From LSB Documentation

A Hymn in Lutheran Service Builder is any hymn or song that is used as part of a service outline. A hymn contains a lot of background information and is constructed to be a flexible as possible when planning your services. Each hymn is an entry in a large database intended to assist you in planning your services and displaying the hymns properly in your service output.

All hymns contain the following information in Lutheran Service Builder:

• A title.
• The complete text of the hymn, broken into stanzas.
• The melody line of the hymn and one or more sets of graphics for the text of each stanza of the hymn (limited to the first four or five stanzas for many hymns)
• The name of the hymn's tune.
• The meter of the hymn's tune.
• The key in which the hymn is played.
• A MIDI preview of the melody of the hymn.
• The names of the authors and composers of the hymn.
• The names of the copyright holders of the hymn.
• Scripture citations sourcing each stanza of the hymn.
• A set of topical categories referenced within the hymn.
• The list of occasions of the Church Year on which the hymn is normally suggested or used.
• The usage history of the hymn within your installation of Lutheran Service Builder.

That's a lot of information. We're going to show you how to select hymns to use within your service and how best to utilize this information in order to find additional resources or make connections to other resources within Lutheran Service Builder.

Contents 1 Selecting a Hymn for Use within a Service 1.1 Selecting a Suggested Hymn 1.2 Searching for a Hymn 1.3 Browsing for a Hymn 1.4 Using or Creating a Custom Hymn 2 Using the Hymn Preview 2.1 Text and Melody Previews 2.2 Listening to MIDI Previews 2.3 The Hymn Info View 2.4 Recording Notes on Hymns 2.5 Viewing Hymn Statistics 3 More on the Hymn Information View

Selecting a Hymn for Use within a Service

The most basic operation you'll be performing with Hymns will be placing them into Services for use, so let's cover that aspect of Hymns first.

When you first plan a Service, normally no Hymns will be selected. You'll instead have a bunch of Hymn placeholders that show warning triangles to indicate to you that a hymn has not yet been selected.

In order to select a hymn, click on the hymn in the service you want to fill with a selection. It will highlight and the center and right-hand displays will change to indicate your selection.

Selecting a Suggested Hymn

The default display in the center will show you the hymn Suggestions for the current occasion in the Church Year. These Suggestions are sourced from the Hymn Selection Guide and were chosen as part of the Lutheran Service Book project by the Commission on Worship. They are broken into three categories.

The Hymn of the Day is the hymn chosen to most closely parallel the Holy Gospel reading appointed for the occasion. Occasionally, more than one hymn is offered for this suggestion when the same text uses more than one tune or when a secondary option is provided for ease of singing. It is normally used in the Hymn of the Day slot provided either immediately before or immediately after the Sermon.

The Hymns for the Readings are related to one or more of the three appointed Readings for the occasion in the Church Year and are drawn from a broader selection of hymns.

Other Suggested Hymns are suggestions provided for yet wider use on a given day and also include suggested hymns for the distribution of Holy Communion. These hymns utilize the full range of hymn and song provided with the Lutheran Service Book collection of resources.

You can click on any Hymn in the list to select it and view its preview in the right-hand display. You can use the tabs above the hymn preview to change your view between the hymn's text, melody, information, personal notes, and statistics. If you want to listen to the hymn's melody as a MIDI preview, you can click on the playhead button immediately to the right of the hymn's title in the preview area.

Once you have found the hymn you would like to use, simply drag-and-drop it on top of the Hymn placeholder in your service. You will see the content appear under the Hymn caption, and your hymn is now fixed within the service.

Searching for a Hymn

If you'd rather search for a particular hymn and not use the suggestions offered for you, you can easily do so by clicking the Search tab at the top of the center display.

You can then type your search criteria into the box that will appear just below the tabs, or open the Advanced Search controls by clicking on the + symbol to the right. Builder will take your search terms and attempt to find the closest matches to your search.

Because you have a Hymn element highlighted to the left, the search will automatically be constrained to hymns as results. You can search for any information related to a hymn, such as a word or phrase, or even a tune name or composer. You can also search by hymn number by simply typing the number into the search field. (For more information on searching, please see Searching for Worship Resources.)

Once you have located the hymn you wish to use, as before, drag-and-drop it on top of the Hymn placeholder within your outline. The hymn will be set as part of your Service and will be integrated into your final output.

Browsing for a Hymn

To view the complete list of hymns available to you in your installation of Lutheran Service Builder, click the Browse tab at the top of the center display. The list will be presented for you in categorical order and you can browse through the list to find the hymn you are looking for.

The hymns are roughly in numerical order, though hymns with numbers higher than 966 (those hymns that appear only in Lutheran Service Builder) appear grouped with their topical categories. These categories are presented in the order in which they appear in Lutheran Service Book.

If you have entered any custom hymns into Lutheran Service Builder, they will appear at the bottom of the list, under the Lutheran Service Book corpus. You can also select these hymns if you desire.

Simply click on the hymns in the list to preview them and drag-and-drop one over to the Service outline when you wish to place it within your Service.

Using or Creating a Custom Hymn

To view the custom hymns you have created in the past, you can click on the Write My Own tab at the top of the center display. This will recall for you the list of hymns you have entered into My Worship Resources. You can simply select a hymn from this list and drag-and-drop it into your service to add it to the outline.

