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About Numbered Notation

The numbers are the notes of a scale

Numbered notation (jianpu, 简谱) writes a melody as numbers instead of notes on a staff. You do not need to read music: take one small step at a time and press Play on any example to hear it while each number lights up. Sound only starts when you press Play.

Instead of notes on a staff, each note is a number from 1 to 7. They are the seven steps of the scale you already know: do re mi fa sol la ti. After 7 the scale starts again at 1.

The seven numbers with their names. Press Play and say each name as its number lights up.
Sing along: do re mi fa sol, and back down to do.

If you can sing do re mi, you can already sing every number from 1 to 7. Tap or click any number to hear just that note.

“1=C” tells you where to start

At the top left of the sheet you will see something like 1=C. It means the number 1 (do) is the note C, and every other number counts up from there. 1=G means do is G, so the whole tune sits a little higher. Nothing else changes: the same numbers make the same shape, only higher or lower.

1=C: do is C.
1=G: the same numbers, starting higher.

Not sure where C is? On a piano it is the white key just left of the two black keys. Or ignore the letter and start on any note that is comfortable for your voice: the tune only has to keep its shape. The − and + key buttons on a hymn page shift the key for you.

Dots make a note higher or lower

A dot above a number means one octave higher. A dot below means one octave lower. Two dots mean two octaves. No dot is the middle range, where most of a tune lives. The name stays the same; only the height changes.

The same number at three heights: dot below, no dot, dot above.
A tune that climbs: it starts on a low sol and ends on a high do.

How long each note lasts

Tap your foot at a steady pace: each tap is a beat. A plain number lasts one beat, so you sing a new number on every tap. Dashes, lines and dots change that.

A plain number is one beat

Four numbers, four beats: one number for each tap.

A dash holds the note longer

Each dash adds one beat. The 5 lasts two beats and the 3 lasts four.

A line underneath makes it shorter

One line is half a beat, so two underlined numbers share one beat. (Two lines are a quarter of a beat.)

A dot after makes it half as long again

A dot after a number adds half its length. The first 5 lasts a beat and a half, and the short 3 fills the rest of the second beat.

0 means rest

A 0 is silence for one beat. Keep counting and keep tapping, but do not sing. Dashes after a 0 make the silence longer, just as they hold a note longer.

Sing 1 3 5, stay quiet for one beat, then come back down. Rests light up too, so you can feel the pause.

Bar lines and the time signature

Tall lines cut the music into bars, each holding the same number of beats. The two small numbers at the start, like 4/4 or 3/4, say how many: 4/4 is four beats in every bar, 3/4 is three. The first beat of each bar is the strongest, so lean on it a little. A double line with a thick edge marks the end.

4/4: count 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4. The first beat of each bar sounds a little louder.
3/4: count 1 2 3, 1 2 3, the lilt of a waltz.

Curves: ties and slurs

A curve over numbers joins them. If it joins two of the same number, it is a tie: sing the note once and hold it for both. If it joins different numbers, it is a slur: sing them all on one syllable, gliding from one to the next.

A tie: the 5 is sung once and held across the bar line, six beats in all.
A slur: “Him” is sung on two notes, 3 then 2.

The words sit under the numbers

Each number gets one syllable, written right underneath it. A short dash after part of a word means the word carries on under the next number. If a number has nothing under it, it belongs to a curve or a dash: keep singing the syllable you are on.

Read left to right, one syllable for each number: Twin-kle, twin-kle, lit-tle star.

Repeat signs and 1. 2. endings

A bar line with two dots, :|, means go back and sing that part again, from the matching |: sign (or from the start if there is none). Sometimes the repeat has two endings. Sing ending 1. the first time; on the repeat, skip it and sing ending 2. instead.

Play it: you hear the 1. ending, the repeat, then the 2. ending. Watch the highlight jump back.

Minor keys: “6=A”

A song in a minor key, which usually sounds more serious or tender, is labeled like 6=A instead of 1=C. It means the number 6 (la) is the home note, here A. The numbers keep their usual names; the tune simply feels at home on 6 and often ends there. 6=A uses the same notes as 1=C.

It starts and ends on 6 (la), the home note. Listen to the darker colour.

Put it together: a line of a hymn

This is the first line of hymn 8, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow”, written in numbered notation. Try the slow tempo first, and sing the words as each number lights up.

