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Your Church, May/Jun 2001
Software That's Music to Your Ears
Programs that help music ministers handle scores of problems
by Thomas Wibbels
Music ministers know the unending frustrations associated with managing an extensive music program. Each week is filled with new challenges: planning the music for the weekday or weekend services; scheduling which ensembles will assist at a particular service and the location for the ensemble's rehearsal; and highlighting specific elements to complement a service's theme by mixing in a praise team or drama team. And then, if possible, the minister might like to find time for his or her own playing and composing.
Then there are the less obvious responsibilities and decisions that often must be addressed by a music minister. Who's running the sound system at each service? Will the words of the hymns and praise choruses be projected on the house video system? If so, who will be responsible for entering the data? Are there lighting requirements for the service?
Welcome to worship arts ministry! It's all in your lap and the job must be done. The next service is always only a few days away.
Software to the Rescue
When I began my church music career nearly thirty years ago, I managed several vocal choirs, a graded handbell and children's choir program, a concert series, a small orchestra, a couple of music librarians, and a dozen or more small performing ensembles (vocal and instrumental). There were three different ministers on staff and each had different music preferences. All of the planning was done with paper and pencil. Later, when computers arrived in our workplace, directors still had to manage many scheduling problems the old- fashioned way. Software designers had not yet realized the need for software programs to assist the church music minister/musician.
That's changed. There is a veritable glut of software products available for music ministers. There are programs designed to assist the music directors of both small and large churches; programs designed for liturgical and contemporary worship styles; programs designed to help write and edit music; and programs designed to track every detail of the larger music ministry. Many of these programs are quite good and loaded with practical features. Just as important, many are also inexpensive and user-friendly.
I'd like to highlight some of these programs for you.
Worship Pro. This great program for the music minister comes from Servant PC Resources. Their motto—"Organizing God's People"—says it all. Servant PC offers innovative products designed to address the many facets of church ministry: Servant Keeper church management software, Bible Knowledge, Multimedia Resources, Phone Tree Management, and Worship Pro. With Worship Pro, a music minister can transpose songs at the touch of a button; create song lists; quickly and easily produce lead sheets and overheads; customize chord symbols for the praise team instrumentalists; generate reports for Christian Copyright Licensing International (ccli); and store sheet music and MIDI files. (MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface, software that represents sound in a form computers can process. It is used for composing and editing electronic music.)
You can plan weeks of services without difficulty. Song lists are available by theme and Scripture reference. And you can select the musicians you want to perform using a team members database.
After everything is organized there are a variety of reports that can be printed. With Worship Pro, version 2.1.4, you will no longer be faced with unreadable photocopied pages, hand-scribbled notes, and basic chord forms; everything can be printed out cleanly and easily. If an overhead is missing, simply push a button and generate a new copy.
The record-keeping capabilities of Worship Pro are outstanding. Want to know if a particular hymn has been sung too many times? Create a song performance report and view your patterns in a matter of seconds. Want to know who is available to sing or play? Keep complete lists of all participants, including their addresses and skill level. Want to know which songs your church has sung this past year so you can print a ccli report? No problem, just refer to your database.
Chip Demetri, worship pastor at West End Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee, has been using the program for nearly three years. On Servant PC's Web site Chip comments, "I would recommend Worship Pro to anyone who is looking for a data management program. It really has helped us to share data among all of the worship team members."
Worship Pro requires a Windows 95 or above environment and 25 mb of disk space. The program is available for $99.
Personal Composer. Claiming to be the world's original music/MIDI software, this is a program that should not be missed. Personal Composer is a powerful music notation, MIDI, sequencing, and publishing program that produces professional results. "Whether you are a composer, arranger, performer, educator, or multimedia enthusiast, Personal Composer offers a composition environment [that] is so intuitive it frees you to concentrate on your music," the company boasts on their Web site.
Norman Jones of Personal Composer agrees that one of the program's most attractive features is its user-friendliness. "It is really an easy program to use."
I agree. With Personal Composer, any music minister can write music for publication and electronic music production. The program will analyze and transcribe data from any MIDI-compatible instrument and reads standard MIDI files. It works with Microsoft's multimedia standard for recording and multiport playback and can run in any Microsoft Windows environment. The program is available in three levels: 8-staff, 16-staff, and 44-staff. Of course, the higher levels offer more features. Prices range from $69 to $199.
Worship Software 3.0. This software from Integrity Music was created to be the ultimate worship planning tool and offers a comprehensive listing of more than 5,000 songs from hymnals and songbooks. These songs can be cross-referenced by key, theme, time signature, Scripture reference, tempo, usage history, and more. In addition, the software will design and print bulletins, slides, overhead transparencies, and labels.
Worship Software 3.0 also features a powerful sheet music engine capable of transposing music into any key and reformatting for staff notation, guitar chords, or both. It even allows for the display of guitar fret diagrams above chord names. For more information and pricing, contact Integrity.
Prologue Worship Leader. Grass Roots Software continues to provide the church with quality presentation software. They believe that the pressures of performance are enough without technology getting in the way. So, their Prologue Worship Leader series allows users greater control over projection slides, including song lyrics, for example. You can get what you need exactly when you need it.
Prologue Worship Leader functions in a random-access fashion, which allows the worship leader or projector operator to view a virtual light table, so all the slides can be seen at a glance and simply chosen. You are not locked into a predetermined sequence of slides; you can cue the slides as planned or take them out of order. With Prologue's CueList you can move quickly from projected songs to text messages or graphics, simply by hitting a single key. If a change occurs in the order of worship, simply use the mouse to click on any component needed. Jump instantly from the first verse to the last verse and then back to a middle verse. The congregation never sees any command instructions on the screen or a floating cursor.
The program comes with more than 600 songs, and you can add as many songs as you wish. For complete information, including pricing, on Prologue packages, contact Grass Roots. Mac and pc versions of Prologue are available.
Now What?
Once you have all of your favorite equipment gathered around you and your great new software packages have been installed, only one problem remains—how to connect all the hardware. For years the serious church musician has depended on the folks at Midiman. Their drivers, connection boxes, and cables have enabled all the gear—computers, electronic keyboards, and lighting board—to speak to one another. From simple two-port boxes to multiport units, Midiman products have excelled in their industry. My own church music program would have sunk long ago without their PC MIDI Interface. It keeps my keyboards, sound models, sound cards, and computer coordinated. Regardless of the task, Midiman products will keep you connected and the data flowing. Now get to work.
Tom Wibbels (twibbels@excite.com) is a studio musician and freelance writer.
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Your Church magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Christian History.
May/June 2001, Vol. 47, No. 3, Page 58
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