The Cyber Hymnal™

What brows­er do you re­com­mend? Web stand­ards are in a state of flux, & will be for the next few years. We be­lieve Fire­fox has the best sup­port for cur­rent stand­ards (es­pe­cial­ly mul­ti-col­umn lay­outs: if you’re us­ing the cur­rent ver­sion of Fire­fox, you’ll see this page in mul­ti­ple col­umns). In ad­di­tion, some brows­ers (not­a­bly In­ternet Ex­plor­er, MSIE) have se­vere lim­its on style sheet im­port depth (though we un­der­stand MSIE version 10 will fix these lim­it­a­tions) So, for now, Fire­fox is our re­com­mend­a­tion. And make sure you get the latest ver­sion (cur­rent­ly 10+; you can down­load it free here). You miss a lot if you use old ver­sions—be­lieve it or not, ma­ny vi­sit­ors are still on Fire­fox 3!

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How can I help?

• Proofread our pag­es & test the links. Tell us about any er­rors you find.
• Many pag­es have re­quests for in­for­ma­tion on them. If you can help an­swer any of these ques­tions, we would be grate­ful!
• Pub­li­cize our ad­dress in In­ter­net mail­ing lists, news groups, church news­letters, ma­ga­zines, news­pa­pers, ra­dio & TV broad­casts, etc. If you find Web sites that still point to the old cyberhymnal.org URL, ask them to up­date their links.
• If some­one can ac­quire own­er­ship of the cyberhymnal.org do­main name (no long­er as­so­ci­at­ed with us), it would be a bless­ing if they could do­nate it to us. Thou­sands lost track of the site when we were forced to move. Sad­ly, we have nei­ther the funds nor abil­i­ty to do this on our own. Please pray­er­ful­ly con­si­der this.
• Send us Christ­ian hymns that have been pub­lished in Ar­a­bic or in In­di­an lang­uag­es. This is a long stand­ing need; help bless mill­ions!
• Help us find pic­tures of hymn­ists, trans­lat­ors & com­pos­ers (click here for list of pic­tures we’re seek­ing).
• Link to us from church & per­son­al Web sites.
• If you’d like to help de­fray our costs for com­put­er hard­ware, soft­ware, books, sup­plies, etc., you can make a do­na­tion at Pay­pal to ac­count cy­ber­hymn­al@hot­mail.com.
• Pray that God will con­tin­ue to show us His will for this site.

God bless you for your sup­port!

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Why does the text in [lan­guage xyz] show rec­tang­les, diamonds or question marks? Some pos­si­ble caus­es:

1. It could be an en­cod­ing problem (see quest­ion above).
2. Your com­put­er doesn’t have a font that knows how to dis­play the miss­ing char­ac­ters. For ex­am­ple, the de­fault font used by Mi­cro­soft In­ter­net Explorer (MSIE) for Greek text un­der Win­dows XP is Times New Ro­man, which can dis­play some, but not all Greek char­ac­ters & di­a­cri­ti­cal marks. We’ve found the free font Gen­ti­um to be good a re­place­ment for Times New Ro­man in the case of Greek. For other lan­guag­es, brows­ers & op­er­a­ting sys­tems, you can find fonts via In­ter­net search en­gines. If the prob­lem per­sists even when the cor­rect font is in­stalled, your brows­er is prob­ab­ly ig­nor­ing the font: The mere pre­sence of a font on your sys­tem doesn’t guar­an­tee your brows­er will use it. Our site gives font hints to brows­ers for lang­uag­es with non-La­tin al­pha­bets, but some brows­ers don’t bo­ther check­ing these hints (MSIE be­ing one of the of­fend­ers). How­ev­er, ma­ny brows­ers let you ex­pli­cit­ly choose the fonts to use for par­ti­cu­lar lan­guag­es. For in­stance, with MSIE, choose Tools-In­tern­et Opt­ions-Fonts (though ev­en this doesn’t al­ways work). Fire­fox seems to read our font hints cor­rect­ly. For other brows­ers, please con­sult the help file or ask a com­put­er sup­port tech­ni­cian.

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I found tune XXX in the tune name in­dex (or on a bi­o­graphy page), but when I click the link, the next page plays a diff­er­ent tune. This can hap­pen if the tune is not the pri­ma­ry tune on any of our hymn pag­es. In this case, the link points to a page where it is an al­ter­nate tune.

