Christian Virtual Hymnal 7.0 Released

MusicEase Software has just released version 7 of the Christian Virtual Hymnal which provides transposable, customizable sheet music for over 9,000 hymns, Handel’s “Messiah”, and Mozart’s “Requiem”.

This includes almost all of the more popular hymns and over 1,500 shape note hymns. Since all the music is public domain, no CCLI license is required. Hymns are displayed on your computer screen exactly as they will print. Functionality includes:

– Traditional SATB 4 part harmony as found in the physical hymnals or melody only;
– Transpose to any key;
– Scale the music and/or verses to almost any size and quickly reformat;
– Re-order verses and/or delete any verses — display/print just the verses you want;
– Edit/completely change the verses for most hymns;
– Lead sheets;
– Chord names or guitar fret diagrams or none;
– Verses under the notes or after the hymn in 1 or 2 column format;
– Print the music as chord charts in any key (verse and chord name fonts and sizes are user specifiable);
– Export verses only to an ascii (text) file;
– Display/extract/play any combination of parts with any verses;
– Display the music using shape notes or standard round noteheads;
– Display the music using tablature for guitar, banjo, or any other stringed instrument.

And when playing,

– Change tempos and specify number of times to repeat playing;
– Specify different general MIDI instruments for the treble and bass clefs;
– When playing a hymn more than once, specify different instruments to be used for each repetition (much like when an organist changes the organ stops at the beginning of each stanza);
– Save hymns as MIDI files which then can be played later or imported into a sequencing program for further manipulation.

Regarding Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem:

– Scale the music to different sizes and automatically reformat it to fit the pages;
– Use any available font and size for lyrics;
– Extract any combination of parts;
– Scale any combination of parts smaller than the other parts;
– Transpose any combination of parts (to facilitate the performance of the music by transposing instruments);
– Display the music as shape notes;
– Display individual parts with or as tablature;
– Have the music played by your computer, optionally after changing the tempo;
– Save the music as a MIDI file.

Supported hymnals include: 2008 Lifeway Baptist Hymnal, Celebration Hymnal®, Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, 1991 Baptist Hymnal, Lutheran Book of Worship, With One Voice, 1989 United Methodist Hymnal, 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal, New National Baptist Hymnal (21st Century Edition), Christian Life Hymnal, and the 1985 Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal. The Christian Virtual Hymnal contains almost all the public domain songs in these collections and provides unprecedented flexibility in creating transposable sheet music with optional chord names/fret diagrams, transposable chord charts and MIDI files. Also included are over 600 older Christmas/Advent hymns and carols, around 50 hymns from Music Sacra, about 170 SATB spirituals from John W. Work’s American Negro Songs plus a number of other hymns from older sources. Additionally over 1,500 shape note hymns taken from various versions of the Sacred Harp and other shape note hymnals are included.

Music and verses are the same as in the respective hymnals so no editing is generally required for congregations using these hymnals. The Christian Virtual Hymnal (either by itself or in conjunction with a sequencing program) can be used in place of an organist. Quickly print out just hymn verses for weekly bulletins or transpose hymns for the choir. Individual hymns, Requiem movements and Messiah scenes can be imported into the MusicEase Professional (version 8.5 and later) music score editor and fully edited.

[Integrity Music, Brentwood-Benson and MediaShout Corporation have all used this same virtual hymnal technology in their products. E.g., Brentwood-Benson’s “Praise and Worship Song Book With Over 600 Songs” CD-ROM was created with this technology.]

Newly added in this version is the ability to use the music of an existing hymn and add completely new lyrics/verses to it and save the result as a new (additional) hymn amenable to all the operations available to hymns that come as part of the Christian Virtual Hymnal.

For some example print outs of various ramifications of music in the Christian Virtual Hymnal, please see our gallery at http://www.cvhymnal.com/gallery.html

The Christian Virtual Hymnal is fully self-contained. MusicEase Professional is not required to run it.

The Christian Virtual Hymnal is available for both Windows and the Mac.

A free evaluation version is available via http://www.cvhymnal.com/download.html

Please visit http://www.cvhymnal.com for more complete information on the Christian Virtual Hymnal.