What You Will Find Here

Here you will find computerized versions of the songs from our songbook “Songs of the Kingdom”.   (Songs from other Church of Christ song books, or original works from contributing artists are welcome here as well.)   There are many excellent web sites that provide on-line files of church music.   So what makes this site different?   First, the songs here are the exact same versions that are in our songbook.   Secondly, we have taken the songs and produced separate versions, one for each of the vocal parts: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass.   This allows you to practice these songs and to learn the parts even if you are not a musician, or don’t have access to a piano to figure out the parts.   Actually, five files are provided for each song – one for each of the four parts and one that contains all four parts.   The songs are not sung, but are rendered instrumentally by the computer in a form that makes following and matching the notes with your voice as easy as possible.

These songs are provided in “Noteworthy” format (file extension NWC).   Noteworthy Composer is a software tool for editing and publishing musical scores.   It is much more powerful than MIDI, perhaps the most well-known computer-based musical file system.   You do not need to have the Noteworthy Composer software in order to play these files.   Noteworthy provides several methods to play the files – two are free!   Just click on the link to go to the web site – these downloads are listed at the bottom right of the page.   Unfortunately, Mac OS and Linux are not supported at this time.

How You Use It

There are two recommended ways to play the files.   The first is to download and install the free NoteWorthy Composer Player - or viewer, as they call it.   The advantage of this is that it is free.   The disadvantage is that it does not give you very much control of the playback.   But for simply listening to the parts of the music it is quite sufficient.  You will have to download the individual files to be able to play the different voices, or parts, of the song because the viewer does not give you that control.  You have to use files in which the voices are already turned on or off.

A second method is to purchase (then download and install) the actual NoteWorthy Composer (Editor).   This cost about $40, but the advantage is that you gain full control over playing the music.   In fact, you don’t even need to download the different vocal parts (soprano, alto, tenor, & bass) because the editor allows you to independently turn the different voices on and off using only the main file for the song.  You have full control and can play just certain voices and certain sections of the song.   Additionally, you can enter songs of your own from any available source.  There is a little bit of learning involved, but it is not bad.

There is yet another free method to play the files, but we do not suggest it for use with this web site.  NoteWorthy supplies a browser plug-in that can play the files, however, it does not work in the latest version of Internet Explorer (v7) - although it does work in FireFox and Netscape.  More importantly, it does not correctly play some of the features in the songs.   Therefore, rather than frustrate you, we suggest you use either the viewer or the editor.

Once you install either the viewer or the player, you are ready to go.  The best part is that the song is displayed for you to view, and it will highlight the notes and lyrics as the song is played!   This is a distinct advantage over playing an ordinary MIDI file.  The display feature is an added bonus and can be used with a projection screen computer monitor for group instruction!