About the Resources

The resources on this site have the focus of enabling congregational music. The first content involves public domain hymns, and offers resources for learning and displaying music.

Currently, there is a very small (but growing!) group of public domain hymns as well as the very beginnings of some original songs and custom arranged hymns.

Audio Files

The hymns have audio files attached to them, which (at this point) are just simple versions of the hymn from the Lutheran Service Book hymnal, an LCMS hymnal published in 2006.

Most of the hymns have five audio files: an SATB version, and a version where each part is highlighted on its own. These are helpful for learning the different parts. For example, if you'd want to learn to sing the Tenor part, click on (or download) the Tenor version, and you'll hear the Tenor part emphasized, while still hearing the other parts for reference.

Features include:

  • sampled piano sound
  • one verse, easily replayable as needed
  • for the individual parts:
    • the part in focus is in the right speaker alone and louder than the others
    • the other parts are in the left speaker
    • if you can "pan" or "balance" the left and right signals (e.g. using your software player after downloading or stereo controls), you can isolate the focus part, or change the relative volume between the focus part and the others
  • you can play the files right in your browser or download them onto your computer
  • when MIDI files are included, you can import these into your own music software for your own use.

Projection Files

One potential drawback to using screens in worship is the greater difficulty of projecting music notation along with lyrics. There are significant benefits to seeing at least a melody line along with lyrics, even for non-musicians. Paper hymnals have generally allowed people to see the notation along with the words (though sometimes there are difficulties with those, too). And so, a number of hymns on this site have projection files included. These are designed to be highly readable slides for projecting on screens, using software such as PowerPoint or more worship-specific software such as ProPresenter, MediaShout, etc., that give worshippers access to musical notation in addition to lyrics.

These are custom versions of the slides that have some significant improvements over the formatting available from other "pre-packaged" sources, including a commonly-used Lutheran worship software package. Features include:

  • slides custom formatted for 4:3 screens and 16:9 screens (some have both, some have one or the other)
  • large-scale, easy-to-read font for lyrics
  • melody and lyric notation
  • line and page breaks that make sense musically and lyrically
  • the files are PNG image files which can be imported into any presentation software
  • the PNG image files have a transparent background, which allows the background to not be required to be white (though white, or another solid light colour is an ideal choice for backgrounds)

To Use the Projection Files

  1. Download the ZIP file to your computer.
  2. Decompress the ZIP file so you have access to the individual image files.
  3. In your software (PowerPoint, ProPresenter, etc.), import/place the image files into the slide assigned to that portion of the song.
    1. The end of the name of each file indicates which part of the song it is (e.g. V1, V1a, C1, etc. - V stands for Verse/Stanza, C for Chorus/Refrain)
    2. If one section (e.g. Verse or Chorus) requires more than one slide, that will be indicated by a, b, c, etc. following the section number (e.g. V1a, V1b).  
  4. Because the image files have a transparent background, ensure your slide has a suitable colour for a background.

Cross-References

One of the by-products of a digital format such as this is easy cross-referencing. Using links, you can easily find out more information, such as other songs that have the same key or time signatures. Many hymns use the same musical tune and these are also linked on the song's page.

The resources are also "tagged" with keywords (e.g. Advent, Christmas) so that you can quickly find other songs and resources that are similarly tagged.