About
About Us
Hi! We're volunteers who work with the Awana® “Truth & Training” (3rd-6th grade) program at New Life Church in Gladstone, Oregon, USA. Awana is a Christian kids' club with a heavy emphasis on Scripture memorization, and we decided that the best way to help kids memorize Bible verses is to set them to music. It turns out lots of other people have had the same idea, so we've been assembling a collection of the best verse songs we can find - either our own compositions, or songs we've borrowed from other people.
Other Verses
It would be cool to add the Gold Extra Credit verses someday, but for now we are concentrating on the regular memory verses used by the Awana T&T program. If you're looking for verses that aren't on our list, check out our links page to see what other people are doing. You can also check out our news page to track our progress.
Audio Recordings
Most songs only have instrumental tracks available, however we are working to add vocal tracks. When downloading a song you'll be presented with all the available options for that song; if the option you're looking for isn't listed, it's because we haven't done it yet. It takes time and equipment and people and talent to create something that doesn't sound awful; if you have those things and are interested in helping out, we'd love to hear from you!
Versions / Translations
Currently all our song lyrics are from NIV '84. If that's the translation you're using, great! If you're using something else, you might be able to make some simple adjustments to make our songs work. For songs we didn't write, be sure to check out the original version, as it may have been originally written for a different translation and we adapted it to fit the NIV.
Someday, we may begin offering some songs in different translations, and you'll be able to pick the version that works best for you. But today is not that day. Remember, we're volunteers, and we're primarily doing this to help out our own Awana ministry, which is using NIV '84. We're open to the idea, but at the moment we don't have time to do it.
Keys
We've tried to set everything in the most appropriate key for the vocal range of most children - mostly between middle C (C4) to high C (C5), only extending beyond that range when the melody has wider than a full octave range. If you're playing guitar, and the key we've selected isn't a good guitar key, we've transposed the lead sheet into a lower key so you can play it with a capo.
Copyrights / Licensing
Although the majority of songs in our collection we wrote ourselves, we've also chosen some songs written by other people. In some cases, the songwriters have graciously allowed us to include their songs in our collection for you to use. We encourage you to follow the links to the original versions, and support the songwriters if you can!
Unfortunately, there are a few that we haven't gotten permission to distribute - in most cases because the copyright owner is a commercial publishing company that we don't have the time or money to deal with. At some point we might write our own replacement songs for these verses, but for now you're on your own. Sorry!
Lyrics taken from the NIV® are under copyright too! We have received special permission from Biblica to use the text of these verses in the New International Version, specifically using the 1984 translation so we can match the Awana curriculum.
Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™
Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Technical Stuff
Sheet music is available in PDF format (US Letter size), and should open in whatever software you normally use to open PDF files. We also make the sheet music available for download in MuseScore version 3 format (.mscz), and we're starting to add MusicXML (.mxl) as well.
Note that the .mscz files will not open in MuseScore 2, so make sure you've upgraded. Also, different minor versions of MuseScore 3 seem to do the layout slightly differently, so depending on which version we were using when the file was created, it may not look quite right when you open it, and of course the MusicXML file may come out looking quite different when you import it. If you just want to view or print the sheet music as-is, you should use the PDF; if you want to make changes, we suggest using the PDF as a reference in case anything got mangled. Let us know if you encounter problems.
Audio recordings are available in AAC, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.
Our web site uses newfangled technologies like HTML 5 audio, and may not be fully compatible with some browsers. We've tested with Safari, Firefox and Chrome.
Currently we're using Band-in-a-Box® software to create the instrumental accompaniment tracks for our songs. If you've got the time, talent and equipment to record something better, we'd love to hear from you!