In this video, pianist Jon Cheney walks through his own arrangement of the hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" from his album A Sunday Afternoon. He explains that the piece was originally written about twenty years ago and is one of his earliest piano arrangements. The walkthrough starts with a simple presentation of the main melody, then moves into detailed technical guidance: choosing the correct fingerings for basic arpeggios, handling the subtle shift between 3/4 and 4/4 meters, and avoiding common harmonic pitfalls (e.g., mistaking an F for a G). Cheney emphasizes precise pedal technique—lifting the pedal fully to create a clean contrast between deep and high registers—and demonstrates the audible difference when the pedal is not cleared properly. He highlights a specific expressive moment on the downbeat of measure 42, where a clean pedal lift and dynamic change produce a dramatic effect. Finally, he advises on playing the fast 16th‑note triplet figures softly and reverently. The video concludes with an invitation to listen to the recorded track.
Chapters
Okay, next up in this new piano book, A Sunday Afternoon, is an arrangement I wrote a long time ago of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. I probably wrote it 10 years, almost exactly 10 years before I recorded this, which was 10 years ago. So 20 years ago I wrote Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, this arrangement. It's a very simple one. It's very basic. I think it might have been the third song. It's probably the third song I ever actually wrote down, and I just happened to record it on this album and published it. And anyway, I hope you enjoy it. It starts very simple, just going through kind of the main melody, and then it actually is a little bit challenging just because you got to figure out the right fingerings and what— you know, they're just our basic arpeggios, right? But you know, you got to get those right. Um, and I'll probably stop and talk about them for a second. Um, and then it ends kind of soft and nice. So anyway, let's see how it goes. So again, I do this all the time. I just start the song with the melody. I don't need it to be complicated yet, and you just put the melody there, and then I'll start getting fun. So again, very simple, simple pattern, repeated, predictable. A little bit of going back and forth between 3/4 and 4/4 right there. Not hard, let's figure it out. Okay, let's stop for a second. So there's 2 times in here. So we're just doing a C, then we do a G, then we do an F. We actually switch from an F into a G, that one. Hear that change? Okay, but just note that it's easy to miss and accidentally play an F there, which doesn't sound good. That's what I just did there. It wants to go— so anyway, Just pay attention to that. Um. It's really important when you switch from a big deep note to, to really clear that pedal all the way. Make sure your foot gets all the way up. If you leave even just a little bit there, it ruins some of that contrast that I like to talk about a lot, right? Of the deep up to the high and pretty there, right? So let me— I'm going to play it wrong. Where I don't let the pedal up all the way, and you can see the difference, or maybe the lack of the, of the dramatic effect here. It's just kind of like leftover. You didn't, you didn't finish what you were doing. You want to just really get a nice clean cut there and move in. So you're— and you should be you know, louder here into soft. There should be a little bit of a change in volume. And notice when I did it, I want to just add that one little part there. I did it right on the downbeat of measure 42 here, right? I didn't do it, I didn't do it while I was doing this. I could, I could go So that, that's okay, I think, but it misses some of that dramatic effect. When you do it right on the downbeat, it almost surprises you a little bit that it just kind of disappears and you're into this new section. So I might have ended this song a little bit differently in the way that I composed today, but it's still fine. One thing I do want to point out is, is these fast kind of triplet 16th, or what are those? Yeah, they're 16th triplet 16th notes. Make sure you stay quiet with them, right? It's very easy when you play fast to want to you know, hit as hard, but they should be soft. Keep them reverent. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this one. Come Mouth Out of Every Blessing, available now.
