Reactor Core Hymn Repository - Musical Accompaniment for your Favorite Hymns - Copyright free. Use, share, and enjoy

REACTOR CORE HYMN REPOSITORY

Musical Accompaniment for your Favorite Hymns

and also

Teaching and Learning Aids to better your Singing

Copyright free. Use, share, and enjoy

WISHLIST: Martin Madan, Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1760) Doctor Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707), The Psalms of David (1717), Hymns Ancient and Modern (1862)

ABOUT THE WISHLIST If you know of any copies of books on the wishlist, please let me know. I would be happy just to photograph each page, but if the book is for sale at a reasonable price, I also want to buy. The purpose is to enter the hymns in and add them to this hymn repository.

Articles

List of Key Signatures, with images of each key signatures so you can quickly determine which key signature you are looking at, in major or minor key.
Manifesto on Psalms and Hymns, by Douglas Wilson, from the 2004 edition of the Cantus Christi hymnal.

 Name                    Last modified       Size  Description

 Parent Directory        08-Jun-2020 12:28      -  
 style.css               21-Dec-2010 18:58     3k  
 secular/                21-Dec-2010 18:58      -  
 popular.txt             21-Dec-2010 18:58     2k  
 newlisp/                21-Dec-2010 18:58      -  
 misc/                   21-Dec-2010 18:58      -  
 lilypond/               21-Dec-2010 18:45      -  
 keysignatures.html      21-Dec-2010 18:44     8k  
 keysignature-images/    21-Dec-2010 18:44      -  
 genly                   21-Dec-2010 18:44     8k  
 default/                21-Dec-2010 18:44      -  
 cantus-manifesto.html   21-Dec-2010 18:44    10k  
 blue.html               21-Dec-2010 18:44    16k  
 audacity/               21-Dec-2010 18:43      -  
 all/                    21-Dec-2010 17:56      -  
 all-midi-files.tgz      21-Dec-2010 17:56   111k  
 SlaveSongs/             21-Dec-2010 17:49      -  
 SacredHarp/             21-Dec-2010 17:49      -  
 MP3/                    21-Dec-2010 14:54      -  
 MP3-tenor/              21-Dec-2010 17:21      -  
 MP3-soprano/            21-Dec-2010 16:45      -  
 MP3-bass/               21-Dec-2010 16:11      -  
 MP3-alto/               21-Dec-2010 15:34      -  
 HaikVantoura/           22-Oct-2012 18:52      -  
 ApostolicChurchOfGod..> 21-Dec-2010 14:09     1k

ABOUT THE REACTOR CORE HYMN REPOSITORY

Free MP3 recordings · Free sheet music (PDF)

Do you wonder what some hymns sound like? Does your house church lack a piano or piano player? Look no further! This repository provides copyright free mp3 files of your favorite hymns, suitable for use in church worship or for practice at home. And if this isn't enough, we also provide high quality sheet music for every hymn in PDF format. This lets you print as many copies as you want without paying a licensing fee to a publishing house.

Did you ever want to improve your hymn singing? Do you wonder if you are a soprano, alto, tenor, or bass? Would you like to sing your part without being distracted by the notes in the other parts? We provide an mp3 file of each of the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts. This lets you sing along to each part to find out which one suits your voice best. Once you learn to sing a part, your whole singing experience will feel better.

If the mp3's provided do not quite meet your needs, the script and source files for the hymns are provided here free of charge. You can use the script and source files to change the hymn however you like. You will need the lilypond, timidity, and lame software as well.

The mp3 files are in the following format:

A few bars are played to refresh your memory of the tune.
The music is played all the way through, once for each verse.
If there is a final coda or "amen", this is played after the last verse.

LICENSE

All of the music on this website is quite old. So old, that any copyrights on it have expired. Under current copyright law, the new music typesetting done by the project, and other work related to building this website are under copyright to Ted Walther and the Reactor Core Hymn Repository. However, we are making it freely available for everyone to share, use, and enjoy in whichever manner they wish. If you want an official license written out in legal language, then consider all work here to be under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

WHAT IS IN THE DIFFERENT FILES?

`hymn.mp3`	This is the full hymn, suitable for singing the whole hymn through.
`hymn.pdf`	This is the sheet music for the hymn. It is suitable for playing the piano. Lyrics are not included at this time.
`soprano.mp3 alto.mp3 tenor.mp3 bass.mp3`	These are the individual parts. They just play the tune once, and the amen if there is one.

FUTURE FEATURES

At some future time you will be able to choose the following attributes of the hymn by using a web interface.

instrument (french horn, clarinet, church organ, etc)
tempo (50, 60, .. 120, etc)
transpose (lower c to a, or raise b to f)

WANT TO CONTRIBUTE A HYMN?

If you can understand the "lilypond" music typesetting program, then you can easily contribute new hymns by looking at the hymns already provided here.

CONTENTS OF THIS DIRECTORY:

`default/`	This directory contains the templates for starting a new hymn. To make a new hymn, make a new directory and copy all the files into it. Edit these files. When you are done, run the "`genly`" program. This will generate mp3 files and a PDF file with the sheet music.
`default/soprano default/alto default/tenor default/bass`	These are the four parts. Most hymns are written in four parts. You need to fill out the middle section in the template, but the intro and amen sections can be left blank. It is recommended you copy the first few bars of the main section into the intro section to remind people of how the hymn goes and help them prepare to start singing. Some hymns have a final "amen", which you would put in the amen section.
`default/header`	This is where you put in the key signature, the time, the title of the hymn, the composer, and similar items of interest.
`default/instruments`	This is where you put the name of the midi instruments, one on each line. Only instruments supported by lilypond can be used. The defaults are `acoustic grand` and `church organ`
`default/stanzas`	This is the number of stanzas, or verses that are in the hymn. This decides how many times the music will be repeated in the mp3.
`default/tempo`	This is the tempo. This controls how fast the mp3 file will play the hymn. There are two numbers: the beats per minute, and the length of a beat. The length of a beat is specified in lilypond syntax. 100 2 for instance, means one hundred half notes per minute.
`default/transpose`	This will transpose the music up or down by the amount of half notes that you specify. The transpose command is described in the lilypond documentation.
`genly`	`genly` is a bourne shell script. Run it inside a hymn directory that has all the files that you find in the default directory. `genly` creates the PDF and mp3 files based on the template files that you filled out.
`all/`	You will find all the hymns in this directory, listed by their titles. Hymns from ANY hymn book are welcome. A page is made for each hymn book, with links to the hymns in the repository that are also in that hymn book. If you have a hymn book and you want to tell everyone to "turn to page 100", you can use the links to click on page 100 yourself. This saves some duplication because the old favorites are found in almost every hymnal.

CONCLUSION

If you enjoy the service provided by this hymn repository, pray that God will bless it and use it to bless others. Oh, and also send me an email. I love getting personal emails! My email address is ted@reactor-core.org.

Ted Walther
Tuesday November 7, 2006