If you wish to make changes to your custom hymns, you may do so here, or you can even create a new one by clicking on the New Element button in the Toolbar. (For more information on creating custom elements, please see the article Creating and Managing Custom Worship Resources.)

Using the Hymn Preview

There's much more information available to you when using the Hymn preview area. Let's take a look at some of this information now and see what's available to you when searching for or previewing a hymn. Much of it is very useful to you when planning a service or when attempting to discover more about a hymn that has been suggested.

Go to the list of Suggestions for a Hymn and click on one of the results to bring up the preview to the right.

Text and Melody Previews

For every hymn in Lutheran Service Builder that is included as part of the Lutheran Service Book corpus, we have included both the entire text of the hymn as well as a melody graphic and associated text graphics to provide you with the most comprehensive resource possible for presenting hymns to your congregation in print and in presentations.

You can toggle between these two previews by clicking the appropriate tab above the hymn preview on the right-hand side. You will see either the complete list of text stanzas belonging to a hymn, or the complete melody graphic set that is available for that hymn. No hymns included with Lutheran Service Builder contain four-part setting graphics.

Please note that not all hymns have melody graphics for every stanza. If you see a different number of stanzas in text versus in melody, then only the stanzas showing in the melody preview will print with the melody graphic. Additional stanzas will display in your bulletin or presentation as text stanzas underneath the appropriate melody stanzas.

You'll also see the appropriate statement regarding copyright and reprint rights displayed at the bottom of the hymn.

Listening to MIDI Previews

Every hymn in Lutheran Service Builder that originates in Lutheran Service Book contains a MIDI-based preview of the hymn melody. You can use this preview to determine your (or your congregation's) familiarity with a particular hymn or to gauge its ease of singing for use in your congregational setting.

To do so, simply click on the playhead icon that appears to the right of the hymn title above the preview area. The preview will begin playing immediately. You can pause it at any time by clicking the playhead a second time.

The hymn is played at a suggested tempo to give you a not just a preview of the melody, but also of the "feel" of the hymn.

The Hymn Info View

You can view the Hymn Info at any time by clicking on the Info tab above the preview area. This brings up a display of the database information collected regarding the hymn you have currently selected.

Because there's so much information here and so much you can do with it, we're going to cover it in a larger section just below in this same article.

Recording Notes on Hymns

If you have usage notes or other reminders you would like to save along with the hymn itself in your Lutheran Service Builder databases, you can click on the Notes tab to bring up a text entry area in which you may type any personal notes you would like to store along with the hymn entry itself. These notes will stay with your installation of Lutheran Service Builder and will be accessible to you in the future.

You do not need to click a "save" button or perform any other operation for your notes to be attached permanently to the hymn.

Viewing Hymn Statistics

To take a brief look at statistics related to the use of the currently selected hymn, click the Stats tab at the top of the preview area.

Lutheran Service Builder presents you with a brief overview of your usage of the selected hymn. You will see both the number of times the hymn has been used in the history of your usage of Builder, and the number of times you have used the hymn within the last 12 months (rolling).

Underneath those displays is a month-to-month calendar you can use to determine how many times in recent months and on what days you have previously used the hymn. You can flip through the calendar months by using the buttons at the top. The single arrow controls move one month in each direction, while the double arrow controls move one year in each direction.

More on the Hymn Information View

When you've clicked on the Info tab at the top of the preview area, there's a lot of information displayed for you to help you intelligently choose hymns and integrate them into your Services and your practices.

Let's go through them one group at a time to help you understand how the information is presented and how to use it.

The Author and/or Composer information gives you names, attributions, and birth/death dates for all persons who wrote either the text or the music for the selected hymn.

Copyright information displays for you the entity or person who currently controls the copyright to the selected work. This information is occasionally subject to change and can be updated in future editions of Lutheran Service Builder. If the hymn's copyright has expired, it is listed as "Public domain". For any hymn with an extant copyright, you must obtain permission from the copyright holder or from a licensing program in order to legally reprint the work.

The Tune is named for you, along with the meter used and the key in which the tune appears for that particular hymn within Lutheran Service Builder. If you want to find an alternate tune to use with the hymn (for instance, you may want to teach a new hymn text that is set to an unfamiliar tune), you can search for other hymns sharing the same meter automatically by clicking the appropriate link below this listing. Please note that Lutheran Service Builder is unable to combine the melody line of one hymn with the text of another. We recommend you print the hymn as text-only and indicate the tune used with a note in your bulletin or presentation.

Next, the Topical categories used to classify the hymn are listed. Some hymns may be assigned to more than one category. Next to each category is a Search link that will automatically execute a search for other hymns sharing that categorical assignment.

The largest portion of data given as part of the hymn's information is in the Related scripture display. Each hymn has been researched and sourced to include multiple Scripture references for each stanza of a hymn to help you find the appropriate hymn for a specific need. Each citation listed here has two links immediately to the right. Clicking on the View link will display a pop-up dialog containing the Scripture text for the given citation, which clicking the Search link will open a search query for the citation and present you with additional resources that match that reference.

The final section of the Hymn Info view is a list of Suggested on: occasions in the Church Year, which details for you the liturgical observances on which the selected hymn is part of any of the Suggestions. All three years of the Three-Year Lectionary are included, as is the One-Year Lectionary. The current year of the Three-Year Lectionary is marked to serve as a quick reminder.