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Why don’t I hear mu­sic? Try this checklist:

• Is the mu­sic lack­ing on all pages, or just spe­ci­fic pag­es? If on­ly on a few pag­es, let us know—the prob­lem might be in the page it­self.
• Do you have a sound card & speak­ers?
• Are the speak­ers plugged in?
• If the speak­ers need bat­ter­ies, are they in­stalled? Are they fresh?
• Is the vol­ume turned up? Is the sound mut­ed? Check the speak­er di­als & any soft­ware which con­trols vol­ume.
• Do you have an old­er sound board? If so, en­sure you have the lat­est driv­ers. You can oft­en down­load these from the man­u­fac­tur­er’s Web site.
• If you use the Note­Worthy Com­pos­er view­er, do you have the lat­est ver­sion?
• Try play­ing a MI­DI file off-line (that is, while not con­nect­ed to the In­ter­net). Most com­put­ers come with samp­le MIDI files you can use; if not, down­load one of ours & save it on disk. If you can’t play MIDI files off­line, the prob­lem is in your com­put­er.
• Other soft­ware may be chang­ing the vol­ume set­tings. Some ver­sions of Mi­cro­soft In­ter­net Ex­plor­er & Me­dia Play­er can cause this; other au­dio play­ers al­so mis­be­have this way. Un­der Win­dows XP, you can fix this as fol­lows:
  • Click the Win­dows Start button
  • Select Run
  • Enter Sndvol32.exe & press En­ter (it might be a good idea to cre­ate a short­cut on your deskt­op or task bar to save this short­cut).
  • Adjust the MIDI vol­ume slid­er un­til you can hear the mu­sic.

  Unfortunately, the prob­lem may re­cur, so re­peat these steps if the mu­sic goes si­lent again lat­er.

If you tried all these steps and your brow­ser still won’t au­to­ma­tic­al­ly play the mu­sic, you can al­ways play it man­u­al­ly by click­ing the MIDI link shown on each page. That should start the mu­sic in  your com­put­er’s mu­sic soft­ware (that is, out­side the brow­ser). 

Sorry, we can’t di­ag­nose prob­lems long dis­tance. If you still can’t hear the mu­sic, please see your lo­cal tech­ni­cian.

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Can I pre­vent the mu­sic from start­ing au­to­ma­tic­al­ly on each page? Yes: Clear the check­box on our home page that says Start Music Au­to­ma­tic­al­ly, & en­sure cook­ies are en­a­bled in your brows­er. Notes:

1. If you don’t ena­ble cook­ies, the mu­sic will start au­to­ma­tic­al­ly ev­en if the check box is cleared. If you don’t know what cook­ies are, or how to en­a­ble them, please see your brows­er’s do­cu­men­ta­tion, or con­sult a lo­cal tech­ni­cian.
2. This au­to­start func­tion is dif­fer­ent than our Au­to­play fea­ture.

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Why is the text/font hard to read? Our site doesn’t spe­ci­fy a par­ti­cu­lar font for Eng­lish text (see next ques­tion for other lang­uag­es). Your brows­er picks the font, so if it’s hard to read, you’ll have to blame your brows­er.

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Why do some in­dex en­tries have num­bers after them? These in­di­cate pri­ma­ry ti­tles/names, etc. Mostly, this is for our own use as a con­ven­ient way to count the num­ber of pri­ma­ry ti­tles. So far we’ve im­ple­ment­ed this style on­ly on the main ti­tle in­di­ces.

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Is there an in­dex of hymns by date writ­ten, by au­thor birth/death dates, etc.? Sorry, no. We don’t have the re­sourc­es to main­tain such in­dex­es.

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Why don’t you have my fa­vo­rite hymn, xxxxxx? If it’s a re­cent work, it’s prob­ab­ly co­py­righ­ted. Click here to see fre­quent­ly re­quest­ed hymns in that ca­te­gory. Al­so, if the ti­tle starts with A, An, or The, it’s in­dexed un­der the next word (that is, the in­dex­es ig­nore these short words at the be­gin­ning of ti­tles).

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Why are some lyr­ics dif­fer­ent than those in our hymn­al? Our sourc­es may have been dif­fer­ent than those your hymn­al used. His­tor­ic­al­ly, hymn­al com­pil­ers have tak­en lib­er­ties with lyr­ics, ar­range­ments, etc., caus­ing the (usu­al­ly mi­nor) dif­fer­enc­es you see. Ev­en we some­times make small chang­es to lyr­ics, though we keep such mod­i­fi­ca­tions to an ab­so­lute min­i­mum. The most com­mon rea­son is to make ar­cha­ic vo­cab­u­lary, spell­ing, or gram­mar clear­er to those whose pri­ma­ry lang­uage is not Eng­lish (due to the world wide reach of the In­te­rnet). How­ev­er, we don’t un­der­take such chang­es light­ly, & make our best ef­fort to re­tain the orig­in­al po­e­try.

