Reviewed by Steve Husband

The Digital Songbook Series is proving to be an indispensable resource for today's worship leaders provided they have a PC with CDROM drive and printer. By focussing on the work of individual songwriters and worship leaders each digital songbook offers up a comprehensive guide to some of their most significant songs. This CD-ROM brings home easily accessed and printable resources material for 50 of the very best songs from the pen of Tim Hughes, one of the most engaging, innovative and appreciated songwriters of this time. These 50 songs represent the best known cuts from Tim's albums 'When Silence Falls', 'Happy Day', 'Here I Am' and 'Holding Nothing Back'. There are also songs from Tim's collaborations works with other songwriters and organisations like Compassion to complete the set. "Here I Am To Worship", "Beautiful One", "Consuming Fire" they're all here alongside more recent songs, like "God Of Justice", "Give Us Your Courage" and "Happy Day". From a practical point of view the CD-ROM is very compact compared to printed books thus giving easy storage and making it easy to use. Inserting the CD-ROM into the computer opens up a menu in your internet browser which gives you a list of all the song titles. Against each song you have the choice to open the song with sheet music, chord charts, or word masters. When you make your choice the version you have selected is opened in PDF format within your internet explorer and can be printed A4 size ready for use. For musicians who arrange music in order of performance this is perfect, allowing a fluid transition from song-to-song without the constant changing of books during worship.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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The Digital Songbook Series is an indispensable resource for today’s worship leaders. By focussing on the work of individual songwriters and worship leaders each Digital Songbook offers up a comprehensive guide to some of the most significant songs of our time. Each CD-ROM brings home easily accessed and printable sheet music, chord charts and word masters for fifty of the very best songs within each artist’s back catalogue.

Tim Hughes has quickly become one of the most engaging, innovative and appreciated songwriters of his day. It’s easy to see how, with songs like Here I Am To Worship, Beautiful One and Consuming Fire coming early on in his career. But he’s just kept on getting better, with God Of Justice, Give Us Your Courage and Happy Day all shaping the Church over recent years.