Saguaro Studios today announced Oratorio, a software solution designed to meet the unique needs of churches and church musicians. Combining the key elements of presentation software and a music library, the cross-platform package allows its users to assemble visuals for a complete service or event within minutes, simply by selecting songs from the library and customizing them for the event.
"Having seen a lot of what goes on behind the scenes with PowerPoint and other presentation packages, I knew there had to be a better way to do this job," said Sean McMains, Saguaro Studiosi president. "The general purpose packages are designed with business in mind, and donit make the job of preparing visuals for a church service particularly easy. Weive looked at the most common challenges faced by church music leaders and created a lean, efficient package that meets those needs without tacking on a lot of extra features people pay for, but never use."
Some of great features of Oratorio include:
- Mac OS X, Macintosh Classic, and Windows versions mean that a volunteer can assemble a presentation at home on her Mac, and then display it on the churchis PC, or vice versa.
- An extensible music library that comes with a large collection of public-domain hymns, and which can be easily expanded to include any additional songs the church uses.
- Streamlined, easy-to-use interface makes it possible to assemble visuals for a service in minutes.
- XML file formats make it easy for Oratorio to interoperate with other software.
Oratorio is currently in beta format and is available for free. You can find more information at the Saguaro Studios Web site.