About Hymntide
Hi, I’m Lavon, and I live in southwestern Ontario with my wife, Janice, and our daughter, Janae. 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 becoming obsolete, I have seen the need to make our recordings available in digital formats. While secular music distribution platforms such as iTunes and Spotify work well for this, many individuals and churches have concerns about opening the doors to the world’s entire music library, and therefore restrict access to these sites. Furthermore, because these platforms make music available at very low prices, there is hardly any compensation for the artist, which makes producing recordings less feasible. Also, to prevent illegal copying and sharing, users are typically restricted to listening within a dedicated app or website, rather than being allowed to save mp3 files to their preferred location or music player.
And so, while we were working on our Glad and Free album, I finally decided to pursue creating my own website in an effort to make the album available as an mp3 download. This approach gave us the added benefit of being able to also make sheet music available for many of the songs on the album. Now, users can easily access most of our sheet music at their convenience without needing to wait on an email.
While Hymntide was originally intended only to make our own music available, it has grown to include several other albums, as well as much new sheet music. If you’re interested, take a look at the recordings available on the audio page, or the sheet music library here.
If you have an album or sheet music that you would like to have published on Hymntide, feel free to get in touch. However, please understand that the content of this website is mostly focused on hymn-style and simple choral music, and anything that is outside of this scope may not be accepted.
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.