"I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also." 1 Corinthians 14:15

Welcome to the Spiritual Songs Web Guide!

The Spiritual Songs Web Guide is designed to help you gain a better grasp of both the words and music of the Spiritual Songs Hymnbook. We are starting off with only a handful of songs (on the right), but we will be adding more!

Know the Words

"Understandest what thou [singest]?" You should! Is there a word or phrase in a hymn that you don't completely understand? Many of the words and phrases used by the hymn-writers are not in common usage today. So the authors intended meaning is not always easily understood. The first purpose of the Spiritual Songs Web Guide is to help you sing with understanding.

Help us! The next time you come across a hymn that isn't completely clear to you (you're not alone!), send us a note and we will try to incorporate it into the ever-growing Web Guide. Even better, provide us with an explanation of a word or phrase that you think would be beneficial to others.

Know the Music

To borrow a phrase from an old Coca-Cola commercial we'd "like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony". But instead, we'll just help a few saints sing a little better. You ask "How can I do that without reading music?"

Well, to help us all learn a little harmony the Web Guide allows you to hear, via midi sound, each of the singing parts separately, and you can listen as often as you like. Just click on the soprano, alto, tenor, or bass of a given hymn and you will hear that voice played distinctively along with other parts. Not everyone is a soprano! By listening to your part you can become familiar with the music that was specifically written for your gender and voice range.

Praying that the Spiritual Songs Web Guide is useful in increasing your understanding of the songs we sing,

Randy Stephenson www.inthebeloved.org

Portions of this Web Guide have been lifted, with generous permission, from Stem Publishing's Spiritual Songs CD. This disk is a reasonably priced treasure. We highly recommend it. This is from the Stem website:

The contents of the CD give tremendous value as there are 1,000 hymns, 500 of which are directly linked to the music. Any hymn can be found from any word or its metre, author, or tune composer, the music can then be played and the score viewed. Parts can be extracted and played, and individual hymns printed for hymn sheets etc. The quality of the sound will depend on the sound system on the computer, and it can be changed in terms of instruments, speed, pitch, etc.

In the 1881 Little Flock edition, although there are not direct links to the music, any of the hymn metres can be browsed and a relevant tune chosen and played. This also applies to the evangelical hymns, but to a lesser extent because the metres have less in common with the Spiritual Songs collection.

The Thematic Index is a remarkable asset and well worth a little effort to understand how to use it. The fact that the Thematic Index, History and Biographies are searched simultaneously with the hymns gives the opportunity to explore these aspects at any time.