Personal Information
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First Name
Gertim
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Last Name
Alberda
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Gender
Male
Musical Information
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Musical Activities
Singer, Arranger, Composer
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Voice
Bass
More
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Website
gertim-alberda.com/chorales
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About Me
I have always loved to sing, even when I was a little child. I sang every day and very often. Singing really is my passion. I would have loved to become a professional singer, but my life did not work out that way.
However, I taught myself to sing (bass) and love to sing, mainly classical music now. For example Die Winterreise of Schubert. Here you can hear me singing some of that great work: https://gertim-alberda.com/hymnody/Other/AO/A013.html
I have set up a little home studio where I sometimes make my own recordings, with accompaniment tracks that I make myself.
In 2016 I started entering all the Dutch Christian acapella hymns with which I was brought up. I did that in Musescore by use of a small midi-keyboard. I also love Bach's music, especially his choral works, so I decided that the next logical step would be to enter in all the 389 four-voiced collected chorales of Bach, and so I did.
When I had finished the Bach chorales (that took me 2 years ), I entered all my favorite English hymns. The last step was to acquire my own player software, to play back the scores (I had been using musescore.com for that), and with the help of 2 great programmers, Bernard Greenberg and Willem/Wim Vree (https://wim.vree.org/ ), I was able to realize my own player (with synchronized blue scroll bar). That meant that I no longer needed musescore.com (MS) to play back my scores, and so I left there and withdrew all my scores from that commercial site.
I have all my scores on my own 3 websites now and, as final step in leaving Musescore, I retrieved all my remaining scores from MS, and placed them under the 'other' tab here: https://gertimalberda.com/hymnody/index.html
Also I undertook the study of counterpoint (since 2016) and learned to write vocal choir parts and realizations based on figured bass. That allowed me to add Schemelli choir realizations. Those can be found here: https://gertimalberda.com/chorales/schemelli_index.html
So, here are my 3 websites (in order of importance, not chronological order):
https://gertim-alberda.com/chorales/
https://gertim-alberda.com/hymnody/
https://gertim-alberda.com/geestelijkeliederen/GL1979/
I hope they will be widely used and that all my hard and tedious work has not been in vain, and will be of blessing and joy to many.
To give you an idea:
- It took on average 1.5 hours to enter in all the notes and lyrics for one chorale by hand.
- It took another 1.5 hours on average to make all the hidden (grey) adjustments to make it sound as realistic as possible. One must consider and use hidden Fermata, many tempo changes, breath pauses, etc. They all had to be tried out and balanced with each other and this could only be done by trial and error and constantly playing it back to judge the result. Those hidden additions can only be seen when the score is downloaded and opened in Musescore (https://musescore.org/en/download), which is free and Open Source and works on any operating system (even Linux). So, 3 hours on average/score times 389.
I really hope that my work will be received with joy and enthusiasm and that people will really use it. So, please share this with your family and friends and to whomever it may be of interest to.
I remind you that Bach first taught his students to realize figured bass, and then write decent chorale settings and then go on from there. The chorales are a great source for comparison and learning.
For playback, do me and yourself a favor and use good headphones. That gives the best result.
I need to thank Bernard Greenberg, who taught me everything, and who was my #1 proofreader for the Bach chorales. He is not only a great programmer, but also a lifetime student of Bach and great composer. More about him can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Greenberg
https://bernardgreenberg.com
https://web.archive.org/web/20040523223221/http://www.bachfaq.org
Finally, I want to thank my wife and family, who were of great support, but most of all my heavenly Father. I basically tried to keep my goal in mind: "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."
I want to end this description as Bach ended his scores ....
Soli Deo Gloria (SDG).
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