HymnPlayer

What is HymnPlayer?

HymnPlayer is an MP3 player that has been specifically targeted at playing backing tracks for congregational singing during a church service.

When my church found itself without an organist we bought some organ backing tracks on CD from Amazon and used them. It became apparent that this was not without its problems because the CD player could only handle a maximum of 19 tracks, and swapping CDs and cueing the next track during the service was error prone.

I started looking at the various MP3 players, both hardware and software, that are available and realised that none of them were particularly suited to the task. It was at this point that I decided that I would develop one from scratch to make the preparation of a setlist and the playing of the tracks a simple as possible for the user.

HymnPlayer has been developed to run on Microsoft Windows 7 and above. I have no plans to port it to any other platform.

Features

HymnPlayer employs a simple user interface that can be easily mastered.

The PlayList can be setup prior to the service, which reduces pressure during the service.

Once the Playlist has been setup and set to play from the beginning of the list, the user need only press the spacebar to play the next song when it is required.

The PlayList may be modified while a song is not playing or paused, which will permit last minute changes.

Skipping a song in the PlayList is easily done.

The HymnList can be sorted, filtered and searched.

When you click on a hymn its filepath is copied to the clipboard and also shown on the screen just above the HymnList.

HymnPlayer remembers the PlayList when you close it. When you open it again, the last PlayList is re-instated.

An Administrator Manual is included to assist in setting up HymnPlayer and the mp3 backing tracks

A User Manual is included that explains how to use HymnPlayer.

I have friends that are using HymnPlayer and they are still speaking to me!