About Hymntide
Hi, I’m Lavon, owner of Hymntide. My wife, Janice, and I live in southwestern Ontario, where both of us grew up. I’ve loved singing and listening to music since the early days of my childhood. Around the age of 12, I began doing recordings with a tiny handheld mic and the free, open source recording program Audacity. My interest in music grew, and I continued doing solo recordings, eventually upgrading to a better recording system. In 2017, my brothers and I, along with some of our cousins, formed the Soldiers of Christ men’s group and recorded our first album, which was released in 2018. Since then, I’ve helped to produce several more albums, as well as continuing to do various unofficial recordings with friends or by myself.
With CDs rapidly becoming obsolete, I have seen the need to make recordings available in digital formats. While secular music distribution platforms such as iTunes and Spotify work very well to publish mp3 files, many individuals and churches have concerns about opening the doors to the world’s entire music library. This site is an attempt to create a digital music library that is a safe place for conservative Christians to download music.
My musical interests have also reached over into songwriting. I’ve done a few completely original works as well as some new music or harmony for a song that I felt could be improved. Some of these songs, as well as many by other authors, are available in the Hymntide sheet music library. This library is another important part of the Hymntide website. It is my goal to build a large library of high quality sheet music available for free to the public, while still honouring copyright restrictions. This could potentially be an avenue for conservative Christian authors to publish new works. If you have a song that you would like to have added to this site, you are welcome to get in touch with me and I will consider adding it. However, songs that are tainted with contemporary music styles that distract from the message or have a shallow, casual feel will not be posted. Also, if the words or music are poorly written from a technical viewpoint, I may choose not to use it. If the song scores low on lyrical, musical, or spiritual quality, it will be rejected.
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or technical issues with this website, please get in touch via the contact page.
Thanks for visiting!
Frequently asked questions
My main hardware is a Behringer Uphoria UMC1820 audio interface and sE X1A large diaphragm condenser mics. I also still have the pair of Art M6 pencil mics that we used years ago for family recordings. The Behringer has 8 XLR inputs, and, although Behringer is not known as a high-end brand, it has served me flawlessly for many years. The few times that I’ve needed more than 8 mics, I rented an amp which connected to the interface via an ADAT connection and gave me 8 additional inputs.
For recording sofware, I have used both Cubase and Mixbus 32C (and, of course, Audacity). Both have their strong points, but overall I like Cubase better. Cubase is much more widely used, and is noticeably more stable than Mixbus.
Typically, I like to have each part stacked four times. The parts are then panned across the stereo width from left to right, which gives the song a wide stereo spectrum while keeping all the individual parts symmetrical.
The Soldiers of Christ group produced three albums: Let the Light Shine On – 2018; Land Beyond – 2019; and Take Courage, 2021. The Widemans have one album: Glad and Free, 2023. Let the Light Shine On is out of print, but may still be available in some stores.