Writing Journal

Okay, I'm not really writing anything new, per se.
Nor am I editing anything I have (or anyone else has) written, either.

I sort of took it upon myself to put together an Easter program, based off of a Sunday School lesson from Easter 2008.  That lesson consisted of our ward's Sunday School teachers taking turns reading from Bruce R. McConkie's final General Conference address, "The Purifying Power of Gethsemane."  The narration was spliced by the class singing hymns about the Atonement.  Unfortunately, Lucy* has my journal entry from that day so I don't even know if I noted all the hymns we sang.

I've been working on it for a couple of weeks.  The other day, I asked our ward music coordinator if she had talked to the bishop about an Easter program; she hadn't, so I shared with her that I was working on something that combined narration and music.  She said she suspects it will be a welcome suggestion. 

Thus far, I have the narration in 12 segments and 11 hymns in use.  I did a dry run the other day, using audio, and found it to be a little long.  So I combined two of the shorter hymns and cut a couple of verses from another.  I've made a few minor cuts to the narration, but it's hard to do that as a trial run as I don't know at what the time marks are for the cuts.  To cut some more of the time, I'm hoping to try what it sounds like with the choir coming in behind the narrator at one point.

To keep things spirited, I've been working on a couple of arrangements for some of the other hymns.  By which I mean changing who sings which lines, not changing the music or the lyrics in the slightest.  I'm really looking forward to hearing how everything sounds outside of my head, even if it's not the same and even if it changes.  Maybe someone from the choir will have an idea of how to better assign parts.

The next big step, which I'm hoping to do this weekend, is to actually decide which hymn goes where.
Once I've got everything set, I'll post it as a page, probably on both this blog and my main blog.  Not only would it make a rather long post (although I seem to be good at making those) but it's also less likely to get lost in the postings.

*(my comatose first generation laptop)