Tomorrow night, while the fall is creating lovely long shadows, I’ll be sharing “A Shabbat Sweet” in a family’s home. They’ll be having about 20 people over for dinner and the service.  And let me tell you, I am VERY excited about sharing the service with such a lovely family in such an intimate setting.

While I was practicing the service to sharpen up, I got two “bonuses”: first, the niggun (wordless melody) I’ve been working on, which I’m calling Beggar’s Niggun, took new shape: I found new and more interesting chords for the melody, and taking the suggestion from a dear friend, well, from Tracy Friend, I found a way to change the melody at the end in a way that holds the integrity of the niggun format while creating musical interest.

Second, as I was playing through V’Shamru, instead of just playing through the third stanza with my usual dissatisfied feeling, I let go and found new chords and a new melody for that stanza, kind of like a “bridge” in pop music.  I think the change really helps improve the song by adding new energy to the end of the piece.