I've talked about it forever, but this past weekend I decided to finally act. I've setup a GitHub repository to which I intend to commit sheet music for the various Christian worship songs that I compose. You can visit the project at:
Those who know me well know that I can be pretty outspoken about copyrights and licensing and such, especially as regards music written (at least ostensibly) "for God" or "for the Church". This is why every worship song I've written carries a Creative Commons license. But while it's all well and good to say, "My songs I offer without restrictive licensing," it matters little if there are other barriers to sharing and re-use. This self-publishing effort is a way for me to remove some more of those barriers. I genuinely want folks to take and use these songs with minimal impediment if they find them worth taking and using, and I'm willing to put in the extra effort to encourage as much.
My goal is to keep for each song MuseScore files with—at a minimum—lead sheets for the songs, plus MusicXML and PDF exports of the same. I could, of course, just use PDFs, but that would discourage getting corrections submitted by folks who are far better at musical transcription than I am. It would also prevent easy transposition of the songs into alternate keys. At the moment, you can load the score into MuseScore, select the whole score (Control-A), and then use the Notes > Transpose... menu to put the song in whatever key you wish. It's that simple! Someday I may also include links to recorded demos of the songs, specific hints for individual instruments, etc.
May God bless this tiny little human's effort to make His praise even more widespread.
https://github.com/cmpilato/worship-musicI've added the music from my recent "Shepherd of My Soul" composition (which my worship team at Providence introduced to our congregation brilliantly this past weekend, I might add!), plus a few other songs. I also have placeholders for several other tunes that I'm committing to self-publish here, too.
Those who know me well know that I can be pretty outspoken about copyrights and licensing and such, especially as regards music written (at least ostensibly) "for God" or "for the Church". This is why every worship song I've written carries a Creative Commons license. But while it's all well and good to say, "My songs I offer without restrictive licensing," it matters little if there are other barriers to sharing and re-use. This self-publishing effort is a way for me to remove some more of those barriers. I genuinely want folks to take and use these songs with minimal impediment if they find them worth taking and using, and I'm willing to put in the extra effort to encourage as much.
My goal is to keep for each song MuseScore files with—at a minimum—lead sheets for the songs, plus MusicXML and PDF exports of the same. I could, of course, just use PDFs, but that would discourage getting corrections submitted by folks who are far better at musical transcription than I am. It would also prevent easy transposition of the songs into alternate keys. At the moment, you can load the score into MuseScore, select the whole score (Control-A), and then use the Notes > Transpose... menu to put the song in whatever key you wish. It's that simple! Someday I may also include links to recorded demos of the songs, specific hints for individual instruments, etc.
May God bless this tiny little human's effort to make His praise even more widespread.