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How do you choose the tunes? We nor­mal­ly use the tune found in the source where we found the lyr­ics. If the source doesn’t as­sign a tune, we pick one that seems to fit best (this is rare, though; the tune we use is al­most al­ways in a pub­lished hymn­al).

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Why don’t you list tune xxx as an al­ter­nate for hymn xxx? The al­ter­nate tune lists are not ex­haust­ive, & due to time & space con­straints, prob­ab­ly ne­ver will be. We simp­ly give some that we have seen pub­lished in var­i­ous mu­si­cal tra­di­tions. Al­so, please real­ize that what’s con­sid­ered a well known tune in one de­nom­in­a­tion can be vir­tu­al­ly un­known else­where.

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Can you ident­i­fy the people & scenes in the pic­tures? Usu­al­ly, but not al­ways, the au­thor of the lyr­ics is on the left, & the com­pos­er of the mu­sic is on the right. How­ev­er, this is some­times re­versed, de­pend­ing which way the pic­tures face. To see which is which, let the mouse point­er ling­er over the pic­ture, & the cap­tion will dis­play. If it doesn’t, up­grade to a more mod­ern brows­er. Most brows­ers al­so let you see the cap­tions when you print the page, or do a print pre­view.

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Why do some por­traits have gold-col­ored bor­ders? This is our way of re­cog­niz­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of peo­ple who have pub­lished one or more works on hymn­ol­o­gy or the stu­dy of church mu­sic (hymn­als & song books don’t count for this pur­pose).

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Do you have high re­so­lu­tion ver­sions of pic­tures? Sor­ry—the on­line imag­es are the on­ly ones avail­a­ble.

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Is your site avail­a­ble on CD-ROM? Sorry, afraid not. As a low budg­et pri­vate site, we don’t have time to run a pub­lish­ing bus­i­ness. Main­tain­ing this site is a full time job.

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How can I get the lyr­ics? Feel free to cut & paste any pub­lic do­main lyr­ics di­rect­ly from the screen. We don’t main­tain a lyr­ics ar­chive or da­ta­base, due to lack of time.

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How can I get the sheet mu­sic? We don’t pub­lish or sell mu­sic; the ma­ter­i­al on this site is from our hymn­al col­lect­ion. Most of it is out of print, so if you want a pa­per co­py, check used book stores or flea mark­ets. Or, you can simp­ly print the score.

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What are the NWC files I get when I click the score link? This is the sheet mu­sic, in Note­Wor­thy Com­pos­er for­mat. See our Down­loads page for fur­ther de­tails.

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What’s the dif­fer­ence be­tween PDF & NWC files?

1. PDF is a gen­er­al pur­pose file for­mat from Ado­be Sys­tems; the NWC for­mat, from Note­wor­thy Soft­ware, is spe­ci­fic­al­ly for sheet mu­sic. Both com­pa­nies of­fer free viewe­rs for their files.
2. You can’t change the PDF files, but—with the full ver­sion of Note­Wort­hy Com­pos­er—you can ed­it NWC files (i.e., change tem­po, lyr­ics or font size; fix err­ors; trans­pose keys or re-ar­range the mu­sic; cre­ate MI­DI files; add com­ments; etc).

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How can I tell where the mu­sic came from? The Note­Wor­thy Com­pos­er files show the sourc­es.

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Why don’t you use open source mu­sic no­ta­tion soft­ware in­stead of a com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tion? Though open source soft­ware would be ideal, we’ve not found any that is both quick & based on in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards. For ex­am­ple, we looked at Li­ly­Pond, but found its text ed­it­or in­put me­thod far too time con­sum­ing. For us to use open source soft­ware, it would need to meet these re­quire­ments:

1. It must have a graph­ic­al in­ter­face that can run on ma­ny op­er­at­ing systems (Ja­va might be a good choice).
2. It must use a file for­mat en­dorsed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Stand­ards Org­an­i­za­tion (ISO) or the World Wide Web Con­sor­ti­um (XML, for in­stance).
3. It must be able to im­port mul­ti­ple score files from other ap­pli­ca­tions. For ex­am­ple, we cur­rent­ly have thou­sands of files in Note­Wor­thy Com­pos­er for­mat, & would need a way to con­vert all of them at once (as op­posed to one at a time).

