Basic Tools

CCLI
CCLI provides churches with copyright licensing for a huge collection of copyrighted songs, without having to obtain individual permission from numerous publishers. Most of the annual license fee (calculated on the basis of the church's size) is distributed as royalties to the copyright holders. Songwriters may also list their songs with CCLI, and receive royalties when churches report using their songs.

CCLI's web site includes lists of the top 25 songs for the English-speaking nations, and a searchable songlist of 78,000 songs in its database, "SongSelect Online". The general version provides song titles, key lines, authors and some publishing information.
CCLI license holders may also purchase the "SongSelect Lyric Service" This service includes searchable texts for some 60,000 songs, thousands of 30-second song samples, and tools for downloading song texts or printing the texts (with complete copyright information) to overheads, for computer projection, bulletin inserts or songbooks. (See Song Select for more information.

Note: CCLI only licenses the not-for-profit use of music. It does not provide the music.

Worship Assistant is a software program to help you to organize song lists. It also provide search capabilities allows for easily importing the "Worship Song Database" from praisenet.com. (registration fee: $65)

If much of your music is from one publisher, you may consider purchasing a similar program from Integrity or Vineyard Music Each includes the lyrics, chords and information for the publisher's own songs.

Noteworthy Composer
Music notation programs do not have to be expensive. Noteworthy Composer is a very useful program that allows you to make clean leadsheets (and much more) very quickly. It can quickly import and convert midi-files to sheet music. A shareware version may be downloaded for evaluation; the fully enabled version is just $39 to register.

Psalms Resource Index

Cyberhymnal includes over 1600 hymns (lyrics and midi files), information about the authors and composers, indexes by topics and tunes.

Digital Hymnal (Seventh Day Adventist) includes lyrics, and midi-arrangments. A brief table of information on each hymn includes a topical classifcation and list of Scriptural allusions. (So far about 150 of 700 hymns have been completed. The songs are listed by title and hymnbook order, though indexes by topic, author and composer are planned.)

provides lyrics and midi-files for hymns for the United Methodist hymnal. The hymns are indexed by tune, title and hymnbook number. The following Search function is included, which allows searching by a various fields, including title, author, tune, meter and phrases. In addition, a multi-site index allows a "Big Search" by title for hymns located on other web sites. (This site also includes the UM lectionary readings with suggested hymns to use with each Scripture.)

Search full texts for: Match phrase All words Any word Sort names Sort numbers

The Lutheran Hymnal Midi Project--Online Hymnal. Includes midi-files sequenced by Richard Jordan (please observe his restrictions on its use). A convenient zip file of the entire TLH may be downloaded (See here for information.)

Gregorian Chant Homepage (Links) Many useful links on the study and performance of Gregorian chant.

The Gregorian Association includes a brief, helpful history of Gregorian chant.

History of Worship focusing especially on the history of "Church Song," from a Lutheran perspective.

For more, see our Hymn History Index and our Index of Hymn Stories

Index of CCM Artists lists Christian artists' webpages.

Integrity Integrity's online music store, as well as discussion forums, testimonies and information about their artists.

Maranatha Maranatha's products and workshops, as well as some book recommendations and brief articles on worship.

Vineyard Music Links to the various national sites of the Vineyard Music Group.

PDI Ministries "PDI is an association of churches committed to glorifying God through church-planting. We also produce a variety of resources to equip the entire church, including study books, videos, drama scripts, and audio-cassette messages on a broad range of topics. And PDI's music - an unexpected but natural outgrowth of our worship as churches - has received worldwide recognition, due first to our recordings in Integrity's Hosanna! and Word's Heart Cry series of worship albums, and now, through our own Come & Worship tapes and CDs."

Worship Together from gospelcom.net.

Reflection Christian Music Resources is Michael Lehr's site of "proven guitar and keyboard-based contemporary music for Christian worship in sheet music and MIDI format (either unpublished or not widely known) made available as efficiently and effectively as possible."

Christian Songwriters Webring: Statistics This is a list of the 25 most active sites in the Webring, and thus is a brief directory to several smaller contemporary music sites.

Worship Map Don't forget to check out the index to the original lyrics and music on THIS site!

Real Player, available for free download, will allow you to listen to streaming audio recordings available on many of the sites listed above, as well as the following.

CD Jukebox allows you to listen to entire CD's from many contemporary artists, using the Real Player.

For online "Praise and Worship" radio station check out the Praise Broadcasting Network or "Praise Until Dawn" on Worship Radio

Or listen to Crosswalk which includes a current 'playlist'