gospel

HYMNS

Did you know that, if necessary, your sound card can be your church
organist? It's not as hard as you might think.

If you've got a sound card and a MIDI player, you're in business. As a
pastor, I've been using my computer to provide worship music for our
services for fifteen years at two different parishes. We'd prefer a human
organist, of course, but this system really works quite well, and it sure
beats singing without accompaniment. If you'd like to try it, download
some of the sample hymn tunes below, and see how they work for you
(PKUnzip required). All the music is from The Lutheran Hymnal, published
1941 by Concordia, a hymnal widely used for decades by Missouri and
Wisconsin Synod Lutherans. All the hymn tunes were sequenced by me,
and like nearly all of our best-loved hymns, they are in the public domain.

Here's some background:

You can play MIDI hymn files on your computer using any device with MIDI
capability, e.g. Windows Media Player, Creative Play Center, Musicmatch
Jukebox, WinAmp, etc. For a low-tech solution, you can record them
directly onto cassette tape through your sound card's 'stereo out' jack
(most sound cards have one). Then put the tape in your stereo or
boombox and play it at the worship service.

In addition to hymns, we also have the standard TLH liturgies in MIDI
format, and they work well with a little practice. You can have a member
turn the music off and on at appropriate times, or (like I do) you can
control it yourself with a remote.

For a little higher-tech solution, you can convert (or record) the MIDI to
WAV and burn it directly onto a music CD. This eliminates the analog step
completely, and greatly improves the sound. This is the system we use
every Sunday at Ascension Lutheran Church. It's simple, and it works very
well.

Nearly all computer sound cards (such as the SoundBlaster Live Value,
SoundBlaster AWE, Soundblaster Audigy, Turtle Beach, Roland Emu or
similar) now come with 'wavetable' sound, which uses digital samples of
actual instruments - like a piano, an organ or a trumpet - to play the MIDI
file. All my hymn files are sequenced to use the 'Hammond Organ'
instrument (program #16 in the general MIDI setup). To me, this sounds
closest to the kind of organ a typical church uses.

If you have the time and inclination to experiment, you can manipulate
and change these files to better suit your worship environment. If you
have appropriate software (Sound Forge, Cakewalk, etc.), you can make
the MIDI files play with a different instrument, such as grand piano,
strings, brass, etc. The note duration in the files on this page have been
specifically configured to allow the hymns to sound great no matter what
instrument you use. You will find many great instrument sounds ("patches"
or "SoundFonts") available on the internet. Two of the best sites are for
SoundFonts and for general MIDI information are Hammersound.net and
synthzone.com.

At Ascension we're currently using a "Gothic Pipe Organ" SoundFont for our
hymns, and the sound is really quite good. Many visitors to our services
have asked me where the organist sits! Give the system a try - it's
convenient, it works great, and assuming you've got a sound card, it costs
next to nothing. The hymns below are free - I hope you enjoy them. All
the tunes were sequenced by myself, and are available as a zipped
download.

Click here to download a sample of five best-loved hymns in MIDI format.
Selections include: "Just As I Am", "How Great Thou Art", "Rock of Ages",
"Holy, Holy, Holy" and "The Lord's My Shepherd".

Click here to download my entire collection of over 200 MIDI hymn tunes
from The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941, plus an index (144K download).

Click here to view a list of hymns available in the above files.

Click here to access the LYRICS of each of the hymns from The Lutheran
Hymnal of 1941 (in separate files). This page is maintained by Project
Wittenberg.

Click here to download all the TLH lyrics in a single searchable text file. Not
included are those twenty or so TLH hymns which are not in the public
domain. File is 307K. PKUnzip required.