Hymn Arranger — Turn a Hymn Melody into SATB

A hymn arranger, on this page, is a practical path from a hymn melody to an editable SATB draft. You bring a public-domain tune, or a melody you already have the right to arrange, and CantuStudio keeps that melody in the soprano. Alto, tenor and bass are a draft you can hear, mark and change. Playback comes before rehearsal. Voice-leading checks come before the folder is printed. MusicXML, MIDI and PDF come after you decide the draft is worth taking to your choir. The honest claim is a faster first hymn setting, not a finished anthem and not a promise that the source is cleared for performance.

Church choirs land here because the tune is already known and the parts are not. A congregation can sing the melody from memory. What the director still needs is four lines that the altos, tenors and basses can learn before Sunday. CantuStudio is that first pass. It does not pick the hymn for the service, it does not replace a conductor, and it does not claim copyright in music you upload. You confirm the melody, text and source are yours to arrange, then you review what the draft proposes.

SATB hymns · Generate a SATB draft · Open the app · Rehearsal kit · Plans and pricing

What a hymn arranger is for a church choir

The search is specific. People looking for a hymn arranger are not asking for a blank notation suite, and they are not asking for a one-click Sunday anthem. They have a strophic tune, often already in the congregation’s ear, and they need soprano, alto, tenor and bass that can be rehearsed this week. CantuStudio answers that search with a reviewable four-part draft. The SATB hymns hub is the catalog of public-domain starting points. This page is the workflow: melody in, editable SATB out, then files your choir can use.

A hymn is a repeated verse. That changes the review. A tenor line that sits too high does not appear once; it returns on every stanza. A bass that only hops tonic and fifth makes every verse feel the same. An alto crossing the tenor will confuse the same two rows every time you repeat the tune. Because the music comes back, a small voice-leading defect is expensive. The useful product is a draft you can fix once and then sing several times, not a decorative inner part that looks busy on a single system.

This page stays inside what the product does today. You can import a melody, generate SATB, listen, edit, export and share a rehearsal kit. You should not treat the first generation as a published hymn setting. A musician still decides tessitura for this choir, text stress for this language, and whether the piece belongs in this service. If you need camera-ready engraving, finish in your notation editor after export. If you need a faster, reviewable starting point before rehearsal, start here.

From a hymn melody to an editable SATB draft

Bring the hymn the way you already have it. MusicXML, MIDI and MuseScore files carry a written line. A PDF lead sheet or a photo of the hymnal page is the paper case. Audio, or humming into the microphone, is the case where someone sang the tune after service. A virtual piano covers the moment when there is no file. Pasted lyrics with chord symbols are accepted too. In every case the extracted melody becomes the soprano and is preserved. CantuStudio does not rewrite the hymn tune to make the harmony easier.

Harmony planning and voice placement are separate steps. A language model proposes the chord progression and a style character. Placement of alto, tenor and bass is not left to that model: a deterministic search scores voice combinations and picks a voice-leading path. A validator then checks parallel fifths and octaves, voice crossing, spacing, each voice’s range, and non-chord tones on strong beats. You still edit. If the alto is too low for your section, if a leading tone does not resolve, or if the bass sits under what your singers can sustain, you change the note and listen again.

Hymns and chorales are a strong fit because the harmony is usually functional and the form is strophic. Classical voicing is a natural starting style. Contemporary, gospel, romantic, baroque and jazz styles also exist in the product when the tune calls for them. Style is a draft setting, not a guarantee that the result matches a published hymnal. Congregational range still wins. If the generated key is high for your altos, edit or choose another key before you print. The draft is editable on purpose: the blank-page hour is what this step removes.

Longer melodies are split when they exceed a single block. The product accepts up to 64 notes in one block, and melodies up to 256 notes are split into bar-aligned sections in the same style. Above that length the input is rejected rather than silently chopped into an unusable hymn. A no-signup demo is shorter still, so use it to hear a phrase, not to process a full hymnal page. Those limits are product facts, not a promise that every hymn in your folder will fit the free tier.

