Virtual Songbooks

A virtual songbook is like a physical songbook except that any song can be transposed and/or otherwise customized in a number of ways. Virtual Songbooks provide transposable, customizable sheet music and MIDI files. Here is a list of many of the customizations generally available:

  • Traditional SATB 4 part harmony as found in hardbound hymnals or melody only;
  • Transpose to any key, up or down;
  • Scale the music and/or verses to almost any size and quickly reformat;
  • Reorder verses and/or delete any verses --- display/print just the verses you want;
  • Chord names or guitar fret diagrams or none;
  • 1, 2, 3, all or no verses under the notes or after the hymn in 1 or 2 column format;
  • Verses only (no music) with optional chord names/fret diagrams;
  • Print the music as chord charts in any key (verse and chordname fonts and sizes are user specifiable);
  • Export verses only to an ascii (text) file;
  • Extract any combination of parts, optionally with verses;
  • Display the music using shape notes or standard round noteheads;
  • Display the music using tablature for guitar, banjo, or any other stringed instrument;
  • Change play tempos and specify number of times to repeat playing;
  • Specify different general MIDI instruments for the treble and bass clefs;
  • When playing more than once, specify different instruments to be used for each repetition.
  • Generally virtual songs can be loaded into MusicEase/MusicEase Professional for complete editing.

The Christian Virtual Hymnal is a virtual songbook containing several thousand hymns plus Handel's Messiah.

Free Christmas Carols is a free virtual songbook of 10 traditional Christmas carols: click here for the Mac version, and here for the Windows version.