Michael Lehr's Links to other Christian Music and Worship Sites (last updated 26 June 1998)
This is a more personal page than the other Reflection pages - it draws only on a year's web and MIDI experience of just one person. I hope, however, that that will change as the Christian worship music web community continues to develop. These are all links that I have found particularly valuable. They are not intended as an all-embracing summary of the Christian Web, as many of the other sites already have substantial link pages. It may expand a bit further, as I find other sites I want to recommend very strongly, but I think I ought to spend most of my time on the music. The links are divided, in some cases arbitrarily, into six sections: KEY WORSHIP SITES PERSONAL SITES CONCERNED WITH WORSHIP MUSIC KEY MIDI SITES COPYRIGHT INFORMATION OTHER CHRISTIAN MUSIC SITES CHRISTIAN RESOURCE DIRECTORIES KEY WORSHIP SITES Worship Resource Center This is an excellent site! However, the home page takes me for ever to load (cluttered up with external links to awards banners). So I go direct to the worship links page. There is also a useful Songsearch database. The Lighthouse electronic Magazine's Christian Music Resources Page Worship is a relatively small element here, but there are some interesting and wide-ranging links. UK Online Worship Net This site was set up by Andrew Merrett in February 1997 and was slow to get off the ground. Now, however, it's well worth a visit - good articles and links Christian Songwriters Group This site has really developed over the past year. It's related to a mailing list I'm part of (details at the site) for Christian songwriters to share thoughts and critique one another's work. There are some excellent song-writing links, including an on-line rhyming dictionary, on- line thesaurus and music shareware. PERSONAL WORSHIP MUSIC SITES Barry's Worship Songs Barry Adams works with the Worship Resource Center and has his own growing site of original worship songs (with MIDIs and gif scores). You'll find a version of his "My strength shall be renewed" here on the 'Reflection' site. Also lots of wide-ranging links. Songs of Praise by Gilberto Barreto and Friends Gilberto is a gifted singer-songwriter from Brazil, who worked in Texas with Elton Smith for quite a time, with a particular ministry in prisons. Elton created MIDIs of many of his songs, with gif scores as well, which are freely available for downloading. Although Gilberto had to return to Brazil earlier this year, Elton has kept the site and broadened it to include music he's now co-writing with other writers. Larry's Songs of Praise and Worship Larry Holder's major music offering is a MIDI and sheet music complete children's musical - "God Cares For You" (zip download size reduced from 764Kb to only about 170Kb since changing from jpg to gif scores). Some nice music, and it seems to hang together well. He's been working closely with Elton Smith over the past six months or so and you'll find quite a few of their collaborations here. Eric Guigere's Music Eric is a Roman Catholic choir leader at the University of Waterloo (somewhere in Canada). Coming from a liturgical background myself, I like his psalm refrains (simple MIDI and gif scores), but it seems that after a burst of activity he stopped putting up new material in 1995. Robert's Homepage of Praise and Worship Christian Music Robert Loh has done an immense amount of work to create and archive simple MIDIs of most of the standard worship and praise songs to help fellow Christians learn them. Sadly, he didn't initially get copyright clearances and has had to take them off-line for the moment, but will still send individual files from the list by email. MIDI SITES MIDI Technical Fanatic's Brainwashing Center (Jeff Glatt) A wonderful site with just about everything you could want to know about MIDI - from trouble-shooting soundcards to different ways of creating slurs by manually modifying MIDI events. It's hard to comprehend how anyone could find the time to make so much knowledge freely available. Zap's Music on the Net Tutorial Zap (Håkan Andersson) explains the pros and cons of MIDI, MOD and RealAudio, and how to add MIDI and streaming RealAudio to webpages. Standard MIDI Files on the Net - Sacred Charles Kelly does an excellent job in researching and providing lists of links to websites with standard midi files, all of which he checks personally (this particular page gives links to sites with Christian MIDI files). He has also prepared some useful pages relating to copyright and the Internet (see below). Enhancing MIDI Recordings A good series of articles by Dr Gene Confrey, a jazz pianist, linking MIDI technicalities with traditional musical practicalities. It's a service provided by the Winjammer site. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Copyright has been and remains a vexing issue for Christians. The Church copyright licence has provided a fair and workable solution to many of the problems, but the Internet has raised a host of new ones. In putting a MIDI file of a favourite song on a homepage aren't you just sharing with friends? The answer is a clear "no" even if that's what it feels like: effectively you're republishing copyright material and broadcasting it over a public communication system. Some publishers, sensibly in my opinion, give permission for their material to be made available for demonstration purposes, but trust you to abide by any restrictions they make. Others, however, are totally paranoid. Copyright, MIDI Files and the Internet Charles Kelly's pages mentioned above - he stresses a) that they are still very much drafts for comment/correction, and b) he is not a lawyer and is not seeking to give authoritative advice. Christian Copyright Licensing International The people who handle the Church Copyright Licence. The on-line facilities on the site are currently mainly for North America, but there are email links for daughter organisations around the world, and a clear explanation of what the licence allows and does not allow. The UK branch has now set up its own site. There is also a searchable online database which provides publisher and writer (but not publication)information. OTHER CHRISTIAN SITES OF RELEVANCE (to me!) Crossroads Church, Branson Missouri A lively church site, using interesting MIDIs of contemporary music in worship, eight available for download (but doubtful that the copyright implications have been sorted out) More to come in due course. CHRISTIAN RESOURCE DIRECTORIES You will find a whole host of links to various Christian resource directories in alphabetical order at Churchnet. The major Christian directories are there (CrossSearch, CrossNet, Goshen etc) as well as many others. The following is a direct search link to the Goshen directory, which has 3,000+ entries. in: Christian Web Directory Church Directory E-mail Addresses Exact Phrase Any Keywords All Keywords Back to Reflection Main Page
This is a more personal page than the other Reflection pages - it draws only on a year's web and MIDI experience of just one person. I hope, however, that that will change as the Christian worship music web community continues to develop.
These are all links that I have found particularly valuable. They are not intended as an all-embracing summary of the Christian Web, as many of the other sites already have substantial link pages. It may expand a bit further, as I find other sites I want to recommend very strongly, but I think I ought to spend most of my time on the music. The links are divided, in some cases arbitrarily, into six sections:
Worship Resource Center
Barry's Worship Songs
Although Gilberto had to return to Brazil earlier this year, Elton has kept the site and broadened it to include music he's now co-writing with other writers.
Eric Guigere's Music
Some publishers, sensibly in my opinion, give permission for their material to be made available for demonstration purposes, but trust you to abide by any restrictions they make. Others, however, are totally paranoid.
Copyright, MIDI Files and the Internet
The UK branch has now set up its own site.
There is also a searchable online database which provides publisher and writer (but not publication)information.
More to come in due course.