Voice-leading review before the choir sings the hymn

A hymn draft can look complete and still fail in the room. Parallel fifths and octaves between the same pair of voices weaken the independence of the lines, especially at a cadence the choir will sing on every verse. Voice crossing makes an alto take a note the tenor expected. Spacing holes that a rehearsal piano hides show up when the choir sings unaccompanied. Ranges copied from a textbook are not your section. The review step exists so those problems surface on your screen, not in the first tutti.

Strong beats matter more than decoration. In common hymn meters the downbeat is where the chord has to be clear. An unresolved non-chord tone on a strong beat is a defect to fix, not color to keep. Passing motion on a weak beat can stay if it does not create a parallel or a crossing. The validator is deterministic about those checks. It does not decide taste, text, or whether a suspension fits the words. You do. Ornament that would create a real parallel or a crossing at that moment is not the goal of the draft.

Read the verse while you listen. Hymn text is often dense, and a busy inner voice will fight the syllable. If the choir cannot say the line while singing the line, thin the motion before rehearsal. Then check the highest and lowest note of each voice against the people you actually have. A public-domain melody does not require a recital tessitura. Keep the parts where your choir can sing them softly and loudly. Typical reference ranges are a map, not a promise that your section matches a conservatory chart.

Do this review before you print and before you share. A hymn setting that repeats a bad cadence will train the choir to sing that cadence. Fix the verse, listen again, and only then treat the draft as rehearsal material. CantuStudio can point at parallels, crossings, spacing, range and strong-beat non-chord tones. It cannot hear your room, your piano, or the way your tenors tire on the last stanza. That listening is the director’s job, and it stays the director’s job after the draft exists.

A per-voice rehearsal kit for the hymn

Once you accept the draft, each singer still needs to hear their own line. The rehearsal kit is that next step, not a second product with a different promise. CantuStudio can put the chosen voice forward and keep the other three soft, and it can offer a solo track of one voice when the section needs the line with nothing under it. A saved arrangement can get a public share link. Adding the voice query opens soprano, alto, tenor or bass directly, so the alto chat does not land on the soprano file.

Directors already use a section chat. Paste the link there. Singers open it in the phone browser. There is no app install and no request that the whole choir create an account just to practice the hymn. That is the path from your laptop to the tune they will sing on Sunday. It does not skip the review above. If you share a tenor line that is still too high, the kit only teaches the wrong notes faster. Listen, edit, then share.

The longer explanation of that kit lives with the choir rehearsal tracks answer. Use it after the hymn draft is one you would put in front of people. The kit does not replace the room. Blend, diction, breathing and balance still happen when the choir sings together. Home practice only stops the section from arriving cold. Soprano hears whether they are carrying the hymn tune or doubling it. Alto hears the inner line the tutti hides. Tenor hears the middle without shouting over the piano. Bass hears whether the line is doing harmonic work or hopping tonic and fifth.

There is no standing public sample that pretends to be your hymn. The honest demo is to generate your own draft and share it after you have listened. If the draft has not passed your ear, do not paste it into the choir chat. The kit distributes what you already accepted as rehearsal material. It does not decide the liturgy, and it does not clear the source. It only puts each voice of this hymn on a phone the singer already owns.

MusicXML, MIDI and PDF for the hymn folder

Export is how the draft leaves the generator. PDF is the page for the choir folder. MIDI is playback and a practice file a singer can loop. MusicXML round-trips into Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore and Dorico when you want to keep editing engraving, lyrics or a house layout. A MuseScore file export is also available. None of these files is a claim that the hymn is camera-ready or cleared for publication. They are the formats directors already use after a reviewable SATB idea.

Some choirs print and never open MIDI. Some practice from the phone and rarely print. Some export MusicXML and finish the hymn in the notation editor they already know. CantuStudio does not force one ritual. The hymn arranger’s job is the editable four-part draft and a way to take it further. If the folder needs publisher-level layout, bar numbers, or extracted instrumental parts, do that layout in your notation software after the MusicXML handoff. The generator is not a Sibelius replacement and does not pretend to be one.