If such an open source ap­pli­ca­tion ex­ist­ed (or were de­vel­oped), we would con­sid­er it.

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Why don’t you have more con­temp­o­ra­ry mu­sic? Co­py­rights. We can’t post co­py­right­ed ma­ter­i­al with­out the co­py­right hold­er’s per­mis­sion, & we simp­ly don’t have the time to pur­sue per­mis­sion for all the co­pyright­ed ma­ter­ial out there. If there are fa­vor­ite hymns you’d like to see on­line, please get the co­py­right holder’s writ­ten per­mis­sion be­fore con­tact­ing us. Our Pop­ul­ar Hymns page has a list of co­py­right­ed ma­terial peo­ple oft­en re­quest. Bot­tom line: please do your home­work.

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When I click the link for an al­ter­nate tune, I get an er­ror mes­sage, or hear no­thing. Dif­fe­rent mu­sic might al­rea­dy be play­ing. Press your brows­er’s Stop but­ton to term­in­ate the mu­sic, then click the tune link again.

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Why does the mu­sic stop after one verse? We have to blame your brows­er for this one. Both Mi­cro­soft^® In­ter­net Ex­plo­rer & Fire­fox can play the mu­sic con­tin­u­ous­ly. If you want to hear mu­sic for more than one verse, con­sid­er us­ing one of these brows­ers.

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Why does the mu­sic sound chop­py? You might have an out­dat­ed soft­ware driv­er for your sound board, or other pro­grams may be steal­ing clock cy­cles. We re­com­mend clos­ing other pro­grams when list­en­ing to mu­sic.

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Why does the mu­sic sound tin­ny/like a harp­si­chord/weird? You prob­ab­ly have an out­dated soft­ware driv­er, or a low qual­i­ty sound board/speak­ers. It’s prob­ab­ly worth some time to fix the prob­lem. With the right set­up, your sound should be al­most CD-qual­i­ty.

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Why is the mu­sic so fast/slow? Speed is large­ly a mat­ter of per­son­al taste. If you want to change the tem­po, you can down­load Note­Wor­thy Com­pos­er^™ & create a MI­DI file to suit your needs.

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How do I de­com­press the ar­chived ZIP files? You need an UNZIP util­i­ty.

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Where can I get MI­DI files for other types of mu­sic? There are ma­ny Web sites spe­cial­iz­ing in MI­DI. Try look­ing on a search en­gine like Google.

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Can you show gui­tar chords? Sor­ry, we don’t have that cap­a­bil­i­ty. But there are other Web sites that spe­cial­ize in wor­ship mu­sic played by gui­tar.

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Why can’t I tell Au­to­play the num­ber of times to play the tune, in­stead of the length of time? This is due to a lack of sup­port in the Hy­per­text Mark­up Lang­uage (HTML) used on the World Wide Web. We en­cour­age us­ers to con­tact the World Wide Web Con­sor­ti­um & let them know about this con­cern. The more peo­ple they hear from, the more like­ly they are to fix the prob­lem in fu­ture ver­sions of HTML.

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Why isn’t my re­gion in your coun­try list? To be on the list, an area must have a coun­try code, as de­fined by the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­za­tion for Stand­ard­iz­a­tion.

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Our Web site links to the Cy­ber Hymn­al. Can you tell us when your pag­es change, so we can up­date our links? Sad­ly, no, due to lack of time. But our Re­cent Ad­di­tions page lists the new ma­ter­i­al we put on­line.

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Do you have any fam­i­ly his­to­ry on the au­thors or com­pos­ers? This is out­side our scope. We re­com­mend you vi­sit one of the ma­ny of gen­e­al­o­gy sites on the Web.

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Can I down­load your en­tire site? There are ma­ny prog­rams on the In­ter­net to down­load en­tire Web sites. For pag­es on our site which have re­strict­ive co­py­right no­tic­es, you should first ob­tain per­mis­sion from the co­py­right own­er.

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Can I play your mu­sic on a re­gu­lar CD player? Not di­rec­tly, but with some ef­fort & the right soft­ware you could con­vert the MIDI files to MP3 for­mat, then burn them onto a CD. You might see if your con­gre­ga­tion­ has a will­ing & able teen­ag­er, as that age group of­ten has ex­per­i­ence in CD cre­a­tion.

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Who are you? What’s your de­nom­in­a­tion? This is a pri­vate Web site, do­ing our best to ad­vance God’s king­dom, us­ing the gifts He gives us. We be­long to the same de­nom­in­a­tion as Je­sus: Christ­ian. — Dick Adams