where the notes change on the same word. Once you have worked out a short phrase, this can be saved and reused on other voices but then has to be tweaked when the rhythm and the word lengths are different. I can see how the long-winded process produces good results but the time investment is huge. This is fine if you are creating a piece of choral music for a film or something but for my weekly workflow, I am going to have to practise and improve my speed. We shall see how I get on with that.
So I resorted to setting the rest of the anthem to a simple 'ah' sound. It's not too bad a sound overall.
I'm fairly pleased with the short anthem itself. The lyrics come from a different source to recent weeks. It's a prayer from Paradise Lost (at least I think so), a work by John Milton, the 17th Century English author.
Here are the words:
Words for Anthem 23:
Hail Son of God, Savior of Men, thy Name
Shall be the copious matter of my Song
Henceforth, and never shall my Harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.
6 min