1=G in 4/4. Three silent beats, then “Praise” on beat 4. The dots under 7, 6 and 5 mean those notes dip one octave lower.

Check yourself

Four quick questions, with no score and no pressure. Tap an answer to see right away why it is right or wrong. You can always try another answer.

Tap the number that is held the longest.

Tap the 5 that is one octave higher than the first 5.

What does a 0 mean?

Under 1=G, which note is the number 1?

Try it on a hymn

You opened this from a hymn that has a Numbered view, so you can try it right now.

  1. Look at the top left of the sheet: the key, such as 1=D, and the time signature, such as 3/4.
  2. Find the first number and sing it. Then follow the numbers from left to right with the words underneath, one syllable for each number. Press Play in the player to hear the recording while you follow.
  3. Letters above the numbers (C, G7) are chords for a guitarist or pianist. Ignore them while you learn the tune.
  4. To be guided, open the Learn tab and press Play. Under Display, set Learn notation to Numbered (or choose Numbered on the Lead Sheet tab first). For hymns that have numbered lines, each line of numbers scrolls into view in time with the recording while a bouncing ball follows the words; other hymns show the piano notation there. The Speed menu slows it down.

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God is processed, this I know

Experience of God His Dispensing

New Songs343
1
God is processed, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Incarnated as a man,
Lived and died and raised again.
 
Yes, God is processed,
Now He’s the Spirit
To constitute us
With the processed Triune God.
2
Incarnation: mingled makes,
Crucifixion: terminates,
Resurrection: germinates,
Life divine now animates.
3
Incarnated so He can
Have the living of a man.
Crucified and raised that He
Could impart His life to me.

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Kelli

Belton, TX, United States

Feb 28, 2017

Praise the Lord. Our Lord was and is and is to come. He is also the processed Spirit. Wow! Thank you for the comments, saints! So rich!

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Kevin Lee Poracan`

Dipolog City, Zamboanga Del Norte, Philippines

Dec 30, 2014

Rishie, we need to embrace the twofoldness of the Divine revelation concerning the essential and economic Trinity. We need to understand both of His essential being and the processes that He went through.

"The Bible reveals both that God is immutable in His essence and that God has been processed in His economy. Processed refers to the crucial and interdependent steps through which the Triune God has passed in the divine economy in order to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity into His chosen and redeemed people. We wish to make it emphatically clear that God's process in His economy does not compromise His essential immutability, and God's immutability in His essence does not preclude His process in His economy. In Himself, in His eternal Godhead, God is unchanging, for His essence is immutable and His nature is unalterable

From eternity to eternity, He can never become either more or less than what He is. Nevertheless, this eternal, immutable, unchanging, unalterable God has, in Christ the Son and for the carrying out of His economy, passed through a process involving incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. This process surely involves a sequence of steps in time, but it absolutely does not entail any change in the immutable essence of God.

God is immutable in His essence and in His attributes. The God who has revealed Himself as I Am—the self-existing, ever-existing One (Exo. 3:14)—speaks of Himself as the One who is, who was, and who is coming (Rev. 1:4). “There never was a time when He was not; there never will come a time when He shall cease to be. God has neither evolved, grown, nor improved. All that He is today, He has ever been, and ever will be” (Pink 37). To say that God is immutable in His attributes is to testify that He is perfect and unchanging in His life, light, love, holiness, righteousness, glory, wisdom, knowledge power, grace, mercy, and all other attributes. His attributes are subject neither to development nor to deterioration. “Whatever the attributes of God were before the universe was called into existence, they are precisely the same now, and will remain so forever”

In keeping with the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth, we believe both in the immutability of God and in the process of God, both in His unchanging essence, nature, and attributes and in the steps He has taken and stages through which He has passed in His economy in order to enter into, dwell in, and be one with His people. Whereas God's immutability is related to His being, God's process is related to His becoming (John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45). In particular, this process is related to the two becomings of Christ—His becoming flesh through incarnation (John 1:14) and His becoming the life-giving Spirit through resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45). These two becomings, as stages of Christ's process, are an economical, not essential, matter, that is, changes that involve God's economy but not God's essence.— Ron Kangas

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Kevin Lee Poracan

Dipolog City, Zamboanga Del Norte, Philippines

Dec 30, 2014

Sister Victoria is right in pointing that God is being processed. Christ as God went many processes. But when we use any illustrations of the Trinity. We need to realize that no illustration could accurately teach all the way we want to say about the Trinity, like the watermelon itself, but it is used that Christ can be enjoyed as the consummated Spirit.

