The Sing! Hymnal, made in Dorico

The Sing! conference is a Getty Music initiative focused on faith and fellowship through congregational singing, hymns and worship, this year taking place 1–3 September 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 2017 by hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty, the annual event brings together thousands of people for three days of congregational worship, singing, preaching, and networking.

The 2025 conference sees the launch of the Sing! Hymnal, which has been produced by Crossway and Getty Music. Dan Kreider from Hymnworks served as the music engraver and editor, using Dorico. If you are attending the conference in person, you'll be able to see the hymnal for yourself at the Crossway and Hymnworks booths. I (John) will also be running a Focus Gathering session called "Dorico on a deadline: Learning new software while delivering music for your ministry" on Tuesday, September 2nd at 5pm in the Volunteer Mezzanine 3-5, Level M.

Before the conference, I caught up with Dan Kreider about creating the Sing! Hymnal.

JB: What inspired the vision behind the Sing! Hymnal, and why do you believe now is the right moment for a new hymnal in Christian worship?

DK: The publisher for this project, Crossway, is best known for the English Standard Version, with some 300 million copies in print. They had long wanted to publish a hymnal, and they felt the time was right for such a project, given the resurgence of hymn singing in American evangelicalism. This trend is closely tied to a revival of modern hymnwriting over the past twenty years, due in large part to the influence of Keith Getty and others. Crossway has partnered with Getty Music to produce this monumental project with the goal of it helping reinforce and shape modern hymn singing.

JB: Who do you see as the primary audience for the Sing! Hymnal? How does the design reflect that intention?

DK: The Sing! Hymnal is primarily intended for American Protestant/evangelical circles, but we expect it to have some broader adoption in mainline denominations as well. It's broadly liturgical, but not strictly so. Of course, it's impossible for one hymnal to meet the needs of all (or even most) churches, but we believe it will fill a valuable role among many churches in these traditions.

JB: Could you describe how the hymns were selected? What criteria guided the Gettys and the team in choosing the 496 hymns, and what theological or musical priorities shaped the selections?

DK: The hymns in this book were selected in consultation with several hundred advisors, including theologians, pastors, and church musicians. Additionally, there was a smaller senior advisory team (basically a hymnal committee) that made the final decisions about what to include and what to omit. As anyone who has been involved in such committees will tell you, these are incredibly difficult decisions!

Our goal was to represent the best and most enduring Protestant hymns from church history, as well as a strong selection of modern hymns from writers like the Gettys, Sovereign Grace Music, City Alight, and others. As the title of the hymnal makes clear, our goal was to strengthen and encourage congregational singing.

JB: Could you tell me about the digital tools available to support the hymnal, as well as the beautiful printed book?
DK: Crossway excels at print production, so they bring incredible expertise and resources to this project. The hymnal uses a newly commissioned custom paper that is infused with titanium for excellent durability and opacity. It's large (900+ pages), but it doesn't feel bulky. I've seen the pre-production samples, and they're really beautiful. I think it may be the most beautiful printed hymnal I've ever seen.

We're also releasing thousands of digital resources for church musicians to supplement the hymnal: lead sheets, chord charts, and piano scores for every title, in a variety of keys for different vocal ranges and capo options. These are in process; we will have around 350 titles completed when the hymnal is released in September, and we expect to be finished in the next few months. There are also plans for orchestrations, projected music for congregational singing, and other resources we're exploring.

JB: How did your experience and expertise influence the music preparation and design of this hymnal, especially considering your track record with custom hymnals and working with Crossway and the Gettys?
DK: My company, Hymnworks, has published something like 60 hymnals (I've lost count exactly). The collaboration with Crossway on this hymnal was unique; this is their first hymnal, but they've printed literally hundreds of millions of books, all beautifully designed and produced. In some areas, I was able to bring my specific expertise, and in other areas, I felt like the least experienced person in the room!

For example, the Crossway design lead wanted to lay out the music "on the line" vertically (that is, according to predetermined grid units; in this case, increments of 4 or 8 points). Initially, I was resistant to this design decision, but as the project unfolded, I grew to love the result, particularly in the consistent use of white space. The design principles I learned from this project have already influenced my own work on other projects.

JB: Tell me about how you used Dorico in preparing the Sing! Hymnal, and what it enabled you to do that might not have been possible otherwise?
DK: Dorico allowed me to control every aspect of the score easily. We used custom clefs, designed to harmonize with the hymnal typeface. Line thicknesses were very important, which Dorico does easily. The recent addition of OpenType support was a lifesaver in regard to workflow. And as the project progressed, Dorico 6 introduced chord symbol kerning, which was released just in time for production of the lay-flat edition, which includes chord symbols above the staff. Then there were little things that added up to massive time savings, like tokens. When you're creating and exporting 4,000 PDFs, it's essential to automate as much as possible in the page design! The first design took weeks to perfect, but after that, I feel like the mechanics of page layout faded into the background.

The production process was admittedly a bit turbulent at times – not relationally, but simply due to timelines and the amount of work required. Dorico was a welcome source of stability through it all: it just worked, every time, with no liabilities.

JB: Thank you for time to talk about this at a busy time for you, and I'll see you in person at the conference this year - looking forward to it!

Details and purchasing
You can find out more details about the hymnal from the Sing! Hymnal website, purchase from the Crossways website in various formats, including hardcover, cloth over board, goatskin or TruTone over board; and from retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Christianbook, Target, Walmart and WTS, amongst others.

If you're attending the conference in person, then please stop by the Hymnworks stand and also attend the Dorico session "Dorico on a deadline: Learning new software while delivering music for your ministry" on Tuesday, September 2nd at 5pm in the Volunteer Mezzanine 3-5, Level M.