Composers, painters, writers, poets, photographers, dancers, artists of all kinds have the occasional project they’re never quite satisfied with, that they continue–throughout their career–to fiddle with and change and rethink. My arrangement of the famous old hymn tune, Amazing Grace, is one of those for me.
Part of the problem, I think, is that this is a piece I also improvise on in live performance and no matter how hard you try, how good an ear you’ve got, how adept you are at using technology, it’s impossible to capture in music notation every tiny nuance of an improvised performance.
Nor is it possible to capture every detail of how you imagine the piece ought to be…could be…must be.
I’d had Amazing Grace on the two websites for self-published scores I use, SheetMusicPlus and SheetMusicDirect, but I grew dissatisfied with my arrangement and withdrew it, even after it had had sales.
I finally got what I think might be a better, more likely to be permanent, arrangement of Amazing Grace, and it’s now up and available on YouTube (https://youtu.be/r2ojjBLohk0) and on the two sheet-music sites at:
- https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/amazing-grace-solo-piano-arrangement-digital-sheet-music/22464352 and
- https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1291294/Product.aspx
You can also stream just the audio for free at https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/amazing-grace-piano-solo-arrangement.
Hilton Kean Jones 