"God in His eternal Godhead is immutable, but God in His economy has been processed and consummated. In keeping with the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth, we should believe in and testify to both the immutability of the Triune God in His eternal Godhead and the process of the Triune God in the outworking in time of the divine economy. God's immutability is related to His being eternally, and God's process is related to His becoming temporally, that is, to a series of experiences within the limits of time which, to the human mind, involve a time sequence. 5 For God to be immutable means that He is not capable of change or susceptible of change; He is not subject to change, for He is unchanging, invariable (James 1:17; Heb. 6:17). He is immutable in His essence (Exo. 3:14; Rev. 1:4), in His attributes (Psa. 89:14; Eph. 2:4), in His promises (Heb. 6:18), and in His purpose (Psa. 33:11; Isa. 46:9-10; Eph. 3:11). Although God is immutable, in Christ He has passed through a process, a series of progressive and interdependent steps, to become the Spirit (John 1:1, 14; 7:37-39; 20:22) so that He might dispense Himself into us. The fact that God has passed through a process for the carrying out of His economy is indicated by certain terms used in the New Testament to describe the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14): “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7), “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9), “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:19), “the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2), “the Spirit” (John 7:39; Gal. 3:14; Rev. 22:17), and “the seven Spirits” (1:4). Now, as the Spirit, the Triune God can reach us, enter into us, dwell in us, fill us, and overflow from within us. Nevertheless, in His eternal Godhead He remains immutable, even as He continues to flow for eternity in the New Jerusalem (22:1-2). Thus, in Himself God is unchanging, for His essence is immutable, His nature is unalterable, and He can never become either more or less than what He is and always will be. The complementary aspect of the twofold truth is that this eternal, immutable, unchanging Triune God has, in Christ, passed through a process in time in order to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people for the accomplishment of His eternal purpose." — Ron Kangas

"When Christ became a man in time. He entered the physical realm of “becoming,” or of change. He entered into a different state, that of humanity (while retaining His divinity). God became a man, the immortal put on mortality, and the immutable put on changeable human nature. In the stage of incarnation the divine life and nature became mingled with the human life and nature and gained a human expression. God had a new existence in humanity. As a man He went through the changes common to human experience, including death. In the stage of resurrection when He became the life-giving Spirit, Christ in His humanity entered a change of state to become spiritual humanity. He also attained to a number of new statuses, such as High Priest, and as the life-giving Spirit, He could impart Himself into His believers and produce the church in order to consummate the New Jerusalem as His ultimate expansion and expression in humanity. There are two critical “becomings” in this process which indicate a change in state: one when Christ as the Word became flesh (which took place in incarnation), and the second when Christ in the flesh became the life-giving Spirit (which took place in resurrection). These two “becomings” correspond to the two “begettings” of Christ: one in which He was begotten of a virgin, Mary, and the second when He was begotten as the Son of God in resurrection...." — Roger Good

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Aaron Thompson

Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand

Jun 7, 2014

Praise the Lord our God is no longer raw. He has been processed that we can eat Him. Hallelujah He's our processed spiritual food.

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Sister Victoria

Jacksonville, Florida, United States

Jul 4, 2013

Rishie, Christ is spiritual food. He is the reality of the riches in the good land in Deuteronomy. In the New Testament Christ is referred to as a lot of edible characters: Bread of Life (John), Fatted Calf (Luke), & Living Water (John). Christ went through a process quite similar to the process a watermelon goes through in order to get into us. The watermelon seed had to be put down into the earth. Christ as the Spirit descended from Heaven into Mary's womb. He was born a man. He lived as a human for 33.5 years. The watermelon seed grew and ripened. The watermelon was sliced open. Christ was crucified (cut like the watermelon) on the cross. He resurrected and ascended, leaving the Spirit to be multiplied among man. The watermelon is cut into pieces so that man can consume it. Now that Christ has gone through a process we can consume Him.

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Rishie

Gllen Innes, Nsw, Australia

Feb 3, 2013

I didn't really like this one so much although the words are powerful, but "God is processed" made me think of processed food and it didn't really make a lot of sense to me. We are the ones who are changed, not Him. Anyway I'm sure the song will bless other people.

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