This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
I will praise you, Jesus
I will praise you, Jesus
I will praise you Jesus,
I will praise you, Lord!
I will praise you Jesus,
I'll praise you with just one chord.
You are great, Lord Jesus,
You are King of kings,
You are great, Lord Jesus,
I'll praise you with open strings.
You're my king, Lord Jesus,
Lord of lords you are.
You're my king, Lord Jesus,
I'll praise you with my guitar.
Words & tune copyright © John Hartley 2002.
Story behind the song
My son Peter (age 16) has Down's Syndrome: he's a healthy chap without any heart problems or anything like that, but he has very severe communication difficulties and almost no recognisable words. He adores music and will listen to CDs for hours, and he will join in: he will make random noises on the recorder to accompany panpipe "themes for dreams", he'll play along to the Mozart horn concertos on an old trombone of mine, and he'll strum away tunelessly on a guitar to Rodriguez and other such things. And in church on Sundays he loves to sit with the music group and croon away while they sing.
So a couple of years ago I bought him his own 3/4-size guitar, and tuned the strings to the key of D (i.e. D, A, D, F#, A and D). In the church music group Peter's soft strumming is drowned out by the rest of the noise going on, but at bedtime when we wanted a night-night song for me to sing and him to play, this one seemed to be the obvious song to finish the day with. Maybe Peter will never be able to appreciate the words, but it allows me to centre down and remind myself of eternal realities at the end of a long day.
Critiques and further suggestions are always welcome, and I won't be offended at anything anyone says!!
John Hartley
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.