You can add your own music to Gloria. It can be as simple as a single song or as extensive as an entire hymnbook. This manual will give you the basics on the steps involved to get you up and running as quickly as possible, and will also explain the finer points of creating and organizing your music to get the best possible result from Gloria for your congregation.
Gloria can be used in many contexts, such as choir practice, stage productions, and personal listening. This manual will focus on Gloria’s typical use in congregational singing, and the workflow and examples will support that focus. That’s generally enough to cover most contexts, but the manual will note where a different type of use may require a different approach.
There are three main steps to adding music to Gloria:
- Creating music files
- Creating a hymnbook table of contents
- Transferring everything to Gloria
You’ll typically use a computer for the first two steps, and transfer the files to Gloria using a USB memory stick for the third step. Examples throughout this manual are based on a Windows PC, using a variety of free and commercial software. However. there are no specific requirements for the computer you need for this process: Windows PC, Mac, Linux or Chromebook can all be used to create a complete hymnbook using only free software.
Note that this process only applies to the Gloria 4 model. Some aspects are common to music creation for Gloria 3, but unless otherwise indicated these instructions are exclusively for Gloria 4.
It helps if you’re a musical person and if you’re comfortable around computers and new software. But you don’t have to be. Music has been created for Gloria by musicians with no computer experience whatsoever. And by technicians with no musical ability. And by musicians who are also technical wizards. And by people who are neither musical nor technical. So no matter what your current talents, you can do this if you’re willing to invest the time.