In Heavenly Love Abiding

Last night, three people knocked on my apartment door and said they wanted to sing with me. So we recorded a four-part hymn!


[Download it in ogg or mp3]

No, just kidding; I overdubbed myself singing the other parts. But that’s only because I was unable to find any other singers in the immediate vicinity.

I wish that really did happen though, because I find participating in SATB harmonization to be extremely fun and a great gift from God (and because singing soprano, as a dude, can be, um, a challenge...as I’m sure you can hear).

The Hymn

The text was written by Anna L. Waring, originally published in 1850 as part of her Hymns and Meditations. (Conveniently, Google Books has digitized the 1854 edition, along with others.)

The really cool part is that at some point (I’m not sure when), the words were set to a pre-existing Mendelssohn lied, “Abschied vom Wald” (“Farewell to the Forest”), from Op. 59, Im Grünen (“In The Countryside”), Six lieder for mixed voices a cappella (1837–1843).

I fell in love with this version last year in choir at Cascade College (Thanks, Tom!)

Aren’t Mendelssohn’s harmonies just blissful?? Glory be to God.

The Technical Side

In the past, I’ve always used Adobe Audition 2.0 on Windows to record. Since switching to Linux a couple years ago, however, I had not found a suitable free replacement, until recently:

This was the first project I completed using Ardour, a really nice open-source Pro Tools-like DAW for Linux/Mac.

A screenshot of Ardour

I didn’t spend too long on the mix, mostly because I don’t have any mixing headphones that aren’t broken. And getting perfect EQ is just plain hard, so eventually I just give up and settle for “good enough”.

Oh, and bonus-points if you can spot the small change I made to one of the words, and guess the theological reason for it!