In the News

Simplified Organ Music Available Online

An “emergency preparedness kit” for pianists with limited organ experience promises to make sacrament meeting accompaniment a little easier. Two new resources, Manual-Only Hymns for Organ and Transformations, were produced to help pianists adapt to the organ.

Manual-Only Hymns for Organ is a compilation of 38 popular hymns arranged to be played without pedals. Transformations contains introductions and endings for the same 38 hymns that can be added to “transform” the hymns into prelude and postlude music. The set is available online and can be downloaded free of charge. Visit music.lds.org, click on Learning Materials, then Accompanying Others, then Manual-Only Hymns for Organists. Spiral-bound copies of the books are available for purchase at http://creativeworks.byu.edu/catalog/ViewItem.aspx?item=SM021.

Unlike simplified hymns available for the piano, the accompaniments include notes in each hand that can be played on separate keyboards or with the organ’s bass coupler button. Though it contains some instructional material, the book is not intended to be a manual for learning to play the organ. Instead, it is designed to give pianists a place to start if they have no experience with the organ and limited time to learn.

The project, which has been underway since late 2008, was headed by former Tabernacle Choir organist Robert Cundick with assistance from current choir organist Richard Elliott and a team of organists from Brigham Young University and BYU–Idaho.

Cebuano, Tagalog Scriptures Available Online

Cebuano and Tagalog editions of the triple combination, containing the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, are now available online. They can be accessed at scriptures.lds.org/ceb and scriptures.lds.org/tgl, respectively.

The sites include footnotes, maps, and photographs, and allow readers to mark the scriptures and perform key word searches. The scriptures site now includes 17 languages, with plans to add Japanese, Indonesian, and Thai in the near future.