Songwriting is the act of baring one's soul to another in the form of words and music.
“Hold on to Me” speaks to my soul, especially those times when I am just barely hanging on…i.e. every other day! I love the prayer in the lyric for Jesus to “hold on to me” when I am barely breathing, don’t believe in myself, when the weight of expectation is too heavy, when I don’t feel worth defending and tired of pretending….hold on to me!
Today I want to share a song I worked on with a family friend. Korene reached out to me this summer with a few songs she had written and hired me to help her work on them and write a piano accompaniment for them so she could submit the songs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
This arrangement is a vocal solo of verses 1, 5, 6 and 7. I didn’t want the song to be too long, so I tried to include the final verses that are essential for the storyline, but are often not sung in Church because of how long the song is. This hymn has beautiful descriptive language that draws you in. A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief was a favorite hymn of the Prophet Joseph Smith. The apostle John Taylor first learned the hymn while on his mission to England. On the afternoon that Joseph and Hyrum were killed by a mob in prison in Carthage, the Smiths requested Taylor sing this hymn twice. How touching and special this hymn is.
Hello! “How Great Thou Art” is the suggested hymn for the Book of Mormon lesson “O How Great the Plan of Our God” studying 2 Nephi 6–10. This is one of the most well-loved and popular hymns among the Christian world. It is based on an original Swedish poem titled “O Store Gud” written in 1885 by Carl Boberg. The English version of the hymn is a loose translation by the English missionary Stuart K. Hine.