Keep the musical decision at export time. A file you have not heard should not go in the folder and should not go in the section chat. Generate, listen, review, then export. That order is the product. PDF for the folder, MIDI for practice, MusicXML for the editor you already pay for: three exits from the same reviewed draft, not three different arrangements. If a later rehearsal shows a note the playback hid, come back and edit. Export is a handoff, not a lock.

A choir director’s week with one hymn

A realistic week starts with the tune, not with a blank staff. You either pick a public-domain hymn from the SATB hymns list or you bring a melody you have the right to arrange. You generate soprano, alto, tenor and bass in the arranger, or you open the app and work there. You listen before anyone else does. You mark parallels, crossings and notes your section cannot sustain. You fix the verse once, because every stanza will repeat it. You export PDF for the folder, MIDI for practice, and MusicXML if the score still needs engraving. Then you share the rehearsal kit so each voice can open their part.

What you do not outsource: copyright, liturgical fit, and the last musical call. Public-domain status is your check, not a label the app stamps on an upload. A melody from a living composer, a recent hymnal, or a recording you do not own is not suddenly arrangeable because a generator accepted the file. CantuStudio will still draft SATB from what you submit. You remain responsible for rights, text accuracy, vocal range and whether the choir should sing it. The answer brief on hymn arranging states the same limit: useful for public-domain or user-owned material, after a musician reviews the draft.

The same honesty applies to quality. The tool can shorten the hour you would spend voicing every chord by hand. It cannot certify a final hymn arrangement. If the piece needs divisi, a descant with its own text, or a harmonic language far from functional four-part writing, finish with a musician. Use the hymn arranger for the common case: a known melody, four singable voices, a rehearsal that is already on the calendar. Arrive with something to test. Do not arrive with a claim that the first pass is the Sunday folder.

Keep the surrounding pages in their lanes so this one stays about hymns. The SATB hymns hub is the public-domain catalog. The SATB arranger is where you generate a draft from a melody you paste or upload. The app is the editor, with playback and the note-by-note changes. The rehearsal-kit answer explains per-voice practice after you trust the draft. Pricing is a separate page. This landing ties those steps into one choir-director week: a melody you may arrange, an editable SATB draft, a voice-leading review, and files you can take to rehearsal.

Demo, Free and Pro for hymn drafts

You can try the loop before you subscribe. A no-signup demo accepts melodies up to 16 notes, enough to hear a phrase of a hymn and see the four voices. A free account includes 10 harmonizations a month and a small MIDI export allowance, currently 2 MIDI exports a month. Paid Pro starts at about R$24.90 per month in BRL, with yearly billing up to about R$249.90. Pro is the tier for unlimited drafts plus PDF, MIDI, MusicXML and the rehearsal kit. Sign in to subscribe. Exact limits live on the English pricing page and can change. Trial terms and current limits live on the plans page.

If one short hymn phrase fits the free allowance, stay there and learn the review loop. If you set a new hymn every week and need the full export pack and the kit, read the pricing page before you upgrade. There are four offers in the public price range, from the free tier through Pro monthly, Pro yearly, and a credit pack. This landing does not reprint a second price table that could drift from the plans page. Currency is BRL. English visitors should use the English plans page so the limits are in the language of this landing.

Start with a hymn you are allowed to arrange. Generate the SATB draft. Listen to each voice. Review the strong beats, the cadences, and the ranges your section can sustain. Export only after that review. Share the rehearsal kit only after you would put the parts in front of people. That is the whole product promise on this page: a faster, editable hymn setting, with the choir director still making the musical decision.

SATB hymns · Generate a SATB draft · Open the app · Rehearsal kit · Plans and pricing

Hymn arranger — FAQ

What formats can I import a hymn melody from?

Import the hymn melody as MusicXML, MIDI, a MuseScore file, a PDF lead sheet, an image or audio. CantuStudio extracts the melody line and harmonizes it.

How long does a hymn arrangement take?

CantuStudio generates a full Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass draft in seconds, then you review and edit it before rehearsal.

Does the AI replace my musical judgment?

No. The arrangement is a draft you edit. You hear playback, check voice leading and adjust every voice before using it with your choir.

Which export formats are supported?

Export MusicXML (round-trips into Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore and Dorico), MIDI for rehearsal tracks, or a print-ready PDF.