How Prelude Works

Prelude is intended to help all the musicians who plan music for worship, by providing a large and easy-to-use library, and simple, intuitive planning tools.

Users

You can have as many Users on your Prelude account as you’d like. Since Prelude is intended for music planners there’s no need to put every choir member on your account, but do add the leaders of the various ensembles at your church, plus any solo musicians (organ/piano, for instance) who plan their own portions of worship.

Finding & Downloading Music

On the Planner Page you’ll find both the Prelude Library and the planning tools you need for music planning. The Library Search tools include simple search boxes for Title/Theme/Keywords, and for Composers. In addition, you can refine your search using a whole array of Advanced Search boxes. When viewing your search results just click on the title of any musical work to preview it and see all the background data about it. Click on the Get Music button to see what files are available for downloading.

Points

Points allow you to “buy” copies of music from Prelude. 
Your Prelude subscription includes a quantity of Points (your current Point balance is shown at the top of every page of Prelude). Every work in Prelude’s Library is assigned a number of Points per copy. Many works in the Library can be downloaded for zero Points (hymns, for instance), but many other works require that you use some of your Points in order to download them. When you click on the “Get Music” button on any work in Search Results or in Plan Details you’ll see how many points per copy each downloadable file for any work requires.

You can buy more Points at any time by going to the Account tab. clicking on Account Information, and using the green “buy more points” button near the bottom of the page. Don’t run out!

View a helpful tutorial videohere.

Plans

Prelude Plans help you be organized and efficient, and they’re really simple. Create one from the Home Page or from the Planner Page. Name a Plan whatever you want. A Plan can be dated – for a specific worship service on a particular day – or it can be undated – ideas for a season, for instance. Just drag music into a Plan – from Search Results or from another Plan. Then, within the Plan, drag the musical works into the sequence you want. Done.

From there you can download a list of the works within the Plan: this is what can go in your bulletin or e-newsletter. You can download any work within the Plan by using the “get music” button to see what’s available, the points needed, and even to link to a store to purchase physical copies.

Using Prelude Downloads

Prelude provides you with the music you need, right away. If you use points to ‘purchase’ copies (of an anthem for instance), you’re only allowed to print the number of copies that you entered. This quantity will appear at the bottom of every page of your download, just to remind you. Don’t make more copies than that – it’s rude to the composer and illegal as well.

If you download something that doesn’t require you to spend any of your points, you still have to be aware of whether you’re allowed to print multiple copies of that work. Prelude helps you by providing permission request letters when they’re needed, so watch for those in your download. Yes, you have to do this.

What Browsers to Use

Prelude is configured to work best with Internet Explorer 9, Chrome 12+, or Safari 5.1+. We do not recommend using